and the fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago, and never trusted to Fortune even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honours, the reputations, and all the advantages which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so, that she might snatch them away without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me. No man suffers by bad fortune, but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts, fancy that they belong to us, and are perpetually to remain with us, if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them; we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as our vain and childish minds, unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute even of those which are imaginary. But if we do not suffer ourselves to be transported by prosperity, neither shall we be reduced by adversity. Our souls will be of proof against the dangers of both these states; and, having explored our strength, we shall be sure of it; for, in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune.

It is much harder to examine and judge than to take up opinions on trust: and therefore the far greatest part of the world borrow, from others, those which they entertain concerning all the affairs of life and death. Hence it proceeds that men are so unanimously eager in the pursuit of things, which, far from having any inherent real good, are varnished over with a specious and deceitful gloss, and contain nothing answerable to their appearances. Hence it proceeds, on the other hand, that in those things which are called evils there is nothing so hard and terrible as the general cry of the world threatens. The word exile comes indeed harsh to the ear, and strikes us like a melancholy and execrable sound, through a certain persuasion which men have habitually concurred in. Thus the multitude has ordained. But the greatest part of their ordinances are abrogated by the wise. Rejecting, therefore, the judgment of those who determine according to popular opinions, or the first appearance of things, let us examine what exile really is. It is, then, a change of place; and, lest you should say that I diminish the object, and conceal the most shocking parts of it, I add, that this change of place is frequently accompanied by some or all of the following inconveniences: by the loss of the estate which we enjoyed, and the rank which we held, by the loss of that consideration and power which we were in possession of; by a separation from our family and our friends, by the conterupt which we may fall into; by the ignominy with which those who have driven us abroad, will endeavour to sully the innocence of our characters, and to justify the injustice of their own conduct.

All these shall be spoke to hereafter. In the meanwhile let us consider what evil there is in change of place, abstractedly and by itself.

To live deprived of one's country is intolerable. Is it so? How comes it, then, to pass that such numbers of men live out of their country by choice? Observe how the streets of London and Paris are crowded. Call over those millions by name, and ask them, one by one, of what country they are; how many will you find, who, from different parts of the earth, come to inhabit these great cities, which afford the largest opportunities, and the largest encouragement to virtue and vice? Some are drawn by ambition, and some are sent by duty; many resort thither to improve their minds, and many to improve their fortunes; others bring their beauty, and others their eloquence, to market. Remove from hence, and go to the utmost extremities of the East or the West: visit the barbarous nations of Africa, or the inhospitable regions of the North: you will find no climate so bad, no country so savage, as not to have some people who come from abroad and inhabit there by hoice.

mong numberless extravagances which have passed through the minds of men,

may justly reckon for one that notion of a secret affection, independent of our reason, and superior to our reason, which we are supposed to have for our country; as if there were some physical virtue in every spot of ground, which necessarily produced this effect in every one born upon it.

There is nothing surely more groundless than the notion here advanced, nothing more absurd. We love the country in which we are born, because we receive particular benefits from it, and because we have particular obligations to it: which ties we may have to another country, as well as to that we are born in; to our country by election, as well as to our country by birth. In all other respects, a wise man looks on himself as a citizen of the world: and, when you ask him where his country lies, points, like Anaxagoras, with his finger to the heavens.

Varro, the most learned of the Romans, thought, since nature is the same wherever we go, that this single circumstance was sufficient to remove all objections to change of place, taken by itself, and stripped of the other inconveniences which attend exile. M. Brutus thought it enough that those, who go into banishment, cannot be hindered from carrying their virtue along with them. Now, if any one judge that each of these comforts is in itself insufficient, he must however confess that both of them, joined together, are able to remove the terrors of exile. For what trifles must all we leave behind us be esteemed, in comparison of the two most precious things which men can enjoy, and which, we are sure, will follow us wherever we turn our steps, the same nature and our proper virtue. Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to us the least valuable parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest; lies out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore intrepidly wherever we are led by the force of human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall meet with men and women, creatures of the same figure, endowed with the same faculties, and born under the same laws of nature. We shall see the same virtues and vices, flowing from the same general principles, but varied in a thousand different and contrary modes, according to that infinite variety of laws and customs which is established for the same universal end-the preservation of society. We shall feel the same revolution of seasons, and the same sun and moon will guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be every where spread over our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may not admire those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same central sun; from whence we may not discover an object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns whose beams enlighten and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around them; and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my soul is thus raised up in heaven, it imports me little what ground I tread upon. Change of place, then, may be borne by every man. It is the delight of many. But who can bear the evils which accompany exile? You who ask the question can bear them. Every one who considers them as they are in themselves, instead of looking at them through the false optic which prejudice holds before our eyes. For what you have lost your estate; reduce your desires, and you will perceive yourself to be as rich as ever, with this considerable advantage to boot, that your

