with what is below us:  there is no condition so miserable wherein a man may not find a thousand examples that will administer consolation.  ’Tis our vice that we more unwillingly look upon what is above, than willingly upon what is below; and Solon was used to say, that “whoever would make a heap of all the ills together, there is no one who would not rather choose to bear away the ills he has than to come to an equal division with all other men from that heap, and take his share.”  Our government is, indeed, very sick, but there have been others more sick without dying.  The gods play at ball with us and bandy us every way: 

          “Enimvero Dii nos homines quasi pilas habent.”

The stars fatally destined the state of Rome for an example of what they could do in this kind:  in it are comprised all the forms and adventures that concern a state:  all that order or disorder, good or evil fortune, can do.  Who, then, can despair of his condition, seeing the shocks and commotions wherewith Rome was tumbled and tossed, and yet withstood them all?  If the extent of dominion be the health of a state (which I by no means think it is, and Isocrates pleases me when he instructs Nicocles not to envy princes who have large dominions, but those who know how to preserve those which have fallen into their hands), that of Rome was never so sound, as when it was most sick.  The worst of her forms was the most fortunate; one can hardly discern any image of government under the first emperors; it is the most horrible and tumultuous confusion that can be imagined; it endured it, notwithstanding, and therein continued, preserving not a monarchy limited within its own bounds, but so many nations so differing, so remote, so disaffected, so confusedly commanded, and so unjustly conquered: 

              “Nec gentibus ullis
               Commodat in populum, terra pelagique potentem,
               Invidiam fortuna suam.”

["Fortune never gave it to any nation to satisfy its hatred against
the people, masters of the seas and of the earth.”—­Lucan, i. 32.]

Everything that totters does not fall.  The contexture of so great a body holds by more nails than one; it holds even by its antiquity, like old buildings, from which the foundations are worn away by time, without rough-cast or mortar, which yet live and support themselves by their own weight: 

                   “Nec jam validis radicibus haerens,
                    Pondere tuta suo est.”

Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work, to examine only the flank and the foss, to judge of the security of a place; we must observe which way approaches can be made to it, and in what condition the assailant is:  few vessels sink with their own weight, and without some exterior violence.  Now, let us everyway cast our eyes; everything about us totters; in all the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to us, if you will but look, you will there see evident menace of alteration and ruin: