s
and to contemn honours: who is wholly self-contained: whom no
external objects affect: whom fortune assails in vain."
--Horace, Sat., ii. 7,]

such a man is five hundred cubits above kingdoms and duchies; he is an
absolute monarch in and to himself:

"Sapiens, . . . Pol! ipse fingit fortunam sibi;"

["The wise man is the master of his own fortune,"
--Plautus, Trin., ii. 2, 84.]

what remains for him to covet or desire?

"Nonne videmus,
Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, quoi
Corpore sejunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur,
Jucundo sensu, cura semotu' metuque?"

["Do we not see that human nature asks no more for itself than
that, free from bodily pain, it may exercise its mind agreeably,
exempt from care and fear."--Lucretius, ii. 16.]

Compare with such a one the common rabble of mankind, stupid and
mean-spirited, servile, instable, and continually floating with the
tempest of various passions, that tosses and tumbles them to and fro, and
all depending upon others, and you will find a greater distance than
betwixt heaven and earth; and yet the blindness of common usage is such
that we make little or no account of it; whereas if we consider a peasant
and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a magistrate and a private man, a
rich man and a poor, there appears a vast disparity, though they differ
no more, as a man may say, than in their breeches.

In Thrace the king was distinguished from his people after a very
pleasant and especial manner; he had a religion by himself, a god all his
own, and which his subjects were not to presume to adore, which was
Mercury, whilst, on the other hand, he disdained to have anything to do
with theirs, Mars, Bacchus, and Diana. And yet they are no other than
pictures that make no essential dissimilitude; for as you see actors in a
play representing the person of a duke or an emperor upon the stage, and
immediately after return to their true and original condition of valets
and porters, so the emperor, whose pomp and lustre so dazzle you in
public:

"Scilicet grandes viridi cum luce smaragdi
Auto includuntur, teriturque thalassina vestis
Assidue, et Veneris sudorem exercita potat;"

["Because he wears great emeralds richly set in gold, darting green
lustre; and the sea-blue silken robe, worn with pressure,