Artabanus coming by surprise once upon his nephew Xerxes, chid him for the sudden alteration of his countenance.  He was considering the immeasurable greatness of his forces passing over the Hellespont for the Grecian expedition:  he was first seized with a palpitation of joy, to see so many millions of men under his command, and this appeared in the gaiety of his looks:  but his thoughts at the same instant suggesting to him that of so many lives, within a century at most, there would not be one left, he presently knit his brows and grew sad, even to tears.

We have resolutely pursued the revenge of an injury received, and been sensible of a singular contentment for the victory; but we shall weep notwithstanding.  ’Tis not for the victory, though, that we shall weep:  there is nothing altered in that but the soul looks upon things with another eye and represents them to itself with another kind of face; for everything has many faces and several aspects.

Relations, old acquaintances, and friendships, possess our imaginations and make them tender for the time, according to their condition; but the turn is so quick, that ’tis gone in a moment: 

              “Nil adeo fieri celeri ratione videtur,
               Quam si mens fieri proponit, et inchoat ipsa,
               Ocius ergo animus, quam res se perciet ulla,
               Ante oculos quorum in promptu natura videtur;”

["Nothing therefore seems to be done in so swift a manner than if
the mind proposes it to be done, and itself begins.  It is more
active than anything which we see in nature.”—­Lucretius, iii. 183.]

and therefore, if we would make one continued thing of all this succession of passions, we deceive ourselves.  When Timoleon laments the murder he had committed upon so mature and generous deliberation, he does not lament the liberty restored to his country, he does not lament the tyrant; but he laments his brother:  one part of his duty is performed; let us give him leave to perform the other.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

OF SOLITUDE

Let us pretermit that long comparison betwixt the active and the solitary life; and as for the fine sayings with which ambition and avarice palliate their vices, that we are not born for ourselves but for the public,—­[This is the eulogium passed by Lucan on Cato of Utica, ii. 383.]—­let us boldly appeal to those who are in public affairs; let them lay their hands upon their hearts, and then say whether, on the contrary, they do not rather aspire to titles and offices and that tumult of the world to make their private advantage at the public expense.  The corrupt ways by which in this our time they arrive at the height to which their ambitions aspire, manifestly enough declares that their ends cannot be very good.  Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society?  What does she so much seek as elbowroom?  A man many do well or ill everywhere; but if what Bias says be true, that the greatest part is the worse part, or what the Preacher says:  there is not one good of a thousand: