decayed and worm-eaten body; but of such a body, the member that is least affected calls itself sound, and with good reason, forasmuch as our qualities have no title but in comparison; civil innocence is measured according to times and places.  Imagine this in Xenophon, related as a fine commendation of Agesilaus:  that, being entreated by a neighbouring prince with whom he had formerly had war, to permit him to pass through his country, he granted his request, giving him free passage through Peloponnesus; and not only did not imprison or poison him, being at his mercy, but courteously received him according to the obligation of his promise, without doing him the least injury or offence.  To such ideas as theirs this were an act of no especial note; elsewhere and in another age, the frankness and unanimity of such an action would be thought wonderful; our monkeyish capets

[Capets, so called from their short capes, were the students of
Montaigne College at Paris, and were held in great contempt.]

would have laughed at it, so little does the Spartan innocence resemble that of France.  We are not without virtuous men, but ’tis according to our notions of virtue.  Whoever has his manners established in regularity above the standard of the age he lives in, let him either wrest or blunt his rules, or, which I would rather advise him to, let him retire, and not meddle with us at all.  What will he get by it?

              “Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri
               Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro
               Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae.”

["If I see an exemplary and good man, I liken it to a two-headed
boy, or a fish turned up by the plough, or a teeming mule.” 
—­Juvenal, xiii. 64.]

One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present; we may wish for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have; and, peradventure, ’tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good.  So long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall shine in any corner of the kingdom, there will I be.  If they unfortunately happen to thwart and contradict one another, so as to produce two parts, of doubtful and difficult choice, I will willingly choose to withdraw and escape the tempest; in the meantime nature or the hazards of war may lend me a helping hand.  Betwixt Caesar and Pompey, I should frankly have declared myself; but, as amongst the three robbers who came after,—­[Octavius, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.]—­a man must have been necessitated either to hide himself, or have gone along with the current of the time, which I think one may fairly do when reason no longer guides: 

“Quo diversus abis?”

          ["Whither dost thou run wandering?”—­AEneid, v. 166.]