others
expose it all in plates and branches; so that to the one a liard is worth
a crown, and to the others the inverse: the world esteeming its use and
value, according to the show. All over-nice solicitude about riches
smells of avarice: even the very disposing of it, with a too systematic
and artificial liberality, is not worth a painful superintendence and
solicitude: he, that will order his expense to just so much, makes it too
pinched and narrow. The keeping or spending are, of themselves,
indifferent things, and receive no colour of good or ill, but according
to the application of the will.

The other cause that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for
the present manners in our state. I could easily console myself for this
corruption in regard to the public interest:

"Pejoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;"

["And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no
similitude in any of Nature's metals."--Juvenal, xiii. 28.]

but not to my own. I am, in particular, too much oppressed by them: for,
in my neighbourhood, we are, of late, by the long licence of our civil
wars, grown old in so riotous a form of state,

"Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas,"

["Where wrong and right have changed places."
--Virgil, Georg., i. 504.]

that in earnest, 'tis a wonder how it can subsist:

"Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes
Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto."

["Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies,
and living by rapine."--AEneid, vii. 748.]

In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and
held together, at what price soever; in what condition soever they are
placed, they still close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as
ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of
themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have
been disposed by art. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most
wicked and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them all
together into a city he had caused to be built for that purpose, which
bore their name: I believe that they, even from vices themselves, erected
a government amongst them, and a commodious and just society. I see, not
one action, or three, or a