 earnestly continue to thirst, and to chafe, and to labour after. The Great are above Temptation; the World has nothing further to exhibit for their Seduction; and, in this Light also, they are become the most respectable of all People.
Whenever you can make it evident, that to humble the Spirit of Man, you ought to place him in Authority; that, to convince him of personal Defaults and Infirmities, you ought to enclose him with Sycophants and servile Dependents; that, to make him temperate, you should seat him at the Table of a
Lucullus;
and that, to humanize his Disposition, you should remove him as far as possible from a Sense of the Miseries of his fellow Creatures; when, to cure a Man of Distempers incident to his Nature, you would place him in the Midst of adventitious Contagion; then, and not till then, will Wealth, Station, and Power be productive of Reformation and Virtue in Man.
Your Error lay in supposing that sensual Appetite and spiritual Ambition would cease or abate on Gratification or Indulgence. But this is not possible. The Spirit of Man is a deathless Desire; its Cravings cannot be satiated till it is possessed of some Object that is adequate to its Nature: and, as this World has no such Object to exhibit, Gratifications only serve to provoke to further Desire, or finally to sink us into utter Despondence. And this makes the Moral that was intended by the Philosophers, when they fabled that the Son of
Philip
broke into a Passion of Tears, on finding that no more Worlds remained for him to conquer.
Your Pardon yet, I pray � With respect to your Opinion that the Descendents, of the Mighty and the Exalted, inherit the Qualities and Excellencies of their Progenitors, you speak as though this Earth and all that was thereon were invariably permanent; whereas the knowing-Ones will tell you that the one and the other are subject to annual, and even diurnal Revolutions.
Perhaps there is not a Beggar or Slave, upon Earth, whose sometime Progenitor was not a Prince or an Emperor. Perhaps there is not a Prince or Emperor, upon Earth, whose sometime Progenitor was not a Slave or a Beggar. Have you then the Discernment to perceive in the Beggar the Lineaments of the Prince, or in the Prince to retrace the Lineaments of the Beggar? You have not, sage Sir. I will tell you a Story.
The Cardinal
Campejius,
or some such great Cardinal, happened to have a Dispute with the Duke of
Modena.
Altercation rose high. Do you know, says the Prince in
