discretion, and that not of the chief, but every one at his own. The
general has a harder game to play within than he has without; he it is
who has to follow, to court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alone
has to obey: all the rest if disolution and free licence. It pleases me
to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by
how abject and servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeases
me to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice,
every day corrupted in the management and command of this confusion.
Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation. We had
ill-formed souls enough, without spoiling those that were generous and
good; so that, if we hold on, there will scarcely remain any with whom to
intrust the health of this State of ours, in case fortune chance to
restore it:

"Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo,
Ne prohibete."

["Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age."
--Virgil, Georg., i. 500. Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king
of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.]

What has become of the old precept, "That soldiers ought more to fear
their chief than the enemy"?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]--and of that
wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts of
a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day in
the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulled
off, but all left to the possessor? I could wish that our youth, instead
of the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less honourable
employments, would bestow one half of that time in being an eye-witness
of naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the other half