t, reflection, and religion.
--I could moralize on the necessity of habitual patience, and the benefit
of preparing the mind for great evils by a philosophic endurance of
little ones; but I am at the Bicetre--the winds whistle round me--I am
beset by petty distresses, and we do not expatiate to advantage on
endurance while we have any thing to endure.--Seneca's contempt for the
things of this world was doubtless suggested in the palace of Nero. He
would not have treated the subject so well in disgrace and poverty. Do
not suppose I am affecting to be pleasant, for I write in the sober
sadness of conviction, that human fortitude is often no better than a
pompous theory, founded on self-love and self-deception.

I was surprized at meeting among our fellow-prisoners a number of Dutch
officers. I find they had been some time in the town on their parole,
and were sent here by Dumont, for refusing to permit their men to work on
the fortifications.--The French government and its agents despise the
laws of war hitherto observed; they consider them as a sort of
aristocratie militaire, and they pretend, on the same principle, to be
enfranchised from the law of nations.--An orator of the convention lately
boasted, that he felt himself infinitely superior to the prejudices of
Grotius, Puffendorff, and Vatel, which he calls "l'aristocratie
diplomatique."--Such sublime spirits think, because they differ from the
rest of mankind, that they surpass them. Like Icarus, they attempt to
fly, and are perpetually struggling in the mire.--Plain common sense has
long pointed out a rule of action, from which all deviation is fatal,
both to nations and individuals. England, as well as France, has
furnished its examples; and the annals of genius in all countries are
replete with the miseries of eccentricity.--Whoever has followed the
course of the French revolution, will, I believe, be convinced, that the
greatest evils attending on it have been occasioned by an affected
contempt for received maxims. A common banditti, acting only from the
desire of plunder, or men, erring only through ignorance, could not have
subjugated an whole people, had they not been assisted by narrow-minded
philosophers, who were eager to sacrifice their country to the vanity of
making experiments, and were little solicitous whether their systems were
good or bad, provided they were celebrated as the authors of them. Yet,
where are they now? Wandering, proscribed,