[BOLINGBROKE. cares will be diminished. Our natural and real wants are confined to narrow bounds, whilst those which fancy and custom create are confined to none. Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense. If we suffer our desires therefore to wander beyond these bounds, they wander eternally. We become necessitous in the midst of plenty, and our poverty increases with our riches. Reduce our desires, be able to say with the Apostle of Greece, to whom Erasmus was ready to address his prayers, quam multis ipse non egeo! banish out of your exile all imaginary, and you will suffer no real wants. The little stream which is left will suffice to quench the thirst of nature, and that which caunot be quenched by it is not your thirst, but your distemper; a distemper formed by the vicious habits of your mind, and not the effect of exile. How great a part of mankind bear poverty with cheerfulness, because they have been bred in it, and are accustomed to it. Shall we not be able to acquire, by reason and by reflection, what the meanest artisan possesses by habit? Shall those who have so many advantages over him be slaves to wants and necessities of which he is ignorant? The rich, whose wanton appetites neither the produce of one country nor of one part of the world can satisfy, for whom the whole habitable globe is ransacked, for whom the caravans of the East are continually in march, and the remotest seas are covered with ships; these pampered creatures, sated with superfluity, are often glad to inhabit a humble cot, and to make a homely meal. They run for refuge into the arms of frugality. Madmen that they arc, to live always in fear of what they sometimes wish for, and to fly from that life which they find it luxury to imitate! Let us cast our eyes backwards on those great men who lived in the ages of virtue, of simplicity, of frugality, and let us blush to think that we enjoy in banishment more than they were masters of in the midst of their glory, in the utmost affluence of their fortune. Let us imagine that we behold a great dictator giving audience to the Samnite ambassadors, and preparing on the hearth his mean repast with the same hand which had so often subdued the enemies of the Commonwealth, and borne the triumphal laurel to the capitol. Let us remember, that Plato had but three servants, and that Zeno had none. Socrates, the reformer of his country, was maintained, as Menenius Agrippa, the arbiter of his country was buried, by contribution. While Attilius Regulus beat the Carthaginians, in Afric, the flight of his ploughman reduced his family to distress at home, and the tillage of his little farm became the public care. Scipio died without leaving enough to marry his daughters, and their portions were paid out of the treasures of the state; for sure it was just that the people of Rome should once pay tribute to him who had established a perpetual tribute on Carthage. After such examples, shall we be afraid of poverty? Shall we disdain to be adopted into a family which has so many illustrious ancestors? Shall we complain of banishment for taking from us what the greatest philosophers and the greatest heroes of antiquity never enjoyed.

You will find fault, perhaps, and attribute to artifice, that I consider singly misfortunes which come altogether on the banished man, and overbear him with their united weight; you could support change of place if it was not accompanied with poverty, or poverty if it was not accompanied with the separation from your family and your friends, with the loss of your rank, consideration, and power, with contempt and ignominy. Whoever he be who reasons in this manner, let him take the following answer. The least of these circumstances is singly sufficient to render the man miserable who is not prepared for it, he who has not divested himself of that passion upon which it is directed to work. But he who has got the mastery of all his passions, who has foreseen all these accidents, and prepared his mind to endure them all, will be superior to all of them, and to all of them at once as well as singly. He will not bear the loss of his rank, because he can bear the loss of his

estate but he will bear both, because he is prepared for both; because he is free from pride as much as he is from avarice.

You are separated from your family and your friends. Take the list of them, and look it well over. How few of your family will you find who deserve the name of friends? And how few among these who are really such? Erase the names of such as ought not to stand on the roll, and the voluminous catalogue will soon dwindle into a narrow compass. Regret, if you please, your separation from this small remnant. Far be it from me, whilst I declaim against a shameful and vicious weakness of mind, to proscribe the sentiments of a virtuous friendship. Regret your separation from your friends, but regret it like a man who deserves to be theirs. This is strength, not weakness of mind; it is virtue, not vice.

