s life by doors and walls, and to be
scarcely safe in one's own house."--Ovid, Trist., iv. I, 69.]

'Tis a grievous extremity for a man to be jostled even in his own house
and domestic repose. The country where I live is always the first in
arms and the last that lays them down, and where there is never an
absolute peace:

"Tunc quoque, cum pax est, trepidant formidine belli....
Quoties Romam fortuna lacessit;
Hac iter est bellis.... Melius, Fortuna, dedisses
Orbe sub Eco sedem, gelidaque sub Arcto,
Errantesque domos."

["Even when there's peace, there is here still the dear of war when
Fortune troubles peace, this is ever the way by which war passes."
--Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 67.]

["We might have lived happier in the remote East or in the icy
North, or among the wandering tribes."--Lucan, i. 255.]

I sometimes extract the means to fortify myself against these
considerations from indifference and indolence, which, in some sort,
bring us on to resolution. It often befalls me to imagine and expect
mortal dangers with a kind of delight: I stupidly plunge myself headlong
into death, without considering or taking a view of it, as into a deep
and obscure abyss which swallows me up at one leap, and involves me in an
instant in a profound sleep, without any sense of pain. And in these
short and violent deaths, the consequence that I foresee administers more
consolation to me than the effect does fear. They say, that as life is
not better for being long, so death is better for being not long. I do
not so much evade being dead, as I enter into confidence with dying. I
wrap and shroud myself into the storm that is to blind and carry me away
with the fury of a sudden and insensible attack. Moreover, if it should
fall out that, as some gardeners say, roses and violets spring more
odoriferous near garlic and onions, by reason that the last suck and
imbibe all the ill odour of the earth; so, if these depraved natures
should also attract all the malignity of my air and climate, and render
it so much better and purer by their vicinity, I should not lose all.
That cannot be: but there may be something in this, that goodness is more
beautiful and attractive when it is rare; and that contrariety and
diversity fortify and consolidate well-doing within itself, and inflame
it by the jealousy of opposition and by glory. Thieves and robbers, of
their