and the goodly contemplation of man's peace with himself. All glory, whether it consist of profits or preferments, is without, and therefore makes nothing to the essence of true happiness; but the feeling of a resolved constancy is within, and ever keeps a feast in a man's soundest content. One pregnant and notable samplar deserves an eye of judgment to be fixed on it. Demosthenes,34 after a long government at his pleasure in the commonwealth,-upon what consideration he himself knew best, and statesmen may easily guess at,-is reported to confess to his friends who came to visit him, that if at the beginning two ways had been proposed before him, the one leading to the tribunal of authority, the other to his grave, if he could by inspiration have foreknown the evils, the terrors, the calumnies, the envies, the contentions, the dangers that men in such places must customarily meet with, that he would much rather with alacrity have posted on to his sepulchre than to his greatness. Brutus, when he determined his own end, cried out with Hercules, "O, wretched and miserable power of man! thou wert nothing but a name, yet I embraced thee as a glorious work, but thou wert a bond-slave to fortune !"35

It is superfluous to enlarge or comment upon the sufferings of those famous men. Every man's own talent of wisdom and share of trial may, with not much difficulty, conster the sense of their meanings. A good man is the man that even the greatest or lowest should both be, and resolve to be; and this much may be confidently averred, that men of eminent commands are not in general more feared in the tide of their greatness than beloved in the ebb of that great

34 Plutarch in vita Demost.

35 Dion. Hist. Rom. lib. xlvii.

ness, if they bear it with moderation. Statists, honoured or favoured,—for favour and honour are for the most part inseparable,-have the eyes of the world upon their carriage, in the carriage either of their glories or dejections. It is not to be doubted—which is a singular comfort-but any sequestration from a wonted height is only but a trial; for being managed with humbleness and gratitude, it may ennoble the patients-for their own particulars to demean themselves excellently in the places they had before may be somewhat too neglectfully discharged. Always there is a rule in observation, positive and memorable, that an interposition or eclipse of eminence must not so make a man undervalue his own desert, but that a noble resolution should still uphold its own worth in deserving well, if we aim and intend to repute and use honours but as instrumental causes of virtuous effects in actions. To all such as so do-and all should so do that are worthy to be such—a service not to be neglected is a proper debt, especially from inferior ministers, to those whose creation hath not more given them the prerogatives of being men, than the virtuous resolution, leading them by a Line of Life, hath adorned them. with the just, known, and glorious titles of being good

men.

Vadum non transeat excors.

FINIS.

GLOSSARIAL INDEX.