ly my tenants, but tenants at
will; that they would all fight for me to the last drop; and that never
tyrant, for such I acknowledged myself to be, was ever so universally
beloved, and yet so horribly feared, by his subjects.

After amusing them with these riddles in government for awhile, I opened
the case, and told them the story at large of my living in the island,
and how I managed both myself and the people there that were under me,
just as I have since minuted it down. They were exceedingly taken with
the story, and especially the prince, who told me with a sigh, that the
true greatness of life was to be master of ourselves; that he would not
have changed such a state of life as mine, to have been czar of Muscovy,
and that he found more felicity in the retirement he seemed to be
banished to there, than ever he found in the highest authority he
enjoyed in the court of his master the czar: that the height of human
wisdom was to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a
calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm, without. When he
came first hither, he said, he used to tear the hair from his head, and
the clothes from his back, as others had done before him; but a little
time and consideration had made him look into himself, as well as round
himself, to things without: that he found the mind of man, if it was but
once brought to reflect upon the state of universal life, and how
little this world was concerned in its true felicity, was perfectly
capable of making a felicity for itself, fully satisfying to itself, and
suitable to its own best ends and desires, with but very little
assistance from the world; that air to breathe in, food to sustain life,
clothes for warmth, and liberty for exercise, in order to health,
completed, in his opinion, all that the world could do for us: and
though the greatness, the authority, the riches, and the pleasures,
which some enjoyed in the world, and which he had enjoyed his share of,
had much in them that was agreeable to us, yet he observed, that all
those things chiefly gratified the coarsest of our affections; such as
our ambition, our particular pride, our avarice, our vanity, and our
sensuality; all which were, indeed, the mere product of the worst part
of man, were in themselves crimes, and had in them the seeds of all
manner of crimes; but neither were related to, or concerned with, any of
those virtues that constituted us wise men, or of those graces