Happy he who, like me, having suffered, can become an example to his
suffering brethren!

YOUTH, prosperous, and imagining eternal prosperity, read my history
attentively, though I should be in my grave! Read feelingly, and
bless my sleeping dust, if it has taught thee wisdom or fortitude!

FATHER, reading this, say to thy children, I felt thus like them, in
blooming youth, little prophesied of misfortune, which after fell so
heavy on me, and by which I am even still persecuted! Say that I
had virtue, ambition, was educated in noble principles; that I
laboured with all the zeal of enthusiastic youth to become wiser,
better, greater than other men; that I was guilty of no crimes, was
the friend of men, was no deceiver of man or woman; that I first
served my own country faithfully, and after, every other in which I
found bread; that I was never, during life, once intoxicated; was no
gamester, no night rambler, no contemptible idler; that yet, through
envy and arbitrary power, I have fallen to misery such as none but
the worst of criminals ought to feel.

BROTHER, fly those countries where the lawgiver himself knows no
law, where truth and virtue are punished as crimes; and, if fly you
cannot, be it your endeavour to remain unknown, unnoticed; in such
countries, seek not favour or honourable employ, else will you
become, when your merits are known, as I have been, the victim of
slander and treachery: the behests of power will persecute you, and
innocence will not shield you from the shafts of wicked men who are
envious, or who wish to obtain the favour of princes, though by the