he will find them all occupied
with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and
if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the
future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our
means; the future alone is our end.[78] So we never live, but we hope to
live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we
should never be so.

173

They say that eclipses foretoken misfortune, because misfortunes are
common, so that, as evil happens so often, they often foretell it;
whereas if they said that they predict good fortune, they would often be
wrong. They attribute good fortune only to rare conjunctions of the
heavens; so they seldom fail in prediction.

174

_Misery._--Solomon[79] and Job have best known and best spoken of the
misery of man; the former the most fortunate, and the latter the most
unfortunate of men; the former knowing the vanity of pleasures from
experience, the latter the reality of evils.

175

We know ourselves so little, that many think they are about to die when
they are well, and many think they are well when they are near death,
unconscious of approaching fever,[80] or of the abscess ready to form
itself.

176

Cromwell[81] was about to ravage all Christendom; the royal family was
undone, and his own for ever established, save for a little grain of
sand which formed in his ureter. Rome herself was trembling under him;
but this small piece of gravel having formed there, he is dead, his
family cast down, all is peaceful, and the king is restored.

177

[Three hosts.[82]] Would he who had possessed the friendship of the King
of England, the King of Poland, and the Queen of Sweden, have believed
he would lack a refuge and shelter in the world?

178

Macrobius:[83] on the innocents slain by Herod.

179

When Augustus learnt that Herod's own son was amongst the infants under
two years of age, whom he had caused to be slain, he said that it was
better to be Herod's pig than his son.--Macrobius, _Sat._, book ii,
chap. 4.

180

The great and the humble have the same misfortunes, the same griefs, the
same passions;[84] but the one is at the top of the wheel, and the other
near the centre, and so less disturbed by the same revolutions.

181

We are so unfortunate that we can only take pleasure in a thing on
condition of being annoyed if it turn out ill, as a thousand things can
do, and do ev