rightly to go to work, to examine only the flank and
the foss, to judge of the security of a place; we must observe which way
approaches can be made to it, and in what condition the assailant is: few
vessels sink with their own weight, and without some exterior violence.
Now, let us everyway cast our eyes; everything about us totters; in all
the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to
us, if you will but look, you will there see evident menace of alteration
and ruin:

"Et sua sunt illis incommoda; parque per omnes
Tempestas."

["They all share in the mischief; the tempest rages
everywhere."--AEneid, ii.]

Astrologers may very well, as they do, warn us of great revolutions and
imminent mutations: their prophecies are present and palpable, they need
not go to heaven to foretell this. There is not only consolation to be
extracted from this universal combination of ills and menaces, but,
moreover, some hopes of the continuation of our state, forasmuch as,
naturally, nothing falls where all falls: universal sickness is
particular health: conformity is antagonistic to dissolution. For my
part, I despair not, and fancy that I discover ways to save us:

"Deus haec fortasse benigna
Reducet in sedem vice."

["The deity will perchance by a favourable turn restore us to our
former position."--Horace, Epod., xiii. 7.]

Who knows but that God will have it happen, as in human bodies that purge
and restore themselves to a better state by long and grievous maladies,
which render them more entire and perfect health than that they took from
them? That which weighs the most with me is, that in reckoning the
symptoms of our ill, I see as many natural ones, and that Heaven sends
us, and properly its own, as of those that our disorder and human
imprudence contribute to it. The very stars seem to declare that we have
already continued long enough, and beyond the ordinary term. This also
afflicts me, that the mischief which nearest threatens us, is not an
alteration in the entire and solid mass, but its dissipation and
divulsion, which is the most extreme of our fears.

I, moreover, fear, in these fantasies of mine, the treachery of my
memory, lest, by inadvertence, it should make me write the same thing
twice. I hate to examine myself, and never review, but very unwillingly,
what has once escaped my pen. I here set