manded my admiration, and not seldom excited my won der. It was one of his maxims, that a man may suggest what he cannot give: adding, that a wild or silly plan had more than once, from the vivid sense, and distinct perception of its folly, occasioned him to see what ought to be done in a new light, or with a clearer insight. There is, indeed, a hopeless sterility, a mere negation of sense and thought; which suggesting neither difference nor contrast, cannot even furnish hints for recollection. But on the other hand, there are minds so whimsically constituted, that they may sometimes be profitably interpreted by contraries, a process of which the great Tycho Brache is said to have availed himself in the case of the Fool, who used to sit and mutter at his Feet while he was studying. A mind of this sort we may compare to a Magnetic Needle, the poles of which had been suddenly reversed by a flash of lightening, or other more obscure accident of Nature. It may be safely concluded, that to those whose judgement or information he respected, Sir Alexander Ball did not content himself with giving access and attention. No! he seldom failed of consulting them whenever the subject permitted any disclosure; and where secrecy was necessary, he well knew how to acquire their opinions without exciting even a conjecture concerning his immediate object.

Yet, with all this readiness of attention, and with all this zeal in collecting the sentiments of the well-informed, never was a man more completely uninfluenced by authority than Sir Alexander Ball, never one who sought less to tranquilize his own doubts by the mere suffrage and coincidence of others. The ablest suggestions had no conclusive weight with him, till he had abstracted the opinion from its author, till he had reduced it into a part of his own mind. The thoughts of others were always acceptable, as affording him at least a chance of adding to his materials for reflection; but they never directed his judgement, much less superseded it. He even made a point of guarding against additional confidence in the suggestions of his own mind, from finding that a person of talents had formed the same conviction unless the person, at the same time, furnished some new argument, or had arrived at the same conclusion by a different road. On the latter circumstance he set an especial value, and, I may almost say; courted the company and conversation

of those, whose pursuits had least resembled his own, if they were men of clear and comprehensive faculties. Duting the period of our intimacy, scarcely a week passed, in which he did not desire me to think on some particular subject, and to give him the result in writing. Most frequently by the time I had fulfilled his request, he would have written down his own thoughts, and then, with the true simplicity of a great mind, as free from ostentation, as it was above Jealousy, he would collate the two papers in my presence, and never expressed more pleasure than in the few instances, in which I had happened to light on all the arguments and points of view which had occurred to himself, with some additional reasons which had escaped him. A single new argument delighted him more than the most perfect coincidence, unless, as before stated, the train of thought had been very different from his own, and yet just and logical. He had one quality of mind, which I have heard attributed to the late Mr. Fox, that of deriving a keen pleasure from clear and powerful reasoning for its own sake, a quality in the intellect which is nearly connected with veracity and a love of justice in the moral character.*

Valuing in others merits which he himself possessed, Sir Alexander Ball felt no jealous apprehension of great talent. Unlike those vulgar Functionaries, whose Place is too big for them, a truth which they attempt to disguise from themselves, and yet feel, he was under no necessity of arming himself against the Natural Superiority of Genius by factitious contempt and an industrious association of extravagance and impracticability, with every deviation from the ordinary routine; as the Geographers in the middle ages used to designate on their meagre Maps, the greater part of the World, as Desarts or Wildernesses, in

It may not be amiss to add, that the pleasure from the perception of Truth was so well poised and regulated by the equal or greater delight in Utility, that his love of real accuracy was accompanied with a proportionate dislike of that hollow appearance of it, which may be produced by turns of phrase, words placed in balanced antithesis, and those epigrammatic points that pass for subtle and luminous distinctions with ordinary Readers, but are most commonly translatable into mere truisms or trivialities, if indeed they contain any meaning at all. Having observed in some casual conversation, that though there were doubtless masses of matter unorganized, I saw no ground for asserting a mass of unorganized matter; Sir A. B. paused, and then said to me, with that frankness of manner which made his very rebukes gratifying, "The distinction is just, and, now I understand you, abundantly obvious; but hardly worth the trouble of your inventing a puzzle of words to make it appear otherwise." I trust the rebuke was not lost on me.

habited by Griffins and Chimeras. Competent to weigh each system or project by its own arguments, he did not need these preventive charms and cautionary amulets against delusion. He endeavoured to make talent instrumental to his purposes in whatever shape it appeared, and with whatever imperfections it might be accompanied ; but wherever talent was blended with moral worth, he sought it out, loved, and cherished it. If it had pleased Providence to preserve his life, and to place him on the same course on which Nelson ran his race of Glory, there are two points in which Sir Alexander Ball would most closely have resembled his illustrious Friend. The first is, that in his enterprizes and engagements he would have thought nothing done, till all had been done that was possible:

"Nil actum reputans, si quid supresset agendum."

