invited neither to mount nor to descend, but to keep in their place; it suits them neither to be a tyrant nor a slave; let it suffice them to be free. Virtue in every case keeps the middle station; there likewise is to be found security, tranquillity, happiness. I could wish therefore that no Burgher should ever desire to get out of the order of the People; but should he feel the restless stimulus of glory, let him still remain in his station; for there is no condition of life but what presents a career capable of gratifying even the most unbounded ambition.

O Plebeian, who dicernest no glory comparable to that which high birth bestows, and who blushest at being a man because thou art not noble, Art thou a lawyer? Be the defender of virtue and the terror of the guilty. Like another Dupaty, rescue from our barbarous codes their innocent victims; declare war against our Verreses and our Catilines; undertake and plead the cause of Nations; consider how Cicero with the thunders of eloquence, protected Kings, and Demosthenes made them tremble. Art thou but a simple tradesman? it is commerce which vivifies Empires; to Commerce the two wealthiest States of Europe, England and Holland, are indebted for their power; it is by means of Commerce that their Merchants behold in their pay, not only Gentlemen innumerable, but Princes and Sovereigns. Commerce exalts even to the throne. Call to mind those ancient traders of Florence who have, swayed the sceptre in their own Country, and given two Queens to your's. Art thou only a wretched mariner, wandering like Ulysses from sea to sea, far remote from thy na

tive shores? Thou art the agent of Nations: thou providest not only a supply for their necessities, but communicatest to them what is most pre cious among mankind, next to virtue. Arts, Sciences, Knowledge. By men of your condition it was that islands were made known to islands, nations to nations, and the two worlds to each other: but for them the Globe with it's rarest productions, would be unknown to us. Reflect on the glory of Christopher Columbus, to which no glory, even that of Royalty, is once to be compared, as he alone, by the discovery of America, has effected a change in the wants, the enjoyments, the empires, the relie gions, and the destiny of the greatest part of the inhabitants of the Globe. Art thou, on the contrary, an artist continually sedentary, as Theseus in the regions below? O how many paths are open to thee, from the bosom of repose, that lead to a glory sullied by no guilt! How many of these are presented to you in painting, sculpture, engraving, music, the productions of which transport with admiration and delight! Nay, how many artists are there, whose names shall be renowned to all ge nerations, though their works no longer exist; so eager are men to pursue the celestial traces of their genius, and to pick up the minutest particles of gold which the brilliant current of their reputation rolls down the tide of ages! Is there a Nobleman in all Europe whose name is to endure, and to be celebrated, like those of the Phidiases and the Apelleses, who have for two thousand years enjoyed the homage of posterity, and who reckoned the Aleranders of their day in the number of their courtiers?

courtiers? Art thou a philosopher simply, to whom Consider that you in your The Nobility depend on Kings, the Philosopher holds of GOD only: the Nobility live as Gentlemen, thou livest as a Man, which is far more dignified. But for Philosophers, the Nations, misled by vain illusions, would know neither the laws nor the combinations of Nature. They are the original sources of the Arts, the Commerce and the Wealth of Nations. Call to remembrance the wonderful discoveries of Galileo, who first found out the gravity of the Air, and demonstrated the motion of the Earth round the Sun; and that multitude of illustrious men who have enlarged the sphere of the human mind, in Astronomy, Chemistry, Botany, &c. They are the most memorable epochas of ages, and their glory will last as long as that of Nature, whose children they are. Art thou a man of letters? The distribution of glory to other men is in thy hands. Illustrious Authors! Like the Venus of Lucretius, without you nothing agreeable is produced in the sphere of intelligence, and nothing is permanent in the fields of memory. Whether your attention is directed to Poetry, to Philosophy, or to History, you are the firmest supports of Virtue. By your means Nations unite themselves in bonds of interest and of friendship, from one extremity of the Earth to the other, and ages past with ages yet to come. But for you, kings and the tribes which they governed would pass away without. leaving a trace of their existence. Whatever is renowned among men owes to you it's celebrity,

no one pays court?

turn pay court to no one.

and

and your own names surpass in splendour the names of those whom you have rendered illustri, ous. What glory ever equalled that of Homer, whose poësy served to regulate the ancient Republics of Greece, and whose genius, after a lapse of twenty-six centuries, still continues to preside among us over Literature, over the fine Arts, over Theatres and over Academies.

Art thou, after all, but an obscure peasant doomed to the culture of the ground? O! reflect that thou exercisest the most noble, the most lovely, the most necessary, the most sacred of all Arts, seeing it is the Art of GOD himself. But if that poison of glory, instilled from infancy into all conditions of men among us by the principle of emulation, is fermenting in thy veins; if the vain applause of men is necessary to thee, in the midst of thy peaceful orchards: meditate on the endless succession of woes which follow in the train of glory, the envy of the little, the jealousy of equals, the perfidy of the great, the intolerance of corps, the neglect and indifference of Kings. Meditate on the fate of those men whom I have produced as instances of persons who have merited the best of their country and of posterity; on the head of Cicero, cut off by his own client Popinius Lena, and nailed to that very pulpit which he had dignified by his eloquence; on Demosthenes, pursued by order of the Athenians whom he had defended against Philip, as far as the temple of Neptune in the island of Calauria, and hastening to swallow poison, to find in death a refuge more certain than altars could afford. Think on the poniard which stabbed to death one of the Medicis in that very City

which they had loaded with benefits; on the irons which bound Christopher Columbus on returning from his second Voyage to the New World, and which in his dying moments he ordered to be put into the tomb with him as a monument of the ingratitude of the Princes to whom he had rendered a service so magnificent; on Galileo in the prisons of the inquisition, obliged to retract on his knees the sublime truth which he had demonstrated; on Homer, blind and a mendicant, singing from door to door his sublime Poems, among those very Greeks who were one day to trace up to them the origin of their Laws, and of their most illustrious Repub lics. Look at Poussin in his country, France, crowned with glory all over Europe, his own country excepted, forced to seek in a foreign land consideration and bread; at Descartes a fugitive in Sweden, after having illumined his Country with the first rays of Philosophy; at Fenelon exiled into his Diocese, for having loved GOD more than his Ministers, and Nations more than Kings. In a word, represent to thyself that innumerable multitude of illustrious and unfortunate men who, torn in secret by the very calumnies of their own professed friends, languished in poverty and contempt, and without having so much as the consolation be pitied, had the mortification of beholding the honours and rewards due to themselves bestowed Then thou wilt bless on most unworthy rivals. thy obscurity which permitteth thee at last to reap the fruit of thy labours with the esteem of the vicinity; to rear a guiltless offspring under the shade of thy orchards, to attain, in a life so tempestuous, the only portion of happiness which Nature has allotted