"Ceu flamina prima
Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos."

["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
announcing the approach of winds to mariners."--AEneid, x. 97.]

How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,
dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the
rack?

"Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum."

["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes
also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right.
--"Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]

Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
troublesome to keep. Even the favours that fortune might have given me
through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very
carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of
advancing my pretensions above their true right. In fine, I have so much
prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this
day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers
made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a
virgin from quarrels too. I have almost passed over a long life without
any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing
a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.

Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!
And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the
greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?
--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius,
c. 3.]--for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of
the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this
kingdom assembled with