grant prosperity and long impunity to those
whom it intends to punish for their crimes, in order that they
may feel more severely from the reverse.... It is easy for a
wicked man to throw a commonwealth into disorder: God only can
restore it. Empires which have been procured by fraud cannot be
stable or permanent. Pride and cruelty will meet with a severe,
though it may be a late retribution; and, according to the
Hebrew proverb, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses
comes." The result of past events is oracular of the future:
"In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Why, then, exert
our ingenuity and labour in adding to our vexation? Away with
fearful apprehensions!'

Turning his thoughts to his old friends and neighbours, the exile makes
playful inquiries for their welfare:--

'What is the _profound Dreamer_ (so I was accustomed to call
him when we travelled together in 1584)--what is our Corydon of
Haddington about? I know he cannot be idle; has he not brought
forth or perfected anything yet, after so many decades of
years? _Tempus Atla veniet tua quo spoliabitur arbos._ Let me
know if our old friend Wallace has at last become the father of
books and bairns? Menalcas of Cupar on the Eden is, I hear,
constant; and I hope he will prove vigilant in discharging all
the duties of a pastor, and not mutable in his friendships, as
too many discover themselves to be in these cloudy days. Salute
him in my name; as also Damoetas of Elie, and our friend Dykes,
with such others as you know to "hold the beginning of their
confidence and the rejoicing of their hope firm to the end."
... We old men daily grow children again, and are ever and anon
turning our eyes and thoughts back on our cradles. We praise
the past days because we can take little pleasure in the
present. Suffer me then to dote; for I am now become pleased
with old age, although I have lived so long as to see some
things which I could wish never to have seen. I try daily to
learn something new, and thus to prevent my old age from
becoming listless and inert. I am always doing, or at least
attempting to do, something in those studies to which I devoted
myself in the younger part of my life. Accept this long epistle
from a talkative old man. _Loqui senibus res est gratissima_,
sa