both the one and the other aspect; if it makes a show, if it serve the turn, I indiscreetly let it run; and as indiscreetly tie up my purse-strings, if it does not shine, and does not please me.  Whatever it be, whether art or nature, that imprints in us the condition of living by reference to others, it does us much more harm than good; we deprive ourselves of our own utilities, to accommodate appearances to the common opinion:  we care not so much what our being is, as to us and in reality, as what it is to the public observation.  Even the properties of the mind, and wisdom itself, seem fruitless to us, if only enjoyed by ourselves, and if it produce not itself to the view and approbation of others.  There is a sort of men whose gold runs in streams underground imperceptibly; others expose it all in plates and branches; so that to the one a liard is worth a crown, and to the others the inverse:  the world esteeming its use and value, according to the show.  All over-nice solicitude about riches smells of avarice:  even the very disposing of it, with a too systematic and artificial liberality, is not worth a painful superintendence and solicitude:  he, that will order his expense to just so much, makes it too pinched and narrow.  The keeping or spending are, of themselves, indifferent things, and receive no colour of good or ill, but according to the application of the will.

The other cause that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for the present manners in our state.  I could easily console myself for this corruption in regard to the public interest: 

              “Pejoraque saecula ferri
               Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
               Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;”

["And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no
similitude in any of Nature’s metals.”—­Juvenal, xiii. 28.]

but not to my own.  I am, in particular, too much oppressed by them:  for, in my neighbourhood, we are, of late, by the long licence of our civil wars, grown old in so riotous a form of state,

“Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas,”

          ["Where wrong and right have changed places.” 
          —­Virgil, Georg., i. 504.]

that in earnest, ’tis a wonder how it can subsist: 

          “Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes
          Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto.”

     ["Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies,
     and living by rapine.”—­AEneid, vii. 748.]

In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and held together, at what price soever; in what condition soever they are placed, they still close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have been disposed by art.  King Philip mustered up a rabble