end of a doubtful and alloyed pleasure. I will not much care, whether my life be long or short. If short, the fewer my days be, the less I shall have of trouble; the sooner shall I arrive at happiness;-if I escape from nothing else, I shall escape from the hazard, life will keep me in. If long, let me be sure to lay it out, in doing the more good; and then, though I stay for it a while, yet as abstinence sharpens appetite, so want and expectation will make my joy more welcome.

OF ESTABLISHING A TROUBLED GOVERNMENT.

HE E that would establish a troubled government, must first vanquish all his foes. Who can be quiet, while his enemy is in arms against him? Factious heads should be higher by a pole, than their bodies. He that would rule over many, must first fight with many, and conquer; and be sure to cut off those that raise up tumults, or by a majestic awe, keep them in a strict subjection. In every able prince, Lipsius would have two things eminent, vis et virtus, power and virtue. He ought to have power, to break insurrection at home, and repel invasion from abroad. He ought to have virtue, to preserve his state and dignity, and, by the necessary art of policy, so order all the streams of government, as that they may run clear and obedient in their proper channels. Power is, certainly, the most essential part of sovereignty. Without it, a prince is but fortune's idol, which every Sejanus may revile and spurn at his pleasure. But

though he has power; yet, if he have not resolution, like a child he wears a sword, but knows not how to use it. Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best, may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all, can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state: like an ague, it shake not this or that limb, but all the body is at once, in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another, and hath no place left to rest on. He flecks from one egg to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions. An easy-natured man may be a good companion, for a private person : but for a prince to be so, is mischief to himself and others. Remissness and connivance are the ruin of unsettled kingdoms.

My passions and affections are the chief disturbers of my civil state. What peace can I expect within me, while these rebels are not under subjection? If I have not judgment to discern their devices, and fly suggestions; if I have not courage to withstand their force and batteries; if I have not authority to command them to obedience; if I have not strength to master all their complications: I leave myself a prize to vice, and at last shall not live to be man. Therefore, as a prince who would be safe among turbulent subjects, must ever be on his guard; so, he who knows the irregularities of his own depraved affections, must keep perpetual sentinel upon them. Security and confidence as often undo a prince, as force; but vigilance is seldom undermined. A state awake and upon its guard, it is difficult to surprise.

THAT VIRTUE AND VICE GENERATE AFTER THEIR

KIND.

VIRTUE begets virtue, vice begets vice. It is as natural for a man to expect a return of virtue out of virtue, and a return of vice out of vice; as it is for him to expect an elephant should beget an elephant, or a serpent beget a serpent. Nay, it not only holds of the genus; but also of the very species; and oftentimes, the proportion of that species too. High actions beget a return of actions, that are so; and poor low ones, beget a return of the like. The echo is according to the voice that speaks: the report of the piece is proportionable to its magnitude: if it be but by reflection only, the beams are reverberated bright, as is the sun that shines them; and clouds cast a shade, according to their blackness. The Romans bestowed on Attalus, the kingdom of Pergamus, on account of his friendship, and munificence; and he, to express his gratitude, not having any children of his own, left the city of Rome the heir of his wealth. The virtues of Terentius, and his being one of the Roman senate, made so deep an impression on Scipio's manly heart, than when the Carthaginians came to sue to him for peace, he would not hear them, till they brought Terentius forth, discharged of his imprisonment; and then he placed him on the throne with himself. And this, again, so prevailed with Terentius, that when Scipio had his triumph, Terentius, though a senator, put himself into Scipio's livery, and as his freedman, waited on his pompous chariot. He teaches

With the froward,
Passion enkindles
How many are

me to be good, who does me good: he prompts me to
enlarge my heart to him, (unless my virtue be totally
dried up and withered,) who first enlarges his own to
me. The same effect hath vice.
thou shalt learn frowardness.
passion; and pride begets pride.
calm and quiet, till they meet with one who is choleric!
He who sows iniquity, must look to reap it. Did
not David's murder and adultery, bring the sword
and incest into his family? How fatally and strikingly
was the massacre at Paris, marked by the massacre
of the chief actors and contrivers of it! Charles the
king, before the twenty-fifth year of his age, died,
bathed in blood; and Anjou, his successor, was assas-
sinated and slain, in the same room that the massacre
was plotted in; Guise was murdered, by the king's
order; the queen, was consumed with grief; and with
succeeding civil war, both Paris and the nation torn.
It is a remarkable instance of retaliation, which is
afforded in the story of Valentinian and Maximus.
Valentinian by fraud and force, seduced the wife of
Maximus: for which, Maximus by fraud and force,
murdered Valentinian, and married his wife; who,
from disdain at being forced into the marriage, and
a desire to revenge her husband's death, plotted the
destruction of Maximus and Rome. No proverb is
more true than the saying of the satirist:

Ad generum Cereris, sinè cæde et sanguine, pauci
Descendunt reges, et siccá morte tyranni.

Juv. Sat. 10.

Few tyrants find death natural, calm, or good;
But, broach'd with slaughter, roll to hell in blood.

There is in vices, not only a natural production of evil in general; but there is a proportion of parts and dimensions, as a seed bringing forth a plant, or the parent a son. Bagoas, a Persian nobleman, having poisoned Artaxerxes and Arsamnes, was detected by Darius, and forced to drink poison himself. Diomedes, who with human flesh fed beasts, was at last by Hercules, made their food himself. Pope Alexander the Sixth, having designed the poisoning of his friend Cardinal Adrian, by his cup-bearer's mistake of the bottle, took the draught himself:—and so died by the same engine, which he himself appointed to kill another. In vain do they expect good, who would have it arise out of evil. I may as well, when I plant a thistle, expect a fig; or upon sowing cockle, look for wheat; as to think by indirect courses, to beget my own benefit. The best policy, is to sow good and honest actions, and then we may expect a harvest that is answerable.

IN

OF MEMORY.

N all that belongs to man, you cannot find a greater wonder than memory. What a treasury of all things? What a record, what a journal of all? As if provident nature, because she would have man circumspect, had provided him an account-book to carry always with him: yet it neither burthens nor takes up room. To myself, it is insensible. I feel no weight it presses with. To others, it is invisible; for when I carry all within me, they can see nothing that I have.