advanced above him will naturally impute that preference to
partiality or caprice, and indeed it can scarcely be hoped that any
man, however magnanimous by Nature or exalted by condition, will be
able to persist for ever in fixed and inexorable justice of
distribution; he will sometimes indulge his own affections and
sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to please
him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he
loves qualities which in reality they do not possess, and to those
from whom he receives pleasure he will in his turn endeavour to
give it. Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were
purchased by money or by the more destructive bribery of flattery
and servility.

"He that hath much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong
must suffer the consequences, and if it were possible that he
should always act rightly, yet, when such numbers are to judge of
his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence
and the good sometimes by mistake.

"The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of
happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from
thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid
obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction or intercept the
expectations of him whose abilities are adequate to his
employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his
influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and
whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has
nothing to do but to love and to be loved; to be virtuous and to be
happy."