ty
to command our arms and lives in things that are practicable.' This great
and generous soul looked upon a base action as a thing impossible.

"There is nothing that honor more strongly recommends to the nobility,
than to serve their Prince in a military capacity. And indeed this is
their favorite profession, because its dangers, its success, and even its
miscarriages, are the road to grandeur. Yet this very law, of its own
making, honor chooses to explain; and in case of any affront, it requires
or permits us to retire.

"It insists also, that we should be at liberty either to seek or to
reject employments; a liberty which it prefers even to an ample fortune.

"Honor, therefore, has its supreme laws, to which education is obliged to
conform. The chief of these are, that we are permitted to set a value
upon our fortune, but are absolutely forbidden to set any upon our lives.

"The second is, that when we are raised to a post or preferment, we
should never do or permit anything which may seem to imply that we look
upon ourselves as inferior to the rank we hold.

"The third is, that those things which honor forbids are more rigorously
forbidden, when the laws do not concur in the prohibition; and those it
commands are more strongly insisted upon, when they happen not to be
commanded by law."

Though our government differs considerably from the French, inasmuch as
we have fixed laws and constitutional barriers for the security of our
liberties and properties, yet the President's observations hold pretty
near as true in England as in France. Though monarchies may differ a good
deal, kings differ very little. Those who are absolute desire to continue
so, and those who are not, endeavor to become so; hence the same maxims
and manners almost in all courts: voluptuousness and profusion
encouraged, the one to sink the people into indolence, the other into
poverty--consequently into dependence. The court is called the world here
as well as at Paris; and nothing more is meant by saying that a man knows
the world, than that he knows courts. In all courts you must expect to
meet with connections without friendship, enmities without hatred, honor
without virtue, appearances saved, and realities sacrificed; good manners
with bad morals; and all vice and virtues so disguised, that whoever has
only reasoned upon both would know neither when he first met them at
court. It is well that you should know the map of that country, that