“When I hear such questions put, I admire the tact of the worthy Milnwood in _Old Mortality_, when in a similar predicament. Sergeant Bothwell broke into his house and dining-room in the king’s name, and asked him what he thought of the murder of the Archbishop of St. Andrew’s; the old man was far too prudent to hazard any opinion of his own, even on a precept of the Decalogue, when a trooper called for it; so he glanced his eye down the Royal Proclamation in the Sergeant’s hand, and appropriated its sentiments as an answer to the question before him. Thereby he was enabled to pronounce the said assassination to be ‘savage,’ ‘treacherous,’ ‘diabolical,’ and ‘contrary to the king’s peace and the security of the subject;’ to the edification of all present, and the satisfaction of the military inquisitor. It was in some such way my young friend got off. His guardian angel reminded him in a whisper that Mr. Grey, his examiner, had himself written a book on Lord Chatham and his times. This set him up at once; he drew boldly on his knowledge of his man for the political views advanced in it; was at no loss for definite propositions to suit his purpose; recovered his ground, and came off triumphantly.”
Here Mr. Black stops; and Mr. Brown takes advantage of the pause to insinuate that Mr. Black is not himself a disciple of his own philosophy, having travelled some way from his subject;—his friend stands corrected, and retraces his steps.
“The thesis,” he begins again, “is ‘Fortune favours the brave;’ Robert has gone off with the nominative without waiting for verb and accusative. He might as easily have gone off upon ‘brave,’ or upon ‘favour,’ except that ‘fortune’ comes first. He does not merely ramble from his subject, but he starts from a false point. Nothing could go right after this beginning, for having never gone _off_ his subject (as I did off mine), he never could come back to it. However, at least he might have kept to some subject or other; he might have shown some exactness or consecutiveness in detail; but just the contrary;—observe. He begins by calling fortune ‘a power’; let that pass. Next, it is one of the powers ‘which rule our earthly destiny,’ that is, _fortune_ rules _destiny_. Why, where there is fortune, there is no destiny; where there is destiny, there is no fortune. Next, after stating generally that fortune raises or depresses, he proceeds to exemplify: there’s Alexander, for instance, and Diogenes,—instances, that is, of what fortune did _not_ do, for they died, as they lived, in their respective states of life. Then comes the Emperor Nicholas _hic et nunc_; with the Turks on the other hand, place and time and case not stated. Then examples are dropped, and we are turned over to poetry, and what we ought to do, according to Horace, when fortune changes. Next, we are brought back to our examples, in order to commence a series of rambles, beginning with Napoleon the First. _Apropos_ of Napoleon the First comes in Napoleon the Third; this leads us to observe that the latter has acted ‘very differently from what we expected;’ and this again to the further remark, that no explanation has yet been given of his getting rid of the Constitution. He then ends by boldly quoting the thesis, in proof that we may rely on fortune, when we cannot help it; and by giving us advice, sound, but unexpected, to cultivate virtue.”