man's own person, that we have deceived the world a thousand times before
we come to be engaged in a real danger: and even then, finding ourselves
in an inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for that
time to conceal our apprehensions by setting a good face on the business,
though the heart beats within; and whoever had the use of the Platonic
ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inward
towards the palm of the hand, a great many would very often hide
themselves when they ought most to appear, and would repent being placed
in so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold.

"Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret
Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?"

["False honour pleases, and calumny affrights, the guilty
and the sick."--Horace, Ep., i. 16, 89.]

Thus we see how all the judgments that are founded upon external
appearances, are marvellously uncertain and doubtful; and that there is
no so certain testimony as every one is to himself. In these, how many
soldiers' boys are companions of our glory? he who stands firm in an
open trench, what does he in that more than fifty poor pioneers who open
to him the way and cover it with their own bodies for fivepence a day
pay, do before him?

"Non quicquid turbida Roma
Elevet, accedas; examenque improbum in illa
Castiges trutina: nec to quaesiveris extra."

["Do not, if turbulent Rome disparage anything, accede; nor correct
a false balance by that scale; nor seek anything beyond thyself."