’tis there that gratitude appears in its full lustre.  The benefit is not so generously bestowed, where there is retrogradation and reflection.  Arcesilaus, going to visit Ctesibius, who was sick, and finding him in a very poor condition, very finely conveyed some money under his pillow, and, by concealing it from him, acquitted him, moreover, from the acknowledgment due to such a benefit.  Such as have merited from me friendship and gratitude have never lost these by being no more; I have better and more carefully paid them when gone and ignorant of what I did; I speak most affectionately of my friends when they can no longer know it.  I have had a hundred quarrels in defending Pompey and for the cause of Brutus; this acquaintance yet continues betwixt us; we have no other hold even on present things but by fancy.  Finding myself of no use to this age, I throw myself back upon that other, and am so enamoured of it, that the free, just, and flourishing state of that ancient Rome (for I neither love it in its birth nor its old age) interests and impassionates me; and therefore I cannot so often revisit the sites of their streets and houses, and those ruins profound even to the Antipodes, that I am not interested in them.  Is it by nature, or through error of fancy, that the sight of places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by persons whose memories are recommended in story, moves us in some sort more than to hear a recital of their—­acts or to read their writings?

     “Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis....Et id quidem in hac urbe
     infinitum; quacumque enim ingredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium
     ponimus.”

     ["So great a power of reminiscence resides in places; and that truly
     in this city infinite, for which way soever we go, we find the
     traces of some story.”—­Cicero, De Fin., v.  I, 2.]

It pleases me to consider their face, bearing, and vestments:  I pronounce those great names betwixt my teeth, and make them ring in my ears: 

     “Ego illos veneror, et tantis nominibus semper assurgo.”

     ["I reverence them, and always rise to so great names.” 
     —­Seneca, Ep., 64.]

Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the common parts:  I could wish to see them in familiar relations, walk, and sup.  It were ingratitude to contemn the relics and images of so many worthy and valiant men as I have seen live and die, and who, by their example, give us so many good instructions, knew we how to follow them.

And, moreover, this very Rome that we now see, deserves to be beloved, so long and by so many titles allied to our crown; the only common and universal city; the sovereign magistrate that commands there is equally acknowledged elsewhere ’tis the metropolitan city of all the Christian nations the Spaniard and Frenchman is there at home:  to be a prince of that state, there needs no more but to be of Christendom wheresoever.  There is no place upon earth that heaven has embraced with such an influence and constancy of favour; her very ruins are grand and glorious,