e condemn the meanness and sterility of my employment, if I
can once come to relish it, as he did. I am of opinion that the most
honourable calling is to serve the public, and to be useful to many,

"Fructus enim ingenii et virtutis, omnisque praestantiae,
tum maximus capitur, quum in proximum quemque confertur:"

["For the greatest enjoyment of evil and virtue, and of all
excellence, is experienced when they are conferred on some one
nearest."--Cicero, De Amicil., c.]

for myself, I disclaim it; partly out of conscience (for where I see the
weight that lies upon such employments, I perceive also the little means
I have to supply it; and Plato, a master in all political government
himself, nevertheless took care to abstain from it), and partly out of
cowardice. I content myself with enjoying the world without bustle;
only-to live an excusable life, and such as may neither be a burden to
myself nor to any other.

Never did any man more fully and feebly suffer himself to be governed by
a third person than I should do, had I any one to whom to entrust myself.
One of my wishes at this time should be, to have a son-in-law that knew
handsomely how to cherish my old age, and to rock it asleep; into whose
hands I might deposit, in full sovereignty, the management and use of all
my goods, that he might dispose of them as I do, and get by them what I
get, provided that he on his part were truly acknowledging, and a friend.
But we live in a world where loyalty of one's own children is unknown.

He who has the charge of my purse in his travels, has it purely and
without control; he could cheat me thoroughly, if he came to reckoning;
and, if he is not a devil, I oblige him to deal faithfully with me by so
entire a trust:

"Multi fallere do cuerunt, dum timent falli;
et aliis jus peccandi suspicando fecerunt."

["Many have taught others to deceive, while they fear to be
deceived, and, by suspecting them, have given them a title to do
ill."--Seneca, Epist., 3.]

The most common security I take of my people is ignorance; I never
presume any to be vicious till I have first found them so; and repose the
most confidence in the younger sort, that I think are least spoiled by
ill example. I had rather be told at two months' end that I have spent
four hundred crowns, than to have my ears battered every night with
three, five, seven: and I have been, in this way, as little