Cellars and granaries in vain we fill,

With all the bounteous fummer's store, If the mind thirft and hunger ftill:

The poor rich man 's emphatically poor.

Slaves to the things we too much prize, We masters grow of all that we despise.

A field of corn, a fountain, and a wood,

Is all the wealth by nature understood.
The monarch, on whom fertile Nile bestows

All which that grateful earth can bear,
Deceives himself, if he suppose

That more than this falls to his share.
Whatever an estate does beyond this afford,
Is not a rent paid to the lord ;

But is a tax illegal and unjust,
Exacted from it by the tyrant luft.

Much will always wanting be,

To him who much defires. Thrice happy he To whom the wife indulgency of Heaven,

With fparing hand, but just enough has given.

VIII.

THE DANGERS OF AN HONEST MAN

IF

IN MUCH COMPANY.

F twenty thousand naked Americans were not able to refift the affaults of but twenty well-armed Spaniards, I fee little poffibility for one honeft man to defend himself against twenty thousand knaves who are all furnished cap à pé, with the defensive arms of worldly prudence, and the offenfive too of craft and malice. He will find no lefs odds than this against him, if he have much to do in human affairs. The only advice therefore which I can give him is, to be fure not to venture his perfon any longer in the open campaign, to retreat and entrench himself, to ftop up all avenues, and draw up all bridges against so numerous an enemy.

The truth of it is, that a man in much business muft either make himself a knave, or elfe the world will make him a fool: and, if the injury went no farther than the being laught at, a wife man would content himself with the revenge of retaliation; but the case is much worfe, for thefe civil cannibals too, as well as the wild ones, not only dance about fuch a taken ftranger, but at last devour him. A fober man cannot get too foon out of drunken company, though they be never fo kind and merry among themselves; it is not unpleasant only, but dangerous, to him.

Do

Do ye wonder that a virtuous man fhould love to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwife; he is fo, when he is among ten thousand: neither is the folitude fo uncomfortable to be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the midft of wild beafts. Man is to man all kind of beafts; a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a diffembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The civilift, methinks, of all nations, are thofe whom we account the most barbarous; there is fome moderation and good-nature in the Toupinambaltians, who eat no men but their enemies, whilft we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like fo many pikes and sharks, prey upon every thing that we can swallow. It is the great boast of eloquence and philofophy, that they firft congregated men difperfed, united them into focieties, and built up the houses and the walls of cities. I wish they could unravel all they had woven ; that we might have our woods and our innocence again, instead of our caftles and our policies. They have assembled many thousands of scattered people into one body: it is true, they have done fo; they have brought them together into cities to cozen, and into armies to murder, one another: they found them hunters and fishers of wild creatures; they have made them hunters and fishers of their brethren: they boast to have reduced them to a ftate of peace, when the truth is, they have only taught them an art of war: they have framed, I must confess, wholesome laws for the reftraint of vice, but they raised first that devil, which now they conjure and cannot bind: though there

were before no punishments for wickedness, yet there was lefs committed, because there were no rewards for it.

But the men, who praise philosophy from this topic, are much deceived; let oratory answer for itself, the tinkling perhaps of that may unite a fwarm: it never was the work of philosophy to assemble multitudes, but to regulate only, and govern them, when they were affembled; to make the best of an evil, and bring them, as much as is poffible, to unity again. Avarice and ambition only were the first builders of towns, and founders of empire; they said, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, left we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth *." What was the beginning of Rome, the metropolis of all the world? What was it, but a concourse of thieves, and a fanc

tuary of criminals ? It was justly named by the augury of no lefs than twelve vultures, and the founder cemented his walls with the blood of his brother. Not unlike to this was the beginning even of the firft town too in the world, and fuch is the original fin of most cities their actual, increase daily with their age and growth; the more people, the more wicked all of them; every one brings in his part to enflame the contagion; which becomes at last so universal and so strong, that no precepts can be fufficient prefervatives, nor

:

* Gen. xi. 4,

any

any thing fecure our fafety, but flight from among the infected.

We ought, in the choice of a fituation, to regard above all things the healthfulness of the place, and the healthfulness of it for the mind, rather than for the body. But fuppofe (which is hardly to be supposed) we had antidote enough against this poifon; nay, fuppose further, we were always and at all points armed and provided, both against the affaults of hoftility, and the mines of treachery, it will yet be but an uncomfortable life to be ever in alarms; though we were compaffed round with fire, to defend ourselves from wild beafts, the lodging would be unpleasant, because we must always be obliged to watch that fire, and to fear no less the defects of our guard, than the diligences of our enemy. The fum of this is, that a virtuous man is in danger to be trod upon and destroyed in the crowd of his contraries, nay, which is worse, to be changed and corrupted by them; and that it is impoffible to escape both these inconveniencies, without fo much caution as will take away the whole quiet, that is the happiness, of his life.

Ye fee then, what he may lofe; but, I pray, what can he get there?

Quid Romæ faciam? Mentiri nefcio *.

What fhould a man of truth and honefty do at Rome? he can neither understand nor fpeak the language of

*Juv. Sat. iii. 41.

the