Men mind their pleas res more than manners.

of poverty in others, and the fear of it in ourselves, unmerciful oppressions, and mercenary magistrates, are the common grievances of a licentious government. The baths and the theatres are crowded, when the temples and the schools are empty; for men mind their pleasures more than their manners. All vices gain upon us by the promise of reward; avarice promises money, luxury sensual satisfaction, ambition promises preferment and power. And it is no excuse to say, that a man is not very covetous; a little ambitious, choleric, inconstant, lustful, and the like. He had better

have one great vice, than a spice of all little ones. We say commonly, that a fool has all sorts of vices in him; that is to say, he is free from none; but they do not all appear, and he is more prone to one than to another. One is given to avarice, another to luxury, a third to wantonness; but we are not yet to ask the Stoics, if Achilles be a coward, Aristides unjust, Fabius rash, Mucius a traitor, Camillus a deserter. We do not say, that all vices are in all men, as some are in some particulars.

THE ORIGINAL OF ALL MEN IS THE SAME, AND VIRTUE IS THE ONLY NOBILITY.

Ir is not well done, to be still murmuring against nature and fortune, as if it were their unkindness that makes you inconsiderable, when it is only by your own weakness that you make yourself so; for it is virtue, not pedigree, that renders a man either valuable, or happy. Philosophy does not either reject or chuse any man for his quality. Socrates was no patrician,

A clear conscience only, makes a man noble.

Cleanthes but an under-gardener; neither did Plato dignify philosophy by his birth, but by his goodness. All these worthy men are our progenitors, if we will but do ourselves the honour to become their disciples. The original of all mankind was the same, and it is only a clear conscience that makes any man noble, for that derives even from heaven itself. It is the saying of a great man-that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves. But fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy, in a long story of revolutions. It is most certain that our beginning had nothing before it; and our ancestors were some of them splendid, others sordid, as it happened. We have lost the memorials of our extraction; and, in truth, it matters not whence we came but whither we go. Nor is it any more to our honour, the glory of our predecessors, than it is to their shame, the wickedness of their posterity. We are all of us composed of the same elements; why should we then value ourselves upon our nobility of blood, as if we were not all of us equal, if we could but recover our evidence? But, when we can carry it no farther, the herald provides some hero to supply the place of an illustrious original, and there is the rise of arms and families. For a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only, when he dies, to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.

Ir pleases me exceedingly, to understand, by all that come out of your quarters, that you demean yourself humanely and tenderly towards your servants. It is the part of a wise, and of a good man, to deal with his inferior as he would have his superior deal with him; for

Tenderness due to servants.-Every man is a servant.

servants are not only men, but a kind of humble friends, and fortune has no more power over them than over their masters; and he that duly considers how many servants have come to be masters, and how many masters to be servants, will lay no great stress of argument either upon the one, or upon the other. Some use their servants worse than beasts, in slavish attendances, betwixt their drink and their lusts; some are brought up only to carve, others to season, and all to serve the turns of pomp and luxury. Is it not a barbarous custom, to make it almost capital for a servant only to cough, snceze, sigh, or but wag his lips, while he is in waiting, and keep him the whole night mute, and fasting; yet so it comes to pass, that they that dare not speak before their masters, will not forbear talking of them; and those, on the other side, that were allowed a modest freedom of speech in their master's entertainments, were most obstinately silent upon the torture, rather than they would betray them. But we live as if a servant were not made of the same materials with his master, or to breathe the same air, or to live and die under the same conditions. It is worthy of observation, that the most imperious masters over their own servants, are, at the same time, the most abject slaves to the servants of other masters. I will not distinguish a servant by his office, but by his manners. The one is the work of fortune, the other of virtue. But we look only to his quality, and not to his merit. Why should not a brave action rather dignify the condition of a servant, than the condition of a servant lessen a brave action? I would not value a man for his clothes, or degree, any more than I would do a horse for his trappings. What if he be a servant! shew

A servant should reverence his master.

me any man that is not so, to his lusts, his avarice, his ambition, his palate, to his queen, nay to other men's servants; and we are all of us servants to fear; insolent we are many of us at home, servile and despised abroad; and none are more liable to be trampled upon, than those that have gotten a habit of giving affronts by suffering them. What matters it how many masters we have, when it is but one slavery? and whosoever contemns that, is perfectly free, let his masters be ever so many. That man is only free, not whom fortune has a little power over, but over whom she has none at all; which state of liberty is an inestimable good, when we desire nothing that is either superfluous, or vicious. They are asses that are made for burden, and not the nobler sort of horses. In the civil wars, betwixt Cæsar and Pompey, the question was not, who should be slaves or free, but who should be master. Ambition is the same thing in private that it is in public; and the duties are effectually the same, betwixt the master of a kingdom and the master of a family. As I would treat some servants kindly because they are worthy, and others to make them so; so, on the other side, I would have a servant to reverence his master, and rather to love him than fear him. Some there are, that think this too little for a master, though it is all that we pay even to God himself. The body of a servant may be bought and sold, but his mind is free.

Conscientious men unthankful to Providence.

WE ARE JUSTER TO MEN THAN TO GOD-OF LIFE AND DEATH-OF GOOD AND EVIL.

It is without di-pute, that the loss of a friend is one of the greatest trials of human frailty, and no man is so much exalted above the sense of that calamity, as not to be affected with it. And yet, if a man bears it bravely, they cry-he has no sense of piety, or good-nature in him if he sinks under it, they call him effeminate : so that he lays both ways under a reproach. And what is the ground of the trouble, I beseech you, but that he might have lived longer in respect of his years, and, in effect, that he ought to have done so, in regard of his usefulness to the world? I cannot but wonder, to see men that are really just and temperate in all their dealings with men, and in business, so exceedingly to forget themselves in this point. But we have, in excuse of this error, the failings of the whole world with us for company. For even those that are the most scrupulously conscientious toward men, are yet unthankful and injurious to Providence.

It is not the number of days that makes a life long, but the full employment of them, upon the main end and purpose of life: which is the perfecting of the mind, in making a man the absolute master of himself. I reckon the matter of age among external things, the main point is to live and die with honour. Every man that lives is upon the way, and must go through with his journey without stopping, until he comes at the end; and wheresoever it ends, if it ends well, it is a perfect life. There is an invincible fate that attends all mortals; and one genera