["Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same
man."--Seneca, Ep., 150.]

Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and even
justice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy,
bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose
himself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry
Neptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion and
prudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline of
the rod with boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage into
the heart of tender virgins in their mothers' arms:

"Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,
Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:"

["She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent
guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth."
--Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.]

'tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by our
outward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover by
what springs the motion is guided. But that being a high and hazardous
undertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it.




CHAPTER II