is."

["Alas! our crimes and our fratricides are a shame to us! What
crime does this bad age shrink from? What wickedness have we left
undone? What youth is restrained from evil by the fear of the gods?
What altar is spared?"--Horace, Od., i. 33, 35]

I do not presently conclude,

"Ipsa si velit Salus,
Servare prorsus non potest hanc familiam;"

["If the goddess Salus herself wish to save this family, she
absolutely cannot"--Terence, Adelph., iv. 7, 43.]

we are not, peradventure, at our last gasp. The conservation of states
is a thing that, in all likelihood, surpasses our understanding;--a civil
government is, as Plato says, a mighty and puissant thing, and hard to be
dissolved; it often continues against mortal and intestine diseases,
against the injury of unjust laws, against tyranny, the corruption and
ignorance of magistrates, the licence and sedition of the people. In all
our fortunes, we compare ourselves to what is above us, and still look
towards those who are better: but let us measure ourselves with what is
below us: there is no condition so miserable wherein a man may not find a
thousand examples that will administer consolation. 'Tis our vice that
we more unwillingly look upon what is above, than willingly upon what is
below; and Solon was used to say, that "whoever would make a heap of all
the ills together, there is no one who would not rather choose to bear
away the ills he has than to come to an equal division with all other men
from that heap, and take his share." Our government is, indeed, very
sick, but there have been others more sick without dying. The gods play
at ball with us and bandy us every way:

"Enimvero Dii nos homines quasi pilas habent."

The stars fatally destined the state of Rome for an example of what they
could do in this kind: in it are comprised all the forms and adventures
that concern a state: all that order or disorder, good or evil fortune,
can do. Who, then, can despair of his condition, seeing the shocks and
commotions wherewith Rome was tumbled and tossed, and yet withstood them
all? If the extent of dominion be the health of a state (which I by no
means think it is, and Isocrates pleases me when he instructs Nicocles
not to envy princes who have large dominions, but those who know how to
preserve those which have fallen into their hands), that of Rome was
never so sound,