as when it was most sick. The worst of her forms was the
most fortunate; one can hardly discern any image of government under the
first emperors; it is the most horrible and tumultuous confusion that can
be imagined; it endured it, notwithstanding, and therein continued,
preserving not a monarchy limited within its own bounds, but so many
nations so differing, so remote, so disaffected, so confusedly commanded,
and so unjustly conquered:

"Nec gentibus ullis
Commodat in populum, terra pelagique potentem,
Invidiam fortuna suam."

["Fortune never gave it to any nation to satisfy its hatred against
the people, masters of the seas and of the earth."--Lucan, i. 32.]

Everything that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body
holds by more nails than one; it holds even by its antiquity, like old
buildings, from which the foundations are worn away by time, without
rough-cast or mortar, which yet live and support themselves by their own
weight:

"Nec jam validis radicibus haerens,
Pondere tuta suo est."

Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work, to examine only the flank and
the foss, to judge of the security of a place; we must observe which way
approaches can be made to it, and in what condition the assailant is: few
vessels sink with their own weight, and without some exterior violence.
Now, let us everyway cast our eyes; everything about us totters; in all
the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to
us, if you will but look, you will there see evident menace of alteration
and ruin:

"Et sua sunt illis incommoda; parque per omnes
Tempestas."

["They all share in the mischief; the tempest rages
everywhere."--AEneid, ii.]

Astrologers may very well, as they do, warn us of great revolutions and
imminent mutations: their prophecies are present and palpable, they need
not go to heaven to foretell this. There is not only consolation to be
extracted from this universal combination of ills and menaces, but,
moreover, some hopes of the continuation of our state, forasmuch as,
naturally, nothing falls where all falls: universal sickness is
particular health: conformity is antagonistic to dissolution. For my
part, I despair not, and fancy that I discover ways to save us:

"Deus haec fortasse benigna
Reducet in