carry about you a soul worthy of praise. A painting of Echion, or some statue of Polycletus, holds you bereft of your senses: I shall not mention from whom you took it, or by what means you possess it: but when I see you staring, gaping, and uttering cries, I look upon you to be the slave of all these follies. You ask me, "Are not these, then, elegant amusements?" They are: for I too have a cultivated eye; but I beseech you, let these elegances be so regarded as the playthings of boys, and not as the shackles of men. What think you then? If Lucius Mummius, after he had expressed his contempt for all Corinth, had seen one of these men examining most eagerly a Corinthian vase, whether would he have looked upon him as an excellent citizen, or a busy appraiser ? If Manius Curius, or some of those Romans who in their villas and their houses had nothing that was costly, nothing besides themselves that was mental, should come to life again, and see one who had received the highest honors from the people, taking out of his tank his mullets or his carp, then handling them, and boasting of the abundance of his lampreys, would not the old Roman think that such a man was so very a slave, that he was not even fit for a very high employment in a household? Is the slavery of those men doubtful, who from their greediness for wealth spurn no condition of the hardest servitude? To what meanness of slavery will not the hope of succeeding to an estate make a man stoop? What gesture of the childless rich old fellow does he not observe? He frames his words to his inclination; he does whatever is commanded him; he courts him, he sits by him, he makes him presents. What of these is the part of a free man? What, indeed, is not the mark of an abject slave.

orna

Well! how hard a mistress is that passion which seems to be more characteristic of liberty, I mean that for public preferment, for empire, for provinces; how imperious! how irresistible! It forced the men who thought themselves the

"Riches gotten by service, though it be of the best rise, yet when they are gotten by flattery, feeding humors, and other servile conditions, they may be placed among the worst. As for fishing for testaments and executorships (as Tacitus saith of Seneca, Testamenta et orbos tamquam indagine capi), it is yet worse, by how much men submit themselves to meaner persons than in service."-Lord Bacon, Essay 34.

greatest men in Rome to be slaves to Cethegus, a person not the most respectable, to send him presents, to wait upon him at nights at his house, to turn suitors, nay, supplicants to him. If this is to be regarded as freedom, what is slavery? But what shall I say when the sway of the passions is over, and when fear, another tyrant, springs out of the consciousness of their misdeeds? What a hard, what a wretched servitude is that, when they must be slaves to chattering boys; when all who seem to know any thing against them are feared as their masters. As to their judge, how powerful is his sway over them, with what terrors does he afflict the guilty. And is not all fear a slavery? What then is the meaning of that more eloquent than wise speech delivered by the accomplished orator Crassus? "Snatch us from slavery." What slavery could happen to so illustrious and noble a man? Every terror of a weak, a mean, and a dastardly soul is slavery. He goes on- "Suffer us not to be the slaves of any (you perhaps imagine that he is now about to assert his liberty. Not at all, for what does he add?)—but of you all, to whom we are able and bound to be subservient." He desires not to be free, but to change his master. Now we whose souls are lofty, exalted, and intrenched in virtue, neither can, nor ought to be slaves. Say that you can be a

slave, since indeed you can; but say not that you are bound

to be one, for no man is bound to any service, unless it is disgraceful not to render it. But enough of this. Now let this man consider if he can be a general, when reason and truth must convince him that he is not so much as a freeman.

PARADOX VI.

THAT THE WISE MAN ALONE IS RICH.

WHAT means this unbecoming ostentation in making mention of your money? You are the only rich man! Immortal gods! ought I not to rejoice that I have heard and learned something? You the only rich man! What if you are not rich at all? What if you even are a beggar? For whom are we to understand to be a rich man? To what

'This paradox is addressed to Marcus Crassus.

kind of a man do we apply the term? To the man as I suppose, whose possessions are such that he may be well contented to live liberally, who has no desire, no hankering after, no wish for more. It is your own mind, and not the talk of others, nor your possessions, that must pronounce you to be rich; for it ought to think that nothing is wanting to it, and care for nothing beyond. Is it satiated, or even contented with your money ? I admit that you are rich; but if for the greed of money you think no source of profit disgraceful (though your order can not make any honest profits), if you every day are cheating, deceiving, craving, jobbing, poaching, and pilfering; if you rob the allies and plunder the treasury; if you are forever longing for the bequests of friends, or not even waiting for them, but forging them yourself, are such practices the indications. of a rich or a needy man? It is the mind, and not the coffers of a man, that is to be accounted rich. For though the latter be full, when I see yourself empty, I shall not think you rich; because men measure the amount of riches by that which is sufficient for each individual. Has a man a daughter? then he has need of money. But he has two, then he ought to have a greater fortune; he has more, then he ought to have more fortune still; and if, as we are told of Danaus, he has fifty daughters, so many fortunes require a great estate. For, as I said before, the degree of wealth is dependent on how much each individual has need of. He therefore who has not a great many daughters, but innumerable passions, which are enough to consume a very great estate in a very short time, how can I call such a man rich, when he himself is conscious that he is poor? Many have heard you say, that no man is rich who can not with his income maintain an army; a thing which the people of Rome some time ago, with their so great revenues, could scarcely do. Therefore, according to your maxim, you never can be rich, until so much is brought in to you from your estates, that out of it you can maintain six legions, and large auxiliaries of horse and foot.' You therefore, in fact, confess

