Time goes faster with the old than young.

that saw the layingof the first stone? In the gardens I found the trees as much out of order, the boughs knotted and withered, and their bodies over-run with moss. "This would not have been," said I, "if you had trenched them, and watered them, as you should have done."-"By my soul, master," says the poor fellow, "I have done what I could, but, alas! they are all dotards, and spent." What am I then (thought I to myself,) that planted all these trees with my own hands? And then I come to bethink myself that age is not yet without its pleasures, if we did but know how to use them, and that the best morsel is reserved for the last; or, at worst, it is equivalent to the enjoying of pleasures, not to stand in need of any. It is but yesterday, methinks, that I went to school. But time goes faster with an old man than with a young; perhaps because he reckons more upon it. There is hardly any man so old, but he may hope for one day more yet; and the longest life is but a multiplication of days, nay, of hours, nay, of moments. Our fate is set,

and the first breath we draw is but the first step toward our last. One cause depends upon another; and the course of all things, public and private, is only a long connection of providential appointments. There is great variety in our lives but all tends to the same issue. Nature may use her own bodies as she pleases; but a good man has this consolation, that nothing perishes that he can call his own. What must be, shall be; and that which is a necessity to him that struggles, is little more than choice to him that is willing. It is bitter to be forced to any thing; but things are easy, when they are complied with.

Of habits.

CUSTOM IS A GREAT MATTER EITHER IN GOOD
OR EVIL.

It

THERE is nothing so hard, but custom makes it easy to us. There are some that never laughed, others that wholly abstain from wine and women, and almost from sleep. Much use of a coach makes us lose the benefit of our legs; so that we must be infirm to be in the fashion, and at last lose the very faculty of walking by disusing it. Some are so plunged in pleasures, that they cannot live without them: and in this they are most miserable; that what was at first but superfluous, is now become necessary. But their infelicity seems to be then consummate, and incurable, when sensuality has laid hold of the judgment, and wickedness is become a habit. Nay, some there are, that both hate and persecute virtue; and that is the last act of desperation. is much easier to check our passions in the beginning, than to stop them in their course; for if reason could not hinder us at first, they will go on in despite of us. The Stoics will not allow a wise man to have any passions at all. The Peripatetics temper them, but that mediocrity is altogether false and unprofitable. And it is all one, as if they said, that we may be a little mad, or a little sick. If we give any sort of allowance to sorrow, fear, desires, perturbations, it will not be in our power to restrain them. They are fed from abroad, and will increase with their causes. And if we yield ever so little to them, the least disorder works upon the whole body. It is not my purpose, all this while, wholly to take away any thing that is either necessary, be

We should check our passions betimes.

When I forbid you

be

neficial, or delightful to human life, but to take that away which may be vicious in it. to desire any thing, I am yet content that you may willing to have it. So that I permit you the same things; and those very pleasures will have a better relish too, when they are enjoyed with anxiety, and when you come to command those appetites which before you served. It is natural, you will say, to weep for the loss of a friend; to be moved at the sense of a good or ill report, and to be sad in adversity. All this I will grant you; and there is no vice, but something may be said for it. At first it is tractable and modest, but, if we give it entrance, we shall hardly get it out again; as it goes on, it gathers strength, and becomes quickly ungovernable. It cannot be denied, but that all affections flow from a kind of natural principle, and that it is our duty to take care of ourselves; but it is then our duty also, not to be over indulgent. Nature has mingled pleasures even with things most necessary; not that we should value them for their own sakes, but to make those things which we cannot live without to be more acceptable to us. If we esteem the pleasure for itself, it turns to luxury; it is not the business of nature to raise hunger or thirst but to extinguish them.

As there are some natural frailties, that by care and industry may be overcome, so there are others that are invincible: as for a man that values not his own blood, to swoon at the sight of another man's. Involuntary motions are insuperable and inevitable, as the starting of the hair at ill-news, blushing at a scurrilous discourse, swimming of the head upon the sight of a precipice, &c. Who can read the story of Clodius's

CC

The course of nature is smooth and easy.

expelling Cicero, and Anthony's killing of him, the cruelties of Marius, and the proscriptions of Sylla, without being moved at it? The sound of a trumpet, the picture of any thing that is horrid, the spectacle of an execution, strikes the mind, and works upon the imagination. Some people are strangely subject to sweat, to tremble, to stammer, their very teeth will chatter in their heads, and their lips quiver, and especially in public assemblies. These are natural infirmities, and it is not all the resolution in the world that can ever master them. Some redden when they are angry: Sylla was one of those, and when the blood flushed into his face, you might be sure he had malice in his heart. Pompey, on the other side, (that hardly ever spake in public without a blush,) had a wonderful sweetness of nature, and it did exceedingly well with him. Your comedians will represent fear, sadness, anger and the like, but when they come to a bashful modesty, though they will give you humbleness of looks, softness of speech, and downcast eyes, to the very life, yet they can never come to express a blush; for it is a thing neither to be commanded, nor hindered; but it comes and goes of its own accord. The course of nature is smooth and easy, but when we come to cross it, we strive against the stream. It is not for one man to act another's part; for nature will quickly return, and take off the mask. There is a kind of sacred instinct that moves us. Even the worst have a sense of virtue. We are not so much ignorant as careless. Whence comes it, that grazing beasts distinguish salutary plants from deadly? A chicken is afraid of a kite, and not of a goose, or peacock, which is much bigger: a bird of a

We are altogether in darkness.

cat, and not of a dog. This is impulse, and not experiment. The cells of bees, and the webs of spiders, are not to be imitated by art, but it is nature that teaches them. The stage-player has his actions and gestures in readiness, but this is only an improvement by art, of what nature teaches them; who is never at a loss for the use of herself. We come into the world with this knowledge, and we have it by a natural institution, which is no other than a natural logic. We brought the seeds of wisdom itself. There is the goodness of God and that of man: the one is immortal, the other mortal; nature perfects the one, and study the other.

WE ARE DIVIDED IN OURSELVES, AND CONFOUND GOOD AND EVIL.

It is no wonder that men are generally very much unsatisfied with the world, when there is not one man of a thousand that agrees with himself, and that is the root of our misery; only we are willing to charge our own vices upon the malignity of fortune. Either we are puffed up with pride, racked with desires, dissolved in pleasures, or blasted with cares; and which perfects our unhappiness, we are never alone, but in perpetual conflict and controversy with our lusts. We are startled at all accidents. We boggle at our own shadows, and fright one another. Lucretius says, that we are as much afraid in the light, as children in the dark; but I say, that we are altogether in darkness, without any light at all, and we run on blindfold, without so much as groping out our way; which rashness in