fears.  To which may be added that the doubts and ignorance of those who take upon them to expound the designs of nature and her internal progressions, and the many false prognostics of their art, ought to give us to understand that her ways are inscrutable and utterly unknown; there is great uncertainty, variety, and obscurity in what she either promises or threatens.  Old age excepted, which is an indubitable sign of the approach of death, in all other accidents I see few signs of the future, whereon we may ground our divination.  I only judge of myself by actual sensation, not by reasoning:  to what end, since I am resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience?  Will you know how much I get by this? observe those who do otherwise, and who rely upon so many diverse persuasions and counsels; how often the imagination presses upon them without any bodily pain.  I have many times amused myself, being well and in safety, and quite free from these dangerous attacks in communicating them to the physicians as then beginning to discover themselves in me; I underwent the decree of their dreadful conclusions, being all the while quite at my ease, and so much the more obliged to the favour of God and better satisfied of the vanity of this art.

There is nothing that ought so much to be recommended to youth as activity and vigilance our life is nothing but movement.  I bestir myself with great difficulty, and am slow in everything, whether in rising, going to bed, or eating:  seven of the clock in the morning is early for me, and where I rule, I never dine before eleven, nor sup till after six.  I formerly attributed the cause of the fevers and other diseases I fell into to the heaviness that long sleeping had brought upon me, and have ever repented going to sleep again in the morning.  Plato is more angry at excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking.  I love to lie hard and alone, even without my wife, as kings do; pretty well covered with clothes.  They never warm my bed, but since I have grown old they give me at need cloths to lay to my feet and stomach.  They found fault with the great Scipio that he was a great sleeper; not, in my opinion, for any other reason than that men were displeased that he alone should have nothing in him to be found fault with.  If I am anything fastidious in my way of living ’tis rather in my lying than anything else; but generally I give way and accommodate myself as well as any one to necessity.  Sleeping has taken up a great part of my life, and I yet continue, at the age I now am, to sleep eight or nine hours at one breath.  I wean myself with utility from this proneness to sloth, and am evidently the better for so doing.  I find the change a little hard indeed, but in three days ’tis over; and I see but few who live with less sleep, when need requires, and who more constantly exercise themselves, or to whom long journeys are less troublesome.  My body is capable of a firm, but not of a violent or sudden agitation.  I