“But, at such an age, you will never return from so long a journey.”  What care I for that?  I neither undertake it to return, nor to finish it my business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I only walk for the walk’s sake.  They who run after a benefit or a hare, run not; they only run who run at base, and to exercise their running.  My design is divisible throughout:  it is not grounded upon any great hopes:  every day concludes my expectation:  and the journey of my life is carried on after the same manner.  And yet I have seen places enough a great way off, where I could have wished to have stayed.  And why not, if Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, Antipater, so many sages of the sourest sect, readily abandoned their country, without occasion of complaint, and only for the enjoyment of another air.  In earnest, that which most displeases me in all my travels is, that I cannot resolve to settle my abode where I should best like, but that I must always propose to myself to return, to accommodate myself to the common humour.

If I feared to die in any other place than that of my birth; if I thought I should die more uneasily remote from my own family, I should hardly go out of France; I should not, without fear, step out of my parish; I feel death always pinching me by the throat or by the back.  But I am otherwise constituted; ’tis in all places alike to me.  Yet, might I have my choice, I think I should rather choose to die on horseback than in bed; out of my own house, and far from my own people.  There is more heartbreaking than consolation in taking leave of one’s friends; I am willing to omit that civility, for that, of all the offices of friendship, is the only one that is unpleasant; and I could, with all my heart, dispense with that great and eternal farewell.  If there be any convenience in so many standers-by, it brings an hundred inconveniences along with it.  I have seen many dying miserably surrounded with all this train:  ’tis a crowd that chokes them.  ’Tis against duty, and is a testimony of little kindness and little care, to permit you to die in repose; one torments your eyes, another your ears, another your tongue; you have neither sense nor member that is not worried by them.  Your heart is wounded with compassion to hear the mourning of friends, and, perhaps with anger, to hear the counterfeit condolings of pretenders.  Who ever has been delicate and sensitive, when well, is much more so when ill.  In such a necessity, a gentle hand is required, accommodated to his sentiment, to scratch him just in the place where he itches, otherwise scratch him not at all.  If we stand in need of a wise woman—­[midwife, Fr. ’sage femme’.]—­to bring us into the world, we have much more need of a still wiser man to help us out of it.  Such a one, and a friend to boot, a man ought to purchase at any cost for such an occasion.  I am not yet arrived to that pitch of disdainful vigour that is fortified in