to themselves high titles of honour, and
prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period:
however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to
give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be
told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say
upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called up;
and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy,
that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. Perjury,
oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like infirmities, were
among the most excusable arts they had to mention; and for these I gave,
as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when some confessed they owed
their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest; others, to the
prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to the betraying
of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning; more to the
perverting of justice, in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I may be
pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that
profound veneration, which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of high
rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their
sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.

I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and
desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon
inquiry I was told, "that their names were to be found on no record,
except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of
rogues and traitors." As to the rest, I had never once heard of them.
They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most of
them telling me, "they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a
scaffold or a gibbet."

Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little
singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side.
He told me, "he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the
sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy's
great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a
fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony's flight, and of the victory
that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed in
the action." He added, "that upon the confidence of some merit, the war
being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus
to be preferred to a gr