shivered through my whole frame; and if I repressed the outward shows
of sorrow, it was by force that I repressed them, and because it is
not by tears that I ought to mourn for the loss of Sir Alexander
Ball.

He was a man above his age; but for that very reason the age has the
more need to have the master-features of his character portrayed and
preserved. This I feel it my duty to attempt, and this alone; for
having received neither instructions nor permission from the family
of the deceased, I cannot think myself allowed to enter into the
particulars of his private history, strikingly as many of them would
illustrate the elements and composition of his mind. For he was
indeed a living confutation of the assertion attributed to the Prince
of Conde, that no man appeared great to his valet de chambre--a
saying which, I suspect, owes its currency less to its truth than to
the envy of mankind, and the misapplication of the word great, to
actions unconnected with reason and free will. It will be sufficient
for my purpose to observe that the purity and strict propriety of his
conduct, which precluded rather than silenced calumny, the evenness
of his temper, and his attentive and affectionate manners in private
life, greatly aided and increased his public utility; and, if it
should please Providence that a portion of his spirit should descend
with his mantle, the virtues of Sir Alexander Ball, as a master, a
husband, and a parent, will form a no less remarkable epoch in the
moral history of the Maltese than his wisdom, as a governor, has made
in that of their outward circumstances. That the private and
personal qualities of a first magistrate should have political
effects will appear strange to no reflecting Englishman, who has
attended to the workings of men's minds during the first ferment of
revolutionary principles, and must therefore have witnessed the