1 "It will be found," says Dr. Johnson, "on a nearer view, that those who extol the happiness of poverty, do not mean the same state with those who deplore its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of magnificence; and, being accustomed to contemplate the down

yourself not to be rich, who are so far short of fulfilling what you desire; you, therefore, have never concealed your poverty, your neediness, and your beggary.

For as we see that they who make an honest livelihood by commerce, by industry, by farming the public revenue, have occasion for their earnings; so, whoever sees at your house the crowds of accusers and judges together; whoever sees rich and guilty criminals plotting the corruption of trials with you as their adviser, and your bargainings for pay for the distribution of patronage, your pecuniary interventions in the contests of candidates, your dispatching your freedmen to fleece and plunder the provinces; whoever calls to mind your dispossessing your neighbors, your depopulating the country by your oppressions, your confederacies with slaves, with freedmen, and with clients; the vacating of estates; the proscriptions of the wealthy; the corporations massacred, and the harvest of the times of Sylla; the wills you have forged, and the many men you have made away with; in short, that all things were venal with you in your levies, your decrees, your own votes, and the votes of others; the forum, your house, your speaking, and your silence; who must not think that such a man confesses he has occasion for all he has acquired? But who can truly designate him as a rich man who needs all his earnings? For the advantage of riches consists in plenty, and this plenty declares the overflow and abundance of the means of life, which, as you can never attain, you can never be rich. I shall say nothing of myself, because as you (and that with reason) despise my fortune for it is in the opinion of the generality middling, in yours next to nothing, and in mine sufficient I shall speak to the subject. Now if facts are to be weighed and estimated by us, whether are we more to esteem-the money of Pyrrhus which he sent to Fabricius, or the continency of Fabricius for refusing that money?-the gold of the Samnites, or the answer of Manius Curius?—the inheritance of Lucius Paulus, or the generosity of Africanus, who gave

fall of empires, or to contrive forms of lamentations for monarchs in distress, rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty who make no approaches to the dignity of crowns. To be poor in the epic language is only not to command the wealth of nations, and to have fleets and armies to pay."-Rambler, No. 202.

to his brother Quintus his own part of that inheritance? Surely the latter evidences of consummate virtue are more to be esteemed than the former, which are the evidences of wealth. If, therefore, we are to rate every man rich only in proportion to the valuable things he possesses, who can doubt that riches consist in virtue, since no possession, no amount of gold and silver, is more to be valued than virtue?

Immortal gods! Men are not aware how great a revenue is parsimony; for I now proceed to speak of extravagant men, I take my leave of the money-hunter. The revenue one man receives from his estate is six hundred sestertia; I receive one hundred from mine. To that man who has gilded roofs and marble pavements in his villas, and who unboundedly covets statues, pictures, vestments, and furniture, his income is insufficient, not only for his expenditure, but even for the payment of his interest; while there will be some surplus even from my slender income, through cutting off the expenses of voluptuousness. Which, then, is the richer, he who has a deficit, or he who has a surplus? -he who is in need, or he who abounds?-the man whose estate, the greater it is, requires the more to sustain it, or whose estate maintains itself by its own resources ?1

But why do I talk of myself, who through the contagion

"Riches are of no value in themselves, their use is discovered only in that which they procure. They are not coveted unless by narrow understandings, which confound the means with the end, but for the sake of power, influence, and esteem; or by some of less elevated and rcfined sentiments as necessary to sensual enjoyment.

"The pleasures of luxury many have, without uncommon virtue, been able to despise, even when affluence and idleness have concurred to tempt them; and therefore he who feels nothing from indigence, but the want of gratifications which he could not in any other condition make consistent with innocence, has given no proof of eminent patience. Esteem and influence every man desires, but they are equally pleasing and equally valuable, by whatever means they are obtained; and whoever has found the art of securing them without the help of money ought in reality to be accounted rich, since he has all that riches can purchase to a wise man. Cincinnatus, though he lived upon a few acres, cultivated by his own hand, was sufficiently removed from all the evils generally comprehended under the name of poverty, when his reputation was such that the voice of his country called him from his farm to take absolute command into his hand; nor was Diogenes much mortified by his residence in a tub, where he was honored with the visit of Alexander the Groat."-The Rambler, No. 202.