The legislator of Columbia considered good policy as a very simple thing. He said to his King, his Three Estates and his collective nation, with the inspired lawgiver “and now Israel what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul: to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command thee, this day, for thy good?” And he added with St. Paul, “now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.” Take care of the pennies, says the frugal old Proverb, and the pounds will take care of themselves. “_Les petites choses_,” says M. de Custine, _sont tout ce qu'on_ sent _de l'existence; les grandes se_ savent, _ce qui est très-différent._ Take care of little things, was the Doctor's maxim as a legislator, and great ones will then proceed regularly and well. He was not ignorant that legislators as well as individuals might be penny-wise and pound foolish; proofs enough he had seen in the conduct of the English Government, and many more and more glaring ones he would have seen if he had lived to behold the progress of œconomical reform and liberal legislation. He also knew that an over-attention to trifles was one sure indication of a little mind; but in legislation as in experimental philosophy, he argued, that circumstances which appeared trifling to the ignorant, were sometimes in reality of essential importance, that those things are not trifles upon which the comfort of domestic life, the peace of a neighbourhood, and the stability of a state depend, and yet all these depend mainly upon things apparently so trifling as common schools and parochial government. “I have ever observed it,” says Ben Jonson, “to have been the office of a wise patriot, among the greatest affairs of the state, to take care of the commonwealth of learning. For schools they are the seminaries of state; and nothing is worthier the study of a statesman, than that part of the republic which we call the advancement of letters.” CHAPTER CCXLII. FARTHER REMARKS UPON THE EFFECTS OF SCHISM, AND THE ADVANTAGES WHICH IT AFFORDS TO THE ROMISH CHURCH AND TO INFIDELITY. —_Io non ci ho interresso Nessun, nè vi fui mai, ne manco chieggo Per quel ch'io ne vò dir, d'esservi messo. Vò dir, che senza passion eleggo, E non forzato, e senza pigliar parte; Di dirne tutto quel, ch'intendo e veggo._ BRONZINO PITTORE.