Disdaining the honours and emoluments, which might have rewarded his apostacy, he preferred a state of poverty and exile, to the countenance of a_profligate and licentious court. For a time, he retired from all interference in public affairs till goaded by persecution, and roused by indignation at his country's spoilers, he strove to reanimate the drooping spirits of his party, to redress their wrongs. If he sought the assistance of Louis, he sought also the alliance of De Witt; and it should never be forgotten, that the great object of his solicitude, was to restore his native land to freedom, when honour and virtue were alike banished from the precincts of the palace and the throne. If pure and honourable motives are, in any case, admitted to justify doubtful or incautious conduct, let the same be equally allowed in others: and let not Sydney be too hastily condemned for attempting, like Thrasybulus and Conon, in a desperate crisis, to assert the liberties of his country, by the aid of foreign powers. Or if he be condemned by the austerity of public virtue, let the odium indiscriminately fall on those, who have pursued such measures on any similar pretence; since the morality of an action can in no wise be affected by its failure or success. If, in his subsequent retirement in the south of France, Sydney was indebted to that country for support, as well as for protection, a fact by no means clearly ascertained, he did not purchase it by any base compliance with the interest or caprices of the court; accepting merely that assistance, which few governments withhold from illus trious strangers in distress. His supposed connection with Barillon, at a later period, involves nothing inconsistent with the public weal. In a free country, no pensioner can be more dangerous than a pensioned king: and the arbitrary projects of an unworthy sovereign, meanly dependent upon foreign counsels, was, perhaps, most effectually counteracted, by his maintaining some intercourse with the person, who so long conducted the intrigue. The delicacy, and difficulty, of such transactions, certainly cannot be denied: but the importance and necessity of the end in view, with the purity and patriotism of the motive, will, in most cases, justify what is not actually and fundamentally wrong. very similar circumstances, Demosthenes received money from Persia, to maintain, against Macedon, the liberties of Greece. In Sydney has been hastily accused, by a historian* too lenient to the crimes of princes, of ingratitude to a sovereign who had pardoned him. But in his case no particucular pardon was necessary; the Act of Indemnity absolving him from all responsibility for his conduct in the civil wars. At first, his exile was quite voluntary, from his detestation of the vices of the court; and the assurance of safety which was afterwards denied him, was no farther requisite, than as a defence against unmerited persecution. When, therefore, he returned in compliance with the wishes of his dying father, a safe conduct was all that he required ;-all that • See Hume's History, VIII, 43, note. there there appears the slightest evidence to prove that he received. It would have been inconsistent with his ardent feelings, to remain a calm spectator of his country's wrongs; and, however anxiously he might seek to redress them, a solemn act of the legislature has long since rescued his memory from the imputation of all legal, and all moral guilt. He fell, indeed, a martyr to his principles, and a victim to the vengeance of a tyrant, whose life he had generously preserved. the history of nations, as it tended to unfold the evils of despotism, and the advantages of popular controul. And his expedients for the preservation or establishment of civil liberty, are few, simple, and practical, wherever public virtue, its only effectual safeguard, can be found... . .. But the approbation bestowed on Sydney, by the historian or the patriot, has been by no means confined to the speculations of his retirement: it has accompanied him Regarding religion solely as a amid the tumults and dissensions divine philosophy, Sydney placed of his active life. Above all, the inno reliance on the efficacy of ex- justice of his sentence has been alternal forms. He was a firm be- most universally condemned; and liever in the wisdom and benevo-"the production of papers, conlence of the Deity; in the truth taining speculative opinions upon and obligations. of the christian government and, liberty, as a subscheme: but he was averse to pub- stitute for a second witness, deprelic worship, and to every descrip- cated, as a system of wickedness tion of ecclesiastical influence in and nonsense, hardly to be paralthe state. He was devoid of all leled in the history of juridical tyintolerance and bigotry, where re- ranny." He has been regarded as ligion alone was concerned, and innocent even of political crimes; his aversion to popery was chiefly as a victim to the sanguinary vengrounded on its supposed connec- geance of his profligate and perfition with arbitrary power. dious king. As a writer on government, Sydney was eminently qualified to excel, no less from his cultivated taste and genius, than from his intimate acquaintance with the theory and practice of political institutions, and his ardour in defending the common rights and freedom of mankind. A master at once of reason and of expression, he wrote from his judgment and his heart; and conveyed the result of his principles and knowledge, in a clear, flowing and nervous style. Conversant with the best writers of antiquity, and the purest models of more recent times, he had studied Such was Algernon Sydney: such, by the