Seeing how miserably we are agitated (for what have we not done!)

              “Eheu! cicatricum, et sceleris pudet,
               Fratrumque:  quid nos dura refugimus
               AEtas? quid intactum nefasti
               Liquimus?  Unde manus inventus
               Metu Deorum continuit? quibus
               Pepercit aris.”

["Alas! our crimes and our fratricides are a shame to us!  What crime does this bad age shrink from?  What wickedness have we left undone?  What youth is restrained from evil by the fear of the gods?  What altar is spared?”—­Horace, Od., i. 33, 35]

I do not presently conclude,

                              “Ipsa si velit Salus,
               Servare prorsus non potest hanc familiam;”

     ["If the goddess Salus herself wish to save this family, she
     absolutely cannot”—­Terence, Adelph., iv. 7, 43.]

we are not, peradventure, at our last gasp.  The conservation of states is a thing that, in all likelihood, surpasses our understanding;—­a civil government is, as Plato says, a mighty and puissant thing, and hard to be dissolved; it often continues against mortal and intestine diseases, against the injury of unjust laws, against tyranny, the corruption and ignorance of magistrates, the licence and sedition of the people.  In all our fortunes, we compare ourselves to what is above us, and still look towards those who are better:  but let us measure ourselves 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: