injury; and some will, as has been just said, protest against the use of the word forgive,' when there is no wrong to be forgiven.

Then avoid the word, if you will; only do not go on to imagine that you have no need to keep down, with a strong effort, just the same kind of feelings that you would have had if there had been an injury. If you take for granted that no care is needed to repress such feelings, inasmuch as they would be so manifestly unreasonable, the probable result will be, that you will not repress but indulge them. You will not, indeed, acknowledge to yourself the real ground (as you do in the case of an actual injury) of your resentful feelings; but you will deceive yourself by finding out some other ground, real or imaginary. It is not that the man adheres to his original views, but that he is an uncharitable bigot: It is not that I grudge him his success, but that he is too much puffed up with it:' 'It is not that I myself was seeking the situation, but that he is unfit for it;' &c.

He who cultivates, in the right way, the habit of forgiving injuries, will acquire it. But if you content yourself with this, and do not cultivate a habit of candour in such cases as those above alluded to, you will be deficient in that; for it does not grow wild in the soil of the human heart. And the unreasonableness and injustice of the feelings which will grow wild there, is a reason not why you should neglect to extirpate them, but why you should be the more ashamed of not doing so.

It is worth mentioning, that your judgment of any one's character who has done anything wrong, ought to be exactly the same, whether the wrong was done to you or to any one else. A man who has cheated or slandered you is neither more nor less a cheat and a slanderer than if it had been some other person, a stranger to you. This is evident; yet there is great need to remind people of it; for, as the very lowest minds of all regard with far the most disapprobation any wrong from which they themselves suffer, so, those a few steps, and only a few, above them, in their dread of such manifest injustice, think they cannot bend the twig too far the contrary way, and are for regarding (in theory, at least, if not in practice) wrongs to oneself as no wrongs at all. Such a person will reckon it a point of heroic generosity to let loose on society a rogue who has cheated him, and to leave uncensured and unexposed a liar

by whom he has been belied, and the like. And if you refuse favour and countenance to those unworthy of it, whose misconduct has at all affected you, he will at once attribute this to personal vindictive feelings; as if there could be no such thing as esteem and disesteem. One may even see tales, composed by persons not wanting in intelligence, and admired by many of what are called the educated classes, in which the virtue held up for admiration and imitation consists in selecting as a bosom friend, and a guide, and a model of excellence, one who had been guilty of manifest and gross injustice, because the party had suffered personally from that injustice.

It is thus that fools mistake reverse of wrong for right.' The charity of some persons consists in proceeding on the supposition that to believe in the existence of an injury is to cherish implacable resentment; and that it is impossible to forgive, except when there is nothing to be forgiven. It is obvious that these notions render nugatory the Gospel-precepts. Why should we be called upon to render good for evil, if we are bound always to explain away that evil, and call it good? Where there is manifestly just ground for complaint, we should accustom ourselves to say, 'That man owes me a hundred pence!' thus at once estimating the debt at its just amount, and recalling to our mind the parable of him who rigorously enforced his own claims, when he had been forgiven ten thousand talents.

There is a whole class of what may be called secondary vulgar errors, errors produced by a kind of re-action from those of people who are the very lowest of all, in point of intellect, or of moral sentiment,-errors which those fall into who are a few, and but a very few, steps higher.

IT

3

ESSAY V. OF ADVERSITY.

T was a high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the 'good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired'-' Bona rerum secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia." Certainly, if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his than the other (much too high for a heathen), 'It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man, and the security of a God'-'Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei." This would have done better in poesy, where transcendencies* are more allowed; and the poets, indeed, have been busy with it-for it is in effect the thing which is figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without mystery; nay, and to have some approach to the state of a Christian, 'that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the length of the great ocean in an earthen pot or pitcher, lively describing christian resolution, that saileth in the frail bark of the flesh through the waves of the world." But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's

1 Sen. Ad Lucil. 66.

3 Poesy. Poetry

'Musick and Poesy

2 Sen. Ad Lucil. 53.

To quicken you.'-Shakespere.

4 Transcendencies. Flights; soarings.

5 Mystery. A secret meaning; an emblem.

Important truths still let your fables hold,

And moral mysteries with art enfold.'-Granville.

'Temperance, with golden square,

Betwixt them both can measure out a mean.'-Shakespere.

favour. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities' of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground: judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant where they are incensed, or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

ANNOTATIONS.

Some kinds of adversity are chiefly of the character of TRIALS, and others of DISCIPLINE. But Bacon does not advert to this difference, nor say anything at all about the distinction between discipline and trial; which are quite different in themselves, but often confounded together.

By 'discipline' is to be understood, anything-whether of the character of adversity or not-that has a direct tendency to produce improvement, or to create some qualification that did not exist before; and by trial, anything that tends to ascertain what improvement has been made, or what qualities exist. Both effects may be produced at once; but what we speak of is, the proper character of trial, as such, and of discipline, as such.

A college tutor, for instance, seeks to make his pupils good scholars; an examiner, to ascertain how far each candidate is such. It may so happen that the tutor may be enabled to

'I met him accidentally in London, in sad-coloured clothes, far from being costly.'-Walton's Lives.

3 Incensed. Set on fire; burned.

But what For no one

form a judgment of the proficiency of the pupils; and that a candidate may learn something from the examiner. is essential in each case, is incidental in the other. would say that a course of lectures was a failure, if the pupils were well instructed, though the teacher might not have ascertained their proficiency; or that an examination had not answered its purpose, if the qualifications of the candidates were proved, though they might have learnt nothing from it.

A corresponding distinction holds good in a great many other things for instance, what is called "proving a gun," that is, loading it up to the muzzle and firing it does not at all tend to increase its strength, but only proves that it is strong. Proper hammering and tempering of the metal, on the other hand, tends to make it strong.

These two things are, as has been just said, very likely to be confounded together: (1) because very often they are actually combined; as e.g., well conducted exercise of the body, both displays, and promotes, strength and agility. The same holds good in the case of music, and various other pursuits, and in none more than in virtuous practice.

(2) Because from discipline and from trial, and anything analogous to these, we may often draw the same inference, though by different reasonings: e.g., if you know that a gunbarrel has gone through such and such processes, under a skilful metallurgist, you conclude à priori that it will be a strong one; and again you draw the same inference from knowing that it has been proved.' This latter is an argument from a sign, the other from cause to effect.' So also, if you know that a man has been under a good tutor, this enables you to form an à priori conjecture, that he is a scholar; and by a different kind of argument, you infer the same from his having passed an examination.

Great evils may arise from mistaking the one of these things for the other. For instance, children's lives have been sacrificed by the attempt to make them hardy by exposing them to cold, and wet, and hardship. Those that have been so exposed are (as many of them as survive) hardy; because their having gone through it proves that they were of a strong constitution, though

1 Rhetoric, Part I. Chap. II.

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