d _poco di meno_ has, in such contingencies, an
unbounded influence. The trade-winds are steady enough to furnish
grounds for the most accurate calculation; but will any man in our
climate venture to predict from what quarter, on any particular day, the
wind may chance to blow?

Therefore, in forming our judgment of human affairs, we must apply a
"Lesbian rule," instead of one that is inflexible. Here it is that the
line is drawn between science, and the wisdom which has for its object
the administration of human affairs. The masters of science explore a
multitude of phenomena to ascertain a single cause; the statesman and
legislator, engaged in pursuits "hardliest reduced to axiom," examine a
multitude of causes to explain a solitary phenomenon. The
investigations, however, to which such questions lead, are singularly
difficult, as they require an accurate analysis of the most complicated
class of facts which can possibly engross our attention, and to the
complete examination of which the faculties of any one man must be
inadequate. The finest specimens of such enquiries which we possess are
the works of Adam Smith and Montesquieu. The latter, indeed, may be
called a great historian. He sought in every quarter for his account of
those fundamental principles which are common to all governments, as
well as of those peculiarities by which they are distinguished one from
another. The analogy which reaches from the first dim gleam of civility
to the last and consummate result of policy and intelligence, from the
law of the Salian Franks to the Code Napoleon, it was reserved for him
to discover and explain. He saw that, though the shape into which the
expression of human thought and will was moulded as the family became a
tribe, and the tribe a nation, might be fantastic and even
monstrous--that the staple from which it unrolled itself must be the
same. Treading in the steps of Vico, he more than realized his master's
project, and in his immortal work (which, with all its faults, is a
magnificent, and as yet unrivalled, trophy of his genius, and will serve
as a landmark to future enquirers when its puny critics are not known
enough to be despised) he has extracted from a chaos of casual
observations, detached hints--from the principles concealed in the
intricate system of Roman jurisprudence, or exposed in the rules which
barely held together the barbarous tribes of Gaul and Germany--from the
manners of the polished Athenian