ect have
the political works of these marvellous men produced upon the
world?--what effect upon any one state, any one city, any one hamlet?
A clerk in office, an accountant, a gauger of small beer, a songwriter
for a tavern dinner, produces more. He thrusts his rags into the hole
whence the wind comes, and sleeps soundly. While you and I are talking
about elevations and proportions, pillars and pilasters, architraves
and friezes, the buildings we should repair are falling to the earth,
and the materials for their restoration are in the quarry.

_Rousseau._ I could answer you: but my mind has certain moments of
repose, or rather of oscillation, which I would not for the world
disturb. Music, eloquence, friendship, bring and prolong them.

_Malesherbes._ Enjoy them, my dear friend, and convert them if
possible to months and years. It is as much at your arbitration on
what theme you shall meditate, as in what meadow you shall botanize;
and you have as much at your option the choice of your thoughts, as of
the keys in your harpsichord.

_Rousseau._ If this were true, who could be unhappy?

_Malesherbes._ Those of whom it is not true. Those who from want of
practice cannot manage their thoughts, who have few to select from,
and who, because of their sloth or of their weakness, do not roll away
the heaviest from before them.

LUCULLUS AND CAESAR

_Caesar._ Lucius Lucullus, I come to you privately and unattended for
reasons which you will know; confiding, I dare not say in your
friendship, since no service of mine toward you hath deserved it, but
in your generous and disinterested love of peace. Hear me on. Cneius
Pompeius, according to the report of my connexions in the city, had,
on the instant of my leaving it for the province, begun to solicit his
dependants to strip me ignominiously of authority. Neither vows nor
affinity can bind him. He would degrade the father of his wife; he
would humiliate his own children, the unoffending, the unborn; he
would poison his own nascent love--at the suggestion of Ambition.
Matters are now brought so far, that either he or I must submit to a
reverse of fortune; since no concession can assuage his malice, divert
his envy, or gratify his cupidity. No sooner could I raise myself up,
from the consternation and stupefaction into which the certainty of
these reports had thrown me, than I began to consider in what manner
my own private afflictions might become the least noxious