yet in a blindness of custom we take little or no account of
it. Whereas, if we consider a cottage and a king, a noble and a workman,
a rich man and a poor, we at once recognise disparity, although, as one
might say, they differ in nothing but their clothes.

An emperor, whose pomp so dazzles us in public, view him behind the
curtain is but an ordinary man, and peradventure viler and sillier than
the least of his subjects! Cowardice, irresolution, ambition, spite,
anger, envy, move and work in him as in another man. Fear, care, and
suspicion haunt him even in the midst of his armed troops. Does the
ague, the headache, or the gout spare him more than us? When age seizes
on his shoulders, can the tall yeoman of his guard rid him of it? His
bedstead encased with gold and pearls cannot allay the pinching pangs of
colic!

The flatterers of Alexander the Great assured him he was the son of
Jupiter, but being hurt one day, and the blood gushing from the wound,
"What think you of this?" said he to them. "Is not this blood of a
lively red hue, and merely human?" If a king have the ague or the gout
what avail his titles of majesty? But if he be a man of worth, royalty
and glorious titles will add but little to good fortune.

Truly, to see our princes all alone, sitting at their meat, though
beleaguered with talkers, whisperers, and gazing beholders, I have often
rather pitied than envied them. The honour we receive from those who
fear and stand in awe of us is no true honour. "Service holds few,
though many hold service."

Every man's manners and his mind
His fortune for him frame and find.

_IV.--Of the Use of Apparel_

I was devising in this chill-cold season whether the fashion of these
late-discovered nations to go naked be a custom forced by the hot
temperature of the air, as we say of the Indians and Moors, or whether
it be an original manner of mankind. My opinion is, that even as all
plants, trees, living creatures, are naturally furnished with protection
against all weathers, even so were we. But like those who by artificial
light quench the brightness of day, so we have spoilt our proper
covering by what we have borrowed. Nations under the same heaven and
climate as our own, or even colder, have no knowledge of clothes.
Moreover, the tenderest parts of us are ever bare and naked--our eyes,
face, mouth, nose, ears; and our country swains, like their forefathers,
go bare-breasted to their middles.

Had we b