them my common viands; and I find they agree with
my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad
gathered in a church-yard as well as in a garden. I
cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard,
or salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper, I find in
me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel
not in myself those common antipathies that I can dis-
cover in others: those national repugnances do not
touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French,
Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but, where I find their
actions in balance with my countrymen's, I honour, love,
and embrace them, in the same degree. I was born in
the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and constel-
lated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out
of a garden. All places, all airs, make unto me one
country; I am in England everywhere, and under any
meridian. I have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy
with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or sleep, in a
tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my con-
science would give me the lie if I should say I abso-
lutely detest or hate any essence, but the devil; or so
at least abhor anything, but that we might come to
composition. If there be any among those common
objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that
great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the mul-
titude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which,
taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures
of God, but, confused together, make but one great
beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.
It is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the