love him as his friends." I will
then say, that if a man must, of necessity, owe something, it ought to be
by a more legitimate title than that whereof I am speaking, to which the
necessity of this miserable war compels me; and not in so great a debt as
that of my total preservation both of life and fortune: it overwhelms me.

I have a thousand times gone to bed in my own house with an apprehension
that I should be betrayed and murdered that very night; compounding with
fortune, that it might be without terror and with quick despatch; and,
after my Paternoster, I have cried out,

"Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit!"

["Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?"
--Virgil, Ecl., i. 71.]

What remedy? 'tis the place of my birth, and that of most of my
ancestors; they have here fixed their affection and name. We inure
ourselves to whatever we are accustomed to; and in so miserable a
condition as ours is, custom is a great bounty of nature, which benumbs
out senses to the sufferance of many evils. A civil war has this with it
worse than other wars have, to make us stand sentinels in our own houses.

"Quam miserum, porta vitam muroque tueri,
Vixque suae tutum viribus esse domus!"

["'Tis miserable to protect one'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 stupidl