But the least uneasiness under the loss of the rank which we held is ignominious. There is no valuable rank among men, but that which real merit assigns. The princes of the earth may give names, and institute ceremonies, and exact the observation of them; their imbecility and their wickedness may prompt them to clothe fools and knaves with robes of honour, and emblems of wisdom and virtue; but no man will be in truth superior to another, without superior merit and that rank can no more be taken from us than the merit which establishes it. The supreme authority gives a fictitious and arbitrary value to coin, which is therefore not current alike in all times and in all places; but the real value remains invariable, and the provident man, who gets rid as soon as he can of the drossy piece, hoards up the good silver. Thus merit will not procure the same consideration universally. But what then? the title to this consideration is the same, and will be found alike in every circumstance by those who are wise and virtuous themselves. If it is not owned by such as are otherwise, nothing is however taken from us; we have no reason to complain. They considered us for a rank which we had; for our denomination, not for our intrinsic value. We have that rank, that denomination no longer; and they consider us no longer; they admire in us what we admire not in ourselves. If they learn to neglect, let us learn to pity them. Their assiduity was importunate; let us not complain of the ease which this change procures us; let us rather apprehend the return of that rank and that power, which, like a sunny day, would bring back these little insects, and make them swarm once more about us. I know how apt we are, under specious pretences, to disguise our weaknesses and our vices, aud how often we succeed, not only in deceiving the world, but even in deceiving ourselves. An inclination to do good is inseparable from a virtuous mind, and, therefore, the man who cannot bear with patience the loss of that rank and power which he enjoyed, may be willing to attribute his regrets to the impossibility which he supposes himself reduced to of satisfying this inclination. But let such an one know that a wise man contents himself with doing as much good as his situation allows him to do; that there is no situation wherein we may not do a great deal; and that, when we were deprived of greater power to do more good, we escape at the same time the temptation of doing some evil.

The inconveniences which we have mentioned carry nothing along with them difficult to be borne by a wise and virtuous man; and those which remained to be mentioned, contempt and ignominy, can never fall to his lot. It is impossible that he who reverences himself should be despised by others, and how can ignominy affect the man who collects all his strength within himself, who appeals from the judgment of the multitude to another tribunal, and lives independent of mankind and the accidents of life? Cato lost the election of prætor, and that of consul; but is any one blind enough to truth to imagine that these repulses reflected any

disgrace on him? The dignity of those two magistracies would have been increased by his wearing them. They suffered, not Cato.

Ignominy can take no hold on virtue; for virtue is in every condition the same, and challenges the same respect. We applaud the world when she prospers, and when she falls into adversity we applaud her. Like the temples of the gods, she is venerable even in her ruins. After this, must it not appear a degree of madness to defer one moment acquiring the only arms capable of defending us against the attacks which at every moment we are exposed to? Our being miserable, or not miserable, when we fall into misfortunes, depends on the manner in which we have enjoyed prosperity. If we have applied ourselves betimes to the study of wisdom, and to the practice of virtue, these evils become indifferent; but if we have neglected to do so they become necessary. In one case they are evils, in the other they are remedies for greater evils than themselves. Zeno rejoiced that a shipwreck had thrown him on the Athenian coast, and he owed to the loss of his fortune the acquisition which he made of virtue, of wisdom, of immortality. There are good and bad airs for the mind, as well as for the body. Prosperity often irritates our chronical distempers, and leaves no hopes of finding any specific but in adversity. In such cases banishment is like change of air, and the evils we suffer are like rough medicines applied to inveterate diseases. What Anacharsis said of the vine may aptly enough be said of prosperity. She bears the three grapes of drunkenness, of pleasure, and of sorrow and happy it is if the last can cure the mischief which the former work. When afflictions fail to have their due effect, the case is desperate. They are the last remedy which indulgent Providence uses: and, if they fail, we must languish and die in misery and contempt. Vain men! how seldom do we know what to wish or to pray for? When we pray against misfortunes, and when we fear them most we want them most. It was for this reason that Pythagoras forbid his disciples to ask any thing in particular of God. The shortest and the best prayer which we can address to Him, who knows our wants, and our ignorance in asking, is this:-Thy will be done.

276. THE DEATH OF AGRIPPINA, THE MOTHER OF NERO.

TACITUS, ANNALS, XIV. 8-9.

[A specimen of a translation of Tacitus.]

GEORGE LONG.

[CAIUS CORNELIUS TACITUS, a great Roman historian, and one of the most remarkable writers of antiquity, is supposed to have been born in the reign of Nero. The following specimen of a translation of his 'Annals' will give some notion of his unequalled condensa tion of thought, and his power of vigorous narration in the fewest words.]

Nero now began to shun all private interviews with his mother when ever she withdrew to her gardens, or her villa at Tusculum, or to the neighbourhood of Antium, he would commend her for seeking retirement. At last, feeling her existence a heavy burden to him wherever she might be, he resolved to put her to death, the only matter of deliberation with him being whether he should get rid of her by poison, by the dagger, or by some other violent means. His first resolve was to take her off by poison. But, if poison should be given to her at the emperor's table, it could not be imputed to accident, for Britannicus had already perished by the same means; to tamper with the attendants of Agrippina appeared hazardous, for her experience in crime had made her vigilant against treachery, and she had fortified herself against poisons by the habit of taking antidotes. If the dagger was