shyness, will of itself tend to throw the head of a party into the closer connection with the more menial of his partisans. For the less menial will hold themselves more aloof, when they do not find the relation of political superiority to come qualified and recommended to them by feelings of personal friendliness.

It is less desirable to be surrounded and served by men of a shallow cleverness and slight character, than by men of even less talent who are of sound and stable character. A statesman will be brought into fewer difficulties and dilemmas by men of the latter class, and will be more easily excused for befriending them beyond their merits. They will be creditable to him in one way, if not in another; and their advancement, bringing less envy upon themselves, will reflect less odium upon their patron: whereas much ill-will and contempt will commonly accompany the ad

vancement of men whose talents have been sufficient to push them forward in life, but inadequate to command respect in the absence of other pretensions to respectability.

It is but an infelicitous alternative, however, to be obliged to choose from either of these classes, when important offices are to be filled; to be compelled to turn from the flimsy man of talent, to the dull respectable man. The latter may pass current with the world; for in the world a man will often be reputed to be a man of sense, only because he is not a man of talent; and in the world, too, he who is taken

to be a man of sense, is taken to be equal to all the functions of a statesman he is sup

;

posed to be "par negotiis," because he is "haud suprà." But good sense, which is an abundant provision, and not a common one, for the purposes of private life, and in public life essential as one constituent quality, does by no means of itself make up a sufficiency of endow

ment for conducting the affairs of a country.

It is only, therefore, to the worse alternative of talent without seriousness and worth, that sense without ability is to be preferred.

But if there be in the character not only sense and soundness, but virtue of a high order, then, however little appearance there may be of talent, a certain portion of wisdom may be relied upon almost implicitly. For the correspondencies of wisdom and goodness are manifold; and that they will accompany each other is to be inferred, not only because men's wisdom makes them good, but also because their goodness makes them wise. Questions of right and wrong are a perpetual exercise of the faculties of those who are solicitous as to the right and wrong of what they do and see; and a deep interest of the heart in these questions carries with it a deeper cultivation of the understanding than can be easily effected by any other excitement to intellectual activity.

Although, therefore, simple goodness does not imply every sort of wisdom, it unerringly implies some essential conditions of wisdom; it implies a negative on folly, and an exercised judgment within such limits as Nature shall have prescribed to the capacity. And where virtue and extent of capacity are combined, there is implied the highest wisdom, being that which includes the worldly wisdom with the spiritual.

A statesman who numbers the wise and good amongst his political friends, men of sense and respectability amongst his adherents; who demeans himself in a spirit of liberal but disengaged good-will towards his ordinary partisans, and holds himself towards his tools in no reciprocity of that relation; who enlists in the public service all the capable men he can find, and renders them available to the extent of their capabilities, all other men's jealousies notwithstanding, and any jealousy of his own

out of the question;-such a statesman has already, in the commonwealth of his own nature, given to the nobler functions the higher place; and as a minister, therefore, he is one whom his country may be satisfied to trust, and its best men be glad to serve. He, on the other hand, who sees in the party he forms only the pedestal of his own statue, or the plinth of a column to be erected to his honour, may, by inferior means and lower service, accomplish his purposes, such as they are; but he must be content with vulgar admiration, and lay out of account the respect of those who will reserve that tribute from what is merely powerful, and render it only to what is great. "He that "seeketh to be eminent amongst able men," says Lord Bacon, "hath a great task; but "that is ever good for the public. But he "that plots to be the only figure amongst

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ciphers, is the decay of a whole age."