storum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes."

["You would see shepherds' haunts deserted, and far and wide empty
pastures."--Virgil, Georg., iii. 476.]

In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughed
for me, lay a long time fallow.

But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity of
all this people? Generally, every one renounced all care of life; the
grapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon the
vines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, either
to-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear,
as if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was an
universal and inevitable sentence. 'Tis always such; but how slender
hold has the resolution of dying? The distance and difference of a few
hours, the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehension
various to us. Observe these people; by reason that they die in the same
month, children, young people, and old, they are no longer astonished at
it; they no longer lament. I saw some who were afraid of staying behind,
as in a dreadful solitude; and I did not commonly observe any other
solicitude amongst them than that of sepulture; they were troubled to see
the dead bodies scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wild
beasts that presently flocked thither. How differing are the fancies of
men; the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of
their dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on
purpose to have them there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happy
amongst them. Some, who were yet in health, dug their own graves; others
laid themselves down in them whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, in
dying, with his hands and feet pulled the earth upon him. Was not this
to nestle and settle himself to sleep at greater ease? A bravery in some
sort like that of the Roman soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae,
were found with their heads thrust into holes in the earth, which they
had made, and in suffocating themselves, with their own hands pulled the
earth about their ears. In short, a whole province was, by the common
usage, at once brought to a course nothing inferior in undauntedness to
the most studied and premeditated resolution.

Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in them
more of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect. We have
a