under another law altogether. His first duty was to himself identical, it is assumed, with the cause he takes up. Humanity was better served by this full development, than by any slavish subservience to a code which is yet binding on all others, and which he could enforce all the more effectively from the absence of the personal in his arguments. Recklessness to the present welfare of others is excused in men who have a boundless sense of their power to make amends; and when things come to the worst there is always the tyranny of ideas to fall back upon, which is a cloak ten times more ample than charity itself.

All

In this way breach of rule and ordinary duty, if there is but assumption enough, adds to prestige. greatness is wayward; and there will always be people to estimate it according to this quality; as rustics are apt to think all the higher of their doctor's skill and penetration if these good gifts are habitually obscured and stultified by drunkenness. In the meanwhile, till memoirs come out in pairs, and we have portraits of the hero from his public and domestic side, given by men best competent by feeling and knowledge to judge, biography must be more or less a sham, and history itself the record of an ignorant or one-sided witness; the scenes played out by personages, of whom, knowing only their public side, we may not necessarily, but possibly-know next to nothing.

There are times in every man's life when mediocrity ceases to be an idea of reproach; though the word can never enter into the vocabulary of compliment. We would rather not ourselves be described that way; but nevertheless a just balance of moderate powers carries it at times over the abnormal. We feel the world's unwisdom and caprice as Fuller felt it, when he complains, in a parable, "Men of great stature will quickly be made porters to a king, and those dimin

utively little, dwarfs to a queen; whilst such as are of a middle height may get themselves masters where they can. The moderate man, eminent for no excess or extravagancy in his judgment, will have few patrons to protect or persons to adhere unto him." And our experience goes along with Addison, who, after a life among the wits, writes of the men best formed for private life; indirectly giving the portrait of genius in the same sentence: "Such as have not spirits too active to be happy and well-pleased in a private condition, nor complexions too warm to make them neglect the duties and relations of life. Of these sort of men consist the worthiest part of mankind; of these are all good fathers, generous brothers, sincere friends, and faithful subjects. Their entertainments are derived rather from reason than imagination, which is the cause that there is no impatience or instability in their speech or action. These are the men formed for society, and those little communities, which we express by the word neighbourhood."

If we go into this character we perceive it to be actuated by a sense of justice. Egoism is essentially an influence which exempts a man from the obligations he feels to be binding on others; the egoist stands alone in his own esteem, and the "active spirits" and warm complexions of every age neglecting the duties of life are all people of this sort, whether, with the poet, they consider it Heaven's dispensation, dispensing them from even care of themselves, arguing"Of all mankind beside fate had some care, But for poor wit no portion did prepare, 'Tis left a rent-charge to the brave and

fair;"

or for caring for anybody but themselves; or permitting them to seize on whatever ministers to their especial gift, and to eschew all obligations which threaten to interfere with or retard its full expansion, or alternating with habitual selfindulgence spurts and flashes of

generosity. A just man-a man to be relied on in human affairs-we must clearly look for under another training; not, we maintain, because brilliancy of intellect or wide range of thought are necessary hindrances to a just view, or to the power to act fairly under that view, but because circumstances almost universal, but yet not essential, have taught the genius a different lesson. Coleridge, says De Quincey, suffered from relaxation of the will: he could not do anything he did not like to do; therefore it followed that others had to perform all the duties that fell to his share. Where egoism condescends to argue, this necessity, this incapacity, is the argument, unless a plenary dispensation on the score of genius is the plea; and when either is fairly disputed, and the gifted being brought to bay, his astonishment finds vent and expression in unexpected ways. In all people of this temperament, however distinguished by the grace of amiability-however capable of inspiring a deep attachment, and of returning it by a show of affectionwe shall see, upon provocation, traits of rude violence approaching to brutality, in seeming antagonism to their whole nature, which may well startle the observer as by some abnormal disturbance of the system. It is not really so; all such outbursts are revelations-of what, perhaps, the man himself knew nothing, but not the less of the tyranny of some ruling principle. It is indignation awakened by a claim against which the self within exalts itself. There is nothing egoism rises against with such mingled surprise, contempt, and disgust as the assertion of others' rights when these are opposed to their own pretensions or imply any forgetfulness of the distance that separates the mass from their individuality. It is held as an insolent claim to equal ity, as overstepping an immeasurable distance, as a particular stupidity of ingratitude. It is this fury that not seldom tempers our rever

