same stuff: only he who made the plume, was pleased to set the lord, highest. The power of commanding is rather political, than derived from nature. The service of man to man, followed not the creation but the fall of man; and until Noah cursed his son, the name of servant is not read in Scripture. Since there is no absolute freedom to be found below, even kings are but more splendid servants for the common body. There is a mutuality between the lord and his vassals. The lord serves them, of necessaries; and they him, in his pleasures and conveniences. Virtue is the truest liberty. He is not free who stoops to passions: nor he in bondage, who serves a noble master. When Demonax saw a cruel one beating his servant, fie (said he) forbear, lest by the world, yourself be taken for the servant.

Fallitur, egregio quisquis sub principe credit
Servitium: nunquam libertas gratior extat

Quam sub rege pio.—

Claud, de Laud. Still, 1. 3.

He knows no bondage whom a good king sways;
For freedom never shines with clearer rays
Than when brave princes reign.

Imperiousness turns that servant into a slave, whom kindness makes an humble-speaking friend. Seneca begins an epistle, with rejoicing that his friend lived familiar with his servant;neither can have comfort, where both are uncommunicable. I confess, the like countenance is not to be shewn to all. That which makes a wise man, modest, makes a fool, unmannerly. It is the saucy servant, that causes the

Lord to withhold his gracious favours. Of the two, pride is more tolerable, in a master. In the other, it is preposterousness. Hadrian sent his inferior servant a box on the ear, for walking between two senators. As there ought to be equality, because nature has made it: so there ought to be a difference, because fortune has set it;-yet, the distance of our fortunes cannot be so much, as our nearness, in being men; no fate can frighten away that likeness. Let not the lord abuse his servant; for it is possible he may fall below him. Let not the servant neglect his master; for he may be cast into a meaner condition. Let the servant deserve, and the master recompense: and if they would both be noble, the best way is for those who are subject, to forget their services, and for those who command, to remember them :-So, each loving the other, for their generous worthiness; the world shall strew praises in both their paths. If the servant suppose his lot to be hard, let him bear in mind, that service is nothing but the freeman's calling, wherein he is bound to discharge himself well, as long as he continues in it.

OF REPREHENSION.

To reprehend well, is the most necessary, and the hardest part of friendship. Who is it, that does not sometimes merit a check; and yet how few will endure one? Yet wherein can a friend more unfold

his love than in preventing dangers before their birth, or in bringing a man to safety who is travelling on the road to ruin? I grant that there is a manner of reprehending, which turns a benefit into an injury and then, it both strengthens error and wounds the giver. When thou chidest thy wandering friend, do it secretly, in season, in love: not in the ear of a popular convention: for oftentimes, the presence of a multitude, makes a man take up an unjust defence, rather than fall into a just shame. Nor can I much blame a man, if he shuns to make the vulgar his confessor; for they are the most uncharitable tell-tales that the burthened earth doth bear. They understand nothing but the dregs of actions. A man had better be convinced, in private, than be made guilty, by a proclamation. Open rebukes are for magistrates and courts of justice; for star-chambers and for scarlets, in the thronged hall. Private rebukes are for friends; where all the witnesses of the offender's blushes, are blind and deaf and dumb. We should do by them, as Joseph thought to have done by Mary, seek to cover blemishes with secrecy. Public reproof is like the striking of a deer in the herd; it not only wounds him, but betrays him to the hound, his enemy; and makes him, by his fellows, to be pushed out of company. Even concealment of a fault, argues some charity to the delinquent and when we tell him of it in secret, it shews we wish he should amend, before the world comes to know that he is amiss. Next, it ought to be in season, neither when the brain is muddled

with rising fumes, nor when the mind is maddened with ungovernable passions. Certainly, he is drunk himself, that so profanes reason as to urge it to a drunken man.

Quis matrem, nisi mentis inops, in funere Nati
Flere vetat? non hoc illa monenda loco est.

Ov. Rem. Am.

He's mad, that dries a mother's eyes' full tide
At her son's grave: This is no time to chide :

was the opinion of the smoothest poet. To admonish a man in the height of his passion, is to call a soldier to council in the midst, in the heat, of a battle. Let the combat slacken, and then thou mayest expect a hearing. All passions are like rapid torrents they swell the more for meeting with a dam, while in their raging violence. He that will hear nothing in the roar of his anger, will after a pause, inquire of you. Seem you to forget him, and he will the sooner remember himself: for it often falls out, that the end of passion is the beginning of repentance. A word seasonably given, like a rudder, sometimes steers a man into quite another course. When the Macedonian Philip was capering in the view of his captives, says Demades;Since fortune has made you like Agamemnon, why will you shew yourself like Thersites? And this, changed him to another man. One blow bestowed in the striking time, is better than ten delivered unseasonably. There are some nicks in time, which,

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whosoever finds, may promise himself success. It is not good to be too harsh and virulent. Kind words make rough actions plausible. If ever flattery be lawful, it is in the business of reprehension. To be plain, argues honesty: but to be pleasing, argues discretion. Every man that adviseth, assumes as it were, a transcendency over him whom he advises; so that if his counsel be not recommended by some self-including terms, it grows hateful. It will be good, therefore, not to make the complaint our own, but to lay it upon some others; who, not knowing the natural virtues of the man, will, according to this, be apt to judge of all his actions. Nor can he be a competent judge of another's crime, who is guilty of the like himself. It is unworthily done, to condemn that in others, which we would have pardoned in ourselves. When Diogenes fell into the school of the stoics, he answered his deriders with this question: Why do you laugh at me for falling backward, when you yourselves do retrograde your lives? He is not fit to cure a dim sight, that looks upon another with a beamed eye. Freed, we may free others; and, if we please them with praising some of their virtues, they will, with much more ease, be brought to know their vices. Shame will not let them be angry with those who so equally Ideal out the rod and the laurel. If he be much our superior, it is good sometimes to do it in parables, as Nathan did to David: and so to let him, by the

application, give himself the censure.

If he be an

equal, let it appear affection and the truth of friend