The second, that he would have called forth all the talent and virtue that existed within his sphere of influence, and created a band of Heroes, a gradation of officers, strong in head and strong in heart, worthy to have been his Companions and his Successors in Fame and public Usefulness.

Never was greater discernment shewn in the selection of a fit agent, than when Sir Alexander Ball was stationed off the Coast of Malta to intercept the supplies destined for the French Garrison, and to watch the movements of the French Commanders, and those of the Inhabitants who had been so basely betrayed into their power. Eucouraged by the well-timed promises of the English Captain, the Maltese rose through all their Casals (or Country Towns) and themselves commenced the work of their emancipation, by storming the Citadel at Civita Vecchia, the ancient Metropolis of Malta, and the central height of the Island. Without discipline, without a military Leader, and almost without arms, these brave peasants succeeded, and destroyed the French Garrison by throwing them over the battlements into the trench of the Citadel. In the course of this blockade, and of the tedious siege of Vallette, Sir Alexander Ball displayed all that strength of character, that variety and versatility of talent, and that sagacity, derived in part from habitual circumspection, but which, when the occasion demanded it, appeared intuitive and like an instinct; at the union of which, in the same Man, one of our oldest naval Commanders once told me,

" he could never exhaust his wonder." The Citizens of Vallette were fond of relating their astonishment, and that of the French, at Captain Ball's Ship wintering at anchor out of the reach of the Guns, in a depth of fathom unexampled, on the assured impracticability of which the Garrison had rested their main hope of regular supplies. Nor can I forget, or remember without some portion of my original feeling, the solemn enthusiasm with which a venerable old man, belonging to one of the distant Casals, shewed me the Sea Coombe, where their Father BALL, (for so they commonly called him) first landed; and afterwards pointed out the very place, on which he first stepped on their Island, while the countenances of his Townsmen, who accompanied him, gave lively proofs, that the old man's enthusiasm was the representative of the common feeling. There is no reason to suppose, that Sir Alexander Ball was at any time chargeable with that weakness so frequent in Englishmen, and so injurious to our interests abroad, of despising the Inhabitants of other Countries, of losing all their good qualities in their vices, of making no allowance for those vices, from their religious or political impediments, and still more of mistaking for vices, a mere difference of manners and customs. But if ever he had any of this erroneous feeling, he completely freed himself from it, by living among the Maltese during their arduous trials, as long as the French continued masters of the Capital. He witnessed their virtues, and learnt to understand in what various shapes and even disguises the valuable parts of human Nature may exist. In many Individuals, whose littleness and meanness in the common intercourse of life would have stamped them at once as contemptible and worthless, with ordinary Englishmen, he had found such virtues of disinterested patriotism, fortitude, and self-denial, as would have done honour to an ancient Roman.

There exists in England, a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly feeling, very different even from that, which is the most like it, the character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of Europe. This feeling probably originated in the fortunate circumstance, that the Titles of our English Nobility follow the law of their Property, and are inherited by the eldest Sons only. From this source, under the influences of our Constitution, and of our astonishing Trade, it has diffused itself in

to

different modifications through the whole Country The uniformity of our Dress among all classes above that of the day labourer, while it has authorized all classes to assume the appearance of Gentlemen, has at the same time inspired the wish to conform their manners, and still more their ordinary actions in social intercourse, to their notions of a Gentleman, the most commonly received attribute of which, is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, the encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned, and favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, and the absence of any cognizable marks of distinction, have rendered each class more reserved and jealous in their general communion, and far more than our Climate, or natural Temper, have caused that haughtiness and reserve in our outward demeanor, which is so generally complained of among Foreigners. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of this gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all its forms and varieties, from the House of Commons, the Gentlemen in the one shilling Gallery. It is always the ornament of Virtue, and oftentimes a support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its worth, as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its' value, as a social advantage. These observations are not irrelevant: for to the want of reflection, that this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us, is not the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, where the same causes have not existed to produce them; and, lastly, to our proneness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I have before said, does, for the greater part, and, in the common apprehension, consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as decisive against the sum total of personal or national worth; we must, I am convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in many instances has left the Inhabitants of Countries conquered or appropriated by Great Britain, doubtful whether the various solid advantages which they derived from our protection and just government, were not bought dearly by the wounds inflicted on their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous and insolent demeanour of the English, as individuals. The Reader who bears this remark in mind, will meet, in the