refuse to return you the oracle of their ballot. The councillors
of princes I will not trust; they are but journeymen. The wisdom
of these later times in princes' affairs (says Verulamius) is
rather fine deliveries and shiftings of dangers when they be
near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them off. Their
councillors do not derive their proceedings from any sound root
of government that may contain the demonstration, and assure the
success of them, but are expedient-mongers, givers of themselves
to help a lame dog over a stile; else how comes it to pass that
the fame of Cardinal Richelieu has been like thunder, whereof we
hear the noise, but can make no demonstration of the reason? But
to return: if neither the people, nor divines and lawyers, can be
the aristocracy of a nation, there remains only the nobility; in
which style, to avoid further repetition, I shall understand the
gentry also, as the French do by the word noblesse.

"Now to treat of the nobility in such sort as may be less
obnoxious to mistake, it will be convenient, and answerable to
the present occasion, that I divide my discourse into four parts:

"The first treating of nobility, and the kinds of it;

"The second, of their capacity of the Senate;

"The third. of the divers kinds of senates;

"The fourth, of the Senate, according to the foregoing
orders.

"Nobility may be defined divers ways; for it is either