ence for lavish benevolence, shown as it often is in rude snubbing of reasonable expectation, and a rough demand to stand loose from all but self-imposed obligations. This sudden finding himself face to face with a claim which it is not easy to rebut, provokes many a world's or a party's hero to such fantastic asperities, such forgetfulness of decencies, as put their adherents to their wits' end for defences. This is the point at which the biographer has to pause and arrange his line-whether to apologise, or to make a virtue of it, after Mr Carlyle's fashion. Excuses are almost out of fashion in our day: we turn to general principles, take a broad view, appeal to the manysidedness of genius, measure not the rights but the intellectual stature of the disputants, and give it for the biggest. We see this transition and change of view in the treatment of such a remarkable egoist as Swift. Swift affected the society of clever women; to them at least he was winning and gentle when it suited him, and for them he would be lavish of his wit and liberal of choice-rhymed flatteries that conferred immortality. But a claim on their part (if so imprudent as to make a claim, which, as far as we know, Stella was not), the hint of expectations, any expression of impatience at the suspense it was his pleasure to keep them in, makes him turn upon his Varena or Vanessa with the rough side of that formidable tongue in a strain of such cold-blooded remonstrance, such bitterness of surprised contempt, as must have made these ladies speculate on the nature of genius. For this tone his earlier biographers blame the wit and pity the ladies; but a wit that can hold his ground in the world of letters for a century and a half we observe to be gradually but surely getting the right of it, and the poor pretenders to his hand to be very generally thrown over.

There is perhaps in all genius, in

all exceptional intellect, well disposed in the main, and aiming at doing mankind a wide service, a sense of boundless power to make amends, which sets the conscience at ease in the commission of (merely) temporary peccadilloes, and exempts from a nice and finical justice. A case of casuistry which long exercised a child's mind may serve as an illustration. A passenger train is snowed up for days. Some of the passengers are rich, others penniless, and the van contains an ample supply of oysters for the market. Are the rich people justified in satisfying their hunger because they can pay for the oysters ten times over? and must the poor starve because they can lay down no equivalent? The typical genius seems to us to live under the easy creed of the man conscious of a full purse: he can always make ample amends though he does commit a breach of common law; while honest mediocrity, having nothing to fall back upon, is afraid to contract obligations, scruples to prey upon what is not his own, and, in the difficulty of satisfying his own wants, learns to measure the rights of all by one common standard, from which he cannot hold himself aloof. He has no thought of making up in some imaginary period the present aggression. If he is to serve the world at all, it is by serving his nearest neigh

bours while he can. He and they are in the same boat, and must in wisdom as well as in equity make common cause. He is just because justice is his own safeguard, and he cannot pretend to be above it.

We have no notion, by anything we can say, of modifying the enthusiasm for genius-God's gift to the world, and the delight of all not sunk below every aspiration. Genius, or what passes for such, must ever carry all before it. But, nevertheless, let those who have to be content with plain good sense for their daily fare be content. All reading and experience show that nobody is the better for a mere external alliance to genius or exceptional talent, for being simply an appendage in its train. And how many are sufferers! At best placed in a false position for a while; puffed up, perhaps, by a borrowed and reflected distinction, to sink at last into obscurity, their natural level, and yet to them an intolerable reverse of fortune, justifying endless fretful discontent. Those profit most by the genius who don't live too near him, as those are most loyal into whose head it never enters to go to court; and if fate does bring us in his way, it is well to respect ourselves, remembering we are no nearer reaching his height by a weak disparagement and ready surrender of our own position.

IT was a rough gusty day of October, with an ugly sea on in the upper part of the Adriatic, that a party of Austrian naval officers on board one of the fishing craft of the gulf sought shelter from the coming "Bora." They had in succession visited creek after creek in hope of finding a spot sufficiently land-locked to ride out the gale; but such is the violence of this peculiar wind, careering down through the clefts of the bare mountains and swooping upon the sea without let or hindrance, that men who have experienced the wildest hurricanes of the tropics pronounce a Trieste Bora as far and away beyond anything they have met elsewhere.

On the occasion I have now to speak of, the wind had given an unusual amount of warning, and the party had in turn entered and left no less than five of the small bays; when at last, just as the gale had burst out with its full fury, the small fishing-vessel glided into a little narrow cleft, defended to the north by a tall wall of rock, and within which the sea lay still and waveless; while outside a tumbling mass of foam surged and boiled in all the fury of a tempest. Here the party landed and lit a fire, and while some employed themselves in cooking and others arranged their clothes to dry, one strolled carelessly along the shingle, and after a half-hour's absence came back to say that he had found a most picturesque spot to build a fishinghut. This was the origin of Miramar, and he who discovered the spot was the Archduke Maximilian.

