quest of it is craggy, difficult, and painful, but its fruition pleasant, what do they mean by that but to tell us that it is always unpleasing?  For what human means will ever attain its enjoyment?  The most perfect have been fain to content themselves to aspire unto it, and to approach it only, without ever possessing it.  But they are deceived, seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the very pursuit is pleasant.  The attempt ever relishes of the quality of the thing to which it is directed, for it is a good part of, and consubstantial with, the effect.  The felicity and beatitude that glitters in Virtue, shines throughout all her appurtenances and avenues, even to the first entry and utmost limits.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct.  Which is the reason why all the rules centre and concur in this one article.  And although they all in like manner, with common accord, teach us also to despise pain, poverty, and the other accidents to which human life is subject, it is not, nevertheless, with the same solicitude, as well by reason these accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of mankind passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty is, and some without sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who lived a hundred and six years in a perfect and continual health; as also because, at the worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short and put an end to all other inconveniences.  But as to death, it is inevitable:—­

              “Omnes eodem cogimur; omnium
               Versatur urna serius ocius
               Sors exitura, et nos in aeternum
               Exilium impositura cymbae.”

["We are all bound one voyage; the lot of all, sooner or later, is
to come out of the urn.  All must to eternal exile sail away.” 
—­Hor., Od., ii. 3, 25.]

and, consequently, if it frights us, ’tis a perpetual torment, for which there is no sort of consolation.  There is no way by which it may not reach us.  We may continually turn our heads this way and that, as in a suspected country: 

“Quae, quasi saxum Tantalo, semper impendet.”

["Ever, like Tantalus stone, hangs over us.” 
—­Cicero, De Finib., i. 18.]

Our courts of justice often send back condemned criminals to be executed upon the place where the crime was committed; but, carry them to fine houses by the way, prepare for them the best entertainment you can—­

     “Non Siculae dapes

Dulcem elaborabunt saporem: 
Non avium cyatheaceae cantus
Somnum reducent.”

["Sicilian dainties will not tickle their palates, nor the melody of
birds and harps bring back sleep.”—­Hor., Od., iii. 1, 18.]