world is now ancient, ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from our own times."

Pascal, in one of his “Pensées," has borrowed this from Bacon, enlarging upon it after his own fashion; and Bentham has done little more than copy Pascal. The latter remarks:

"Toute la suite des hommes, pendant le cours de tant de siècles, doit être considérée comme un même homme qui subsiste toujours et qui apprend continuellement d'où l'on voit avec combien d'injustice nous respectons l'antiquité dans ses philosophes; car comme la vieillesse est l'âge le plus distant de l'enfance, qui ne voit que la vieillesse de cet homme universel ne doit pas être cherchée dans les temps proches de sa naissance, mais dans ceux qui en sont le plus éloignés ? Ceux que nous appelons anciens étaient véritablement nouveaux en toutes choses, et formaient l'enfance des hommes, proprement; et comme nous avons joint à leurs connaissances l'expérience des siècles qui les ont suivis, c'est en nous que l'on peut trouver cette antiquité que nous révérons dans les autres."

Dugald Stewart, however, in his dissertation prefixed to the "Encyclopædia Britannica," assigns a higher origin to this thought than even Lord Bacon, and refers it to the following passage in the "Opus Majus" of Roger Bacon:

"Quanto juniores, tanto perspicaciores, quia juniores, posteriores successione temporum, ingrediuntur labores priorum."

Although Roger Bacon's "Opus Majus" was not published till the eighteenth century, there is every reason to suppose that Lord Bacon had seen the manuscript. The fame of a man bearing

his patronymic would naturally lead him to make inquiries respecting his writings: and the presumption that he did so is confirmed by more than one passage in his lordship's works, which present a striking similarity, both in thought and expression, to the remarks of his great namesake.

Another, and indeed far from improbable, conjecture is, that the source of this remarkable thought is to be found in the following verse in the "Book of Esdras:"

"Sæculum perdidit juventutem suam, et tempora appropinquant senescere."

There is a thought in Pascal to which La Rochefoucauld furnishes a parallel. Pascal

says:

"Il n'y a point d'homme plus différent d'un autre que de soi-même, dans les divers temps."

La Rochefoucauld has it :

"On est quelques fois aussi différent de soi-même que des autres."

Which is the borrower, it is not easy to determine; but one or the other has adopted it from this of Horace :

"Nihil fuit unquam

Sic dispar sibi."

Another of La Rochefoucauld's aphorisms:"L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu,"

has been diluted in the following fashion by Sir Walter Scott:

Hypocrisy cannot exist unless religion be to a certain extent held in esteem, because no one would be at the trouble to assume a mask which was not respectable; and, so far, compliance with the external forms of religion is a tribute paid to the doctrines which it teaches."-Life of Napoleon.

And Trench has it in this passage:

"When we have learnt the pedigree of the word, the man and the age which gave it birth rise up before us, glorying in their shame, and no longer caring to pay to virtue even that outward hypocritical homage which vice not seldom yields."On the Study of Words.

Gibbon has a striking observation on the nature of history, which he describes as,

"Little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind."

This seems to have been adopted from Voltaire, who says in one of his prose works :

"En effet, l'histoire n'est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs."

Even Junius is not free from the imputation of borrowing. In his seventh "Letter," addressed to Sir W. Draper, he has the remark :—

"It is the middle compound character which alone is vulnerable; the man who, without firmness enough to avoid a dishonourable action, has feeling enough to be ashamed of it."

This is taken from Bevil Higgons' "Short View of English History:"

"So weak and fallible is that admired maxim: 'factum valet quod fieri non debuit,' an excuse first invented to palliate the unfledged villany of some men who are ashamed to be knaves, yet have not the courage to be honest."

Another borrowed thought in Junius occurs in the well-known passage where he employs that curious simile of the caput mortuum of vitriol:

"He was forced to go through every division, resolution, composition, and refinement of political chemistry, before he happily arrived at the caput mortuum of vitriol in your grace. Flat and insipid in your retired state; but brought into action, you become vitriol again. Such are the extremes of alternate indolence or fury which have governed your whole administration."

The simile here has evidently been taken from these lines in Rochester:

"Wit, like tierce claret, when 't begins to pall,

Neglected lies and 's of no use at all;

But in its full perfection of decay

Turns vinegar, and comes again in play."

Then we have the passage in another of the "Letters: ".

"In the shipwreck of the state, trifles float and are preserved; while everything solid and valuable sinks to the bottom and is lost for ever."

Which is but a prose version of the thought expressed by Dryden's couplet :—

66

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below."

U

Chenevix, in his "Essay on National Character,” remarks :—

“This single day is sufficient to prove that the trident of Neptune is the true sceptre of the universe."

Here is a saying well worthy of an Englishman; the merit of which, however, belongs to the French poet Lemierre, who says in his poem on "Commerce:

"Le trident de Neptune est le sceptre du monde.”

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One of the most beautiful similes in any guage occurs in a passage in Hallam's "Literature of Europe." The writer is speaking of Pascal, and remarks:

"His melancholy genius plays in wild and rapid flashes, like lightning round the scathed oak, about the fallen greatness of man."

It occurred to me, on reading this, that it must have emanated from some imagination of a more poetic cast than Hallam's; and, some time after, I was not surprised to meet with it in this passage in Moore's "Lalla Rookh :".

"In every glance there broke without control
The flashes of a bright but troubled soul;
Where sensibility still wildly play'd,

Like lightning round the ruins it had made."

Macaulay, in his "Essay on Sir James Mackintosh," first published in 1835, presents us with