The rocky promontory on which the castle stands is bold and defiant, and the road by which the approach is conducted skirts the sea for a

VOL. CII.-NO. DCXXIII.

considerable way, and is only protected by a parapet wall from the blue ocean. The grounds rise gradually as the mountain slopes, and are tastefully wooded, though in this exposed region vegetation is a matter of infinite care and cost, and every branch and twig is a conquest over nature.

The castle itself is a very handsome and imposing structure, and quite worthy, either from architectural beauty or internal accommodation, to be the residence of a prince. It contains, besides, a most choice collection of pictures selected by the Archduke himself during his residence in Italy, and an admirable library of works in every language of Europe.

So completely had the Archduke surrounded himself with all the objects of his peculiar tastes at Miramar, and so thoroughly provided himself with all the resources on which he loved to count, that it was clear he intended to have made this spot his chosen residence, and never to have quitted it during his lifetime. It was, moreover, his passion to beautify the grounds here, to steal some sheltered spot for higher cultivation, and clothe with fruit-trees the sides of every cliff and bank which lay secure against the wind. He was proud of a success which many had not hesitated to declare impossible, and pointed to his triumphs with all the zest and delight of one who really asked for no greater conquests. In any walk of life Maximilian would have been a noticeable and remarkable man; his great desire for knowledge, his unceasing thirst for acquirement, combined with great natural faculties, would have distinguished him; but to find these gifts and these tastes in a member of the Imperial house of a family

which, whatever their natural advantages, cautiously held themselves aloof from all contact with mere men of science, and lived strictly within the charmed precincts of a court, was something for which the world was not prepared.

When Count Cavour first promulgated his plan of "Italy for the Italians," he found no such obstacle in his path as the personal character of Maximilian. It would have been absurd to inveigh against the tyranny of Austrian rule in presence of a prince whose reputation for justice, tempered with mercy, was known on all sides. How harangue against perfidy and false faith where every act of the ruler gave confidence and trustfulness?

It was the great misfortune of the Austrian Cabinet not to have known and valued the sterling gifts of the man who then ruled the Lombardo-Venetian provinces. At Vienna men spoke of him as a revolutionist-one whose thirst for popular favour and applause was sure to carry him any length in concessions, and who had no other idea of government than in yielding to the pressure of the multitude. It was in vain that he represented how impossible the old system of repression had become, that the Metternich theory of keeping Italy ignorant, and consequently governable, belonged to a day that was passed and never to return; and, above all, that the men who undertook to guide the mind and direct the spirit of the nation were no fanatics, no men of wild and exaggerated opinions, full of the theories of the first French Revolution, and armed with the "rights of man," but grave, thoughtful, cautious politicians, who, in the long years of exile, had studied the working of constitutional government, and who had watched the results of liberty in England and in France. That when these men should appeal to the people of Italy to remind them that they had a soil, a race, a language, and a history,

and yet were still not a nation, the public opinion of all Europe would be with them, the Archduke well knew, and he was eager in his anxiety to impress upon the Cabinet of Vienna that this was a new peril, and one that they had never been confronted with before.

That he was not listened to, that his warnings were disregarded, is matter of history. The Archduke was discredited, and with him fell the last hope of Austrian rule in Italy.

So firmly rooted were the convictions of the Austrian mind that there was but one mode in which Italy could be held, and one measure which could be meted to Italians, that it was currently believed at Vienna the concessions of the Archduke were the sources from which all the disasters to the Imperial rule had sprung, and that, but for the lenity and mildness of his rule, Austrian supremacy in Italy would never have been endangered.

Distrusted and coldly looked on at Vienna, by some regarded as a man of unscrupulous intentions and unbounded ambition, by others as a weak-minded seeker after popularity, the Prince retired to the island of Lacroma, in the Adriatic, on which stood a picturesque old monastery of the sixteenth century. This he purchased and fitted up as a residence, apparently little sorry to give himself up to those pursuits of study and improvement which had been the passion of his earlier years.

His original profession had been the sea, and although well aware how inferior a place Austria must of necessity occupy amongst maritime nations, he laboured assiduously to render her small navy all that modern invention and skill could accomplish. Nothing can better illustrate his eagerness on this subject than the collection which his library contains of works and reports on modern shipbuilding, and on all the details of equip