childhood, as well as in all the several parts of his life. Nay, on
his death-bed, he describes him as being pleased, that while his
soul returned to Him who made it, his body should incorporate with
the great mother of all things, and by that means become beneficial
to mankind. For which reason, he gives his sons a positive order
not to enshrine it in gold or silver, but to lay it in the earth as
soon as the life was gone out of it.

An instance of such an overflowing of humanity, such an exuberant
love to mankind, could not have entered into the imagination of a
writer who had not a soul filled with great ideas, and a general
benevolence to mankind.

In that celebrated passage of Sallust, where Caesar and Cato are
placed in such beautiful but opposite lights, Caesar's character is
chiefly made up of good nature, as it showed itself in all its forms
towards his friends or his enemies, his servants or dependents, the
guilty or the distressed. As for Cato's character, it is rather
awful than amiable. Justice seems most agreeable to the nature of
God, and mercy to that of man. A Being who has nothing to pardon in
Himself, may reward every man according to his works; but he whose
very best actions must be seen with grains of allowance, cannot be
too mild, moderate, and forgiving. For this reason, among all the
monstrous characters in human nature, there is none so odious, nor
indeed so exquisitely ridiculous, as that of a rigid, severe temper
in a worthless man.

This part of good nature however, which consists in the pardoning
and overlooking of faults, is to be exercised only in doing
ourselves justice, and that too in the ordinary commerce and