liberal and enlightened, has he ever been esteemed.His little errors are lost in the blaze of transcendant genius, of virtues such as fall not to the common lot of man. Let those, who calumniate his character and revile his principles, remember, that to the practical assertion of those very principles at the revolution, England has owed her best superiority over the nations of Europe. If he formed too favourable an opinion of the dignity of human nature, and recommended a freedom too pure and too lofty for the passions and and prejudices of the mass of mankind; it was the error of a mind sublime and generous: the greatest benefactors of their species have invariably cherished an equal enthusiasm. And whilst the censures of the venal and the base are heard but for a moment, the name of Sydney will live in the memory of the just, and his conduct will excite the emulation of the honourable; while his character and his principles will be applauded by every friend to the liberties of Britain. And if, in the revolving annals of her history, that day shall ever arise, when the despotic prince, and the profligate minister, shall again prompt the patriot of noble birth to do or die for his country; then may the image of Algernon Sydney rise up to his admiring eye and against the darkness of fate, whether its smile or its frown awaits his "well considered enterprize," let him fortify his spirit by an example of magnanimity so choice and so complete. EPITAPH On the late SIR WADSWORTH BUSK, BURIED IN THE Church of the Middle Temple, LONDON. Hoc Tumulo requiescunt Cineres WADSWORTH BUSK Equitis, Jurisconsulti, præclaræ hujus Societatis Consessoris et multis annis Regiarum Causarum Procuratoris in Mona Insula; Obiit Die XV. Decembris, Anno Salutis MDCCCXI. ETAT. LXXXII. By the faithful and assiduous discharge of his Official Duties, and by an unremitting attention to the true interests of the Island, which was the scene of his professional engagements, he merited and obtained the rewards of his Sovereign, and conciliated the esteem, gratitude, and veneration of the inhatants. Qualified to shine in any station of Public Trust, he preferred, in philosophical retirement, the path of virtue and piety, which led to a more enviable and lasting preeminence. In private life his virtues were conspicuous-not ostentatious; his conduct exemplary-not austere ; his deportment dignified-not assuming; his benevolence warm and comprehensive, but not indiscriminate; his manners invariably gentle, unaffected, and sincere. In conversation he was instructive, animating, and impressive; in composition nervous, perspicuous, and elegant; his acquirements were solid, classical, useful, and extensive, and his knowledge of the human mind penetrating and profound. Zealous for the promotion of civil and religious freedom, (the foundation of all human excellence,) he accounted it a singular blessing to have ranked among his steadiest friends some of the ablest advocates of Liberty and Christianity. A firm believer in the truths of revealed Religion, he unceasingly endeavoured to promote its genuine doctrines and practical influence by prayer, by precept, and by example; for his life was passed in the exercise of every social duty, of every moral obligation, of every christian charity! his end was marked by calm content, placid placid resignation, and pious hope, the fruit of intellectual exertion, the meed of tried integrity, the theme of disinterested praise, the promise of a blessed immortality! Brevis a natura nobis vita data est at memoria bene redditæ vitæ sempiterna. Filii quinque uxoris prioris et conjux carissima superstes, suis madidum lachrimis, hoc marmor posuerunt. MANNERS MANNERS, CUSTOMS, &c. OF NATIONS AND CLASSES OF PEOPLE. KALMUCK PRAYING MACHINES. this cylinder is large, another twice as small, and filled with writing, is fixed for ornament at the top of (From Travels in the Caucasus and it. The inscriptions on such prayer Georgia) MONG the most remarkable temples is the Kürdü, a cylindrical vessel or wood or metal, either very small or of immense size. In its centre is fixed an iron axle; but the interior of the cylinder, which is quite hollow, is filled with sacred writings, the leaves of which are all stuck one to another at the edge, throughout the whole length. This paper is rolled tightly round the axis of the cylinder till the whole space is filled up. A close cover is fixed on at each end, and the whole Kürdä is very neatly finished, painted on the outside with allegorical representations, or Indian prayers, and varnished. This cylinder is fastened upright in a frame by the axis; so that the latter, by means of a wheel attached to it below, may be set a-going with a string, and with a slight pull kept in a constant rotatory motion. When wheels commonly consist of masses for souls, psalms, and the six great general litanies, in which the most petitions are preferred for the welfare of all creatures. The text they sometimes repeat a hundred or even a thousand times, attributing from superstition a proportionably augmented effect to this repetition, and believing that by these frequent copies, combined with their thousands of revolutions, they will prove so much the more efficacious. You frequently see, as well on the habitations of the priests as on the whole roof of the temple, small Kürdä placed close to each other, in rows, by way of ornament; and not only over the gates, but likewise in the fields, frames set up expressly for these praying-machines, which, instead of being moved by a string, are turned by means of four sails, shaped and hollowed out like spoons, by the wind. Other similar Kürdä are fasten ed |