conversant with the history of Europe since those days, as he ought to be, if he would be properly qualified for holding a place in the councils of a kingdom. Men who take the course of public life will not, nor can they be expected to, wait for this. Youth and ardour, and ambition and impatience, are here in accord with worldly prudence; if they would reach the goal for which they start, they must begin the career betimes; and such among them as may be conscious that their stock of knowledge is less than it ought to be for such a profession, would not hesitate on that account to take an active part in public affairs, because they have a more comfortable consciousness that they are quite as well informed as the contemporaries, with whom they shall have to act, or to contend. The _quantulum_ at which Oxenstern admired would be a large allowance now. For any such person to suspect himself of deficiency would, in this age of pretension, be a hopeful symptom; but should he endeavour to supply it, he is like a mail-coach traveller, who is to be conveyed over macadamised roads at the rate of nine miles an hour, including stoppages, and must therefore take at his minuted meals whatever food is readiest. He must get information for immediate use, and with the smallest cost of time; and therefore it is sought in abstracts and epitomes, which afford meagre food to the intellect, though they take away the uneasy sense of inanition. _Tout abrege sur un bon livre est un sot abrege_, says Montaigne; and of all abridgments there are none by which a reader is liable, and so likely, to be deceived as by epitomised histories. _Sir Thomas More_.--Call to mind, I pray you, my foliophagous friend, what was the extent of Michael Montaigne's library; and that if you had passed a winter in his chateau you must, with that appetite of yours, have but yourself upon short allowance there. Historical knowledge is not the first thing needful for a statesman, nor the second. And yet do not hastily conclude that I am about to disparage its importance. A sailor might as well put to sea without chart or compass as a minister venture to steer the ship of the State without it. For as "the strong and strange varieties" in human nature are repeated in every age, so "the thing which hath been, it is that which shall be. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time which was before us." _Montesinos_.-- "For things forepast are precedents to us, Whereby we may things present now, discuss," as the old poet said who brought together a tragical collection of precedents in the mirror of magistrates. This is what Lord Brooke calls "the second light of government Which stories yield, and no time can disseason:" "the common standard of man's reason," he holds to be the first light which the founders of a new state, or the governors of an old one, ought to follow.