“Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur.”

     ["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed.”]

He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament.  The middle region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness: 

               “Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
               Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
               Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari! 
               Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
               Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!”

["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of rapacious Acheron:  he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs.”—­Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]

The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little to be found.  I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb the natural propension that inclined me to it: 

                    “Jure perhorrui
                    Lath conspicuum tollere verticem.”

          ["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high.” 
          —­Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]

All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations; for too many heads judge of them.  Some say of this civic employment of mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid temperament; and they have some colour for what they say.  I endeavoured to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;

          “Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;”

          ["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age.” 
          —­Cicero, De Petit.  Consul., c. 2.]

and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression, ’tis in truth without my advice.  Yet from this natural heaviness of mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in conferring that honour upon me at first.  I wish them all imaginable good;