“Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus,
               quantum ad privatas res pertinet;”

     ["We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our
     private affairs.”—­Livy, xxx. 44.]

and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relieves the regret we should have for it.  It was health, but only in comparison with the sickness that has succeeded it:  we are not fallen from any great height; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and office seem to me the least supportable:  we are less injuriously rifled in a wood than in a place of security.  It was an universal juncture of particular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most of them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure.  This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the assistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself, but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself.  Also, as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men, my health continued at that time more than usually good; and, as I can do nothing without it, there are few things that I cannot do with it.  It afforded me means to rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my hand before the wound that would else, peradventure, have gone farther; and I experienced, in my patience, that I had some stand against fortune, and that it must be a great shock could throw me out of the saddle.  I do not say this to provoke her to give me a more vigorous charge:  I am her humble servant, and submit to her pleasure:  let her be content, in God’s name.  Am I sensible of her assaults?  Yes, I am.  But, as those who are possessed and oppressed with sorrow sometimes suffer themselves, nevertheless, by intervals to taste a little pleasure, and are sometimes surprised with a smile, so have I so much power over myself, as to make my ordinary condition quiet and free from disturbing thoughts; yet I suffer myself, withal, by fits to be surprised with the stings of those unpleasing imaginations that assault me, whilst I am arming myself to drive them away, or at least to wrestle with them.

But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail of the rest:  both without doors and within I was assailed with a most violent plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodies are subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to be forced but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, however near, in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted, produced strange effects: 

         “Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum
          Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;”

["Old and young die in mixed heaps.  Cruel Proserpine forbears
none.”—­Horace, Od., i. 28, 19.]