who made the age famous, grave lawyers, judicious historians, wise philosophers; the name of learning was honourable, its professors were encouraged; and along the vast surface of the Roman empire there was perhaps a greater number, whose minds were cultivated by intellectual discipline, than under the more brilliant reign of the first emperor.

It is not, I think, very easy to give a perfectly satisfactory solution of the rapid downfall of literature between the ages of Antonine and of Diocletian. Perhaps the prosperous condition of the empire from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, and the patronage which those good princes bestowed on letters, gave an artificial health to them for a moment, and suspended the operation of a disease which had already begun to undermine their vigour. Perhaps the intellectual energies of mankind can never remain stationary; and a nation that ceases to produce original and inventive minds, born to advance the landmarks of knowledge or skill, will recede from step to step, till it loses even the secondary merits of imitation and industry. During the third century, not only there were no great writers, but even few names of indifferent writers have been recovered by the diligence of modern inquiry. Law neglected, philosophy perverted till it became contemptible, history nearly silent, the Latin tongue growing rapidly barbarous, poetry rarely and feebly attempted, art more and more vitiated; such were the symptoms by which the age previous to Constantine announced the decline of human intellect.

State of Europe during the Middle Ages, iii.

IV.

A knight was unfit to remain a member of the order, if he violated his faith; he was ill acquainted with its duties, if he proved wanting in courtesy. This word expressed the most highly refined good-breeding, founded less upon a knowledge of ceremonious politeness, though this was not to be omitted,

than on the spontaneous modesty, self-denial, and respect for others, which ought to spring from his heart. Besides the grace which this beautiful virtue threw over the habits of social life, it softened down the natural roughness of war, and gradually introduced that indulgent treatment of prisoners which was almost unknown to antiquity. Instances of this kind are continual in the latter period of the middle ages. An Italian writer blames the soldier who wounded Eccelin, the famous tyrant of Padua, after he was taken. He deserved, says he, no praise, but rather the greatest infamy for his baseness; since it is as vile an act to wound a prisoner, whether noble or otherwise, as to strike a dead body. Considering the crimes of Eccelin, this sentiment is a remarkable proof of generosity. The behaviour of Edward III. to Eustace de Ribeaumont, after the capture of Calais, and that, still more exquisitely beautiful, of the Black Prince to his royal prisoner at Poitiers, are such eminent instances of chivalrous virtue, that I omit to repeat them only because they are so well known. Those great princes too might be imagined to have soared far above the ordinary track of mankind. But in truth, the knights who surrounded them, and imitated their excellencies, were only inferior in opportunities of displaying the same virtue. After the battle of Poitiers," the English and Gascon knights," says Froissart, "having entertained their prisoners, went home each of them with the knights or squires he had taken, whom he then questioned upon their honour, what ransom they could pay without inconvenience, and easily gave them credit; and it was common for men to say, that they would not straighten any knight or squire, so that he should not live well, and keep up his honour." Liberality indeed, and disdain of money, might be reckoned, as I have said, among the essential virtues of chivalry. All the romances inculcate the duty of scattering their wealth with profusion, especially towards minstrels, pilgrims, and the poorer members of their own order. The last, who were pretty numerous, had a constant

right to succour from the opulent; the castle of every lord, who respected the ties of knighthood, was open with more than usual hospitality to the traveller whose armour announced his dignity, though it might also conceal his poverty.

State of Europe during the Middle Ages, iii.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

I.

It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men but what was hateful; yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so far humane, that it was highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings, or to hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort of humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man, whose power to help or to hurt is bounded by a narrow circle, has, in princes, often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one well-disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine and oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round his own board, and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great societies who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access to him for the sake of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles was such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe. Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him, and undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of titles, places, domains, state secrets, and pardons. He bestowed much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame of bene

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

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ficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally went, not to those who deserved it best, but to the most shameless and importunate suitor who could obtain an audience.

The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles II. differed widely from those by which his predecessor and his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon by the patriarchal theory of government and the doctrine of divine right. He was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of affairs, that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at his childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any share in determining his course; for never was there a mind on which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions. He wished merely to be a king such as Louis XV. of France afterwards was; a king who could draw without limit on the treasury for the gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons capable of assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was brought by maladministration to the depths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be obtained without risk or trouble.

History of England, i.

II.

Then was committed that great crime-memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left

at the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice-the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls, and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was 146. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated, they entreated, but in vain. The guards threatened to cut all down who hesitated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them.

Nothing in history or fiction-not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer-approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy; they strove to burst the door. Holwell, who even in that extremity retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was, that nothing could be done without the nabob's orders that the nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows-fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies-raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers, in the mean time, held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of the victims. At length the tumult died away in low