famous victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin.  The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty of so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight without closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good company in the other world:  and so of the rest Pythagoras was want to say,—­[Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., v. 3.]—­that our life resembles the great and populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they may carry away the glory of the prize:  others bring merchandise to sell for profit:  there are also some (and those none of the worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own.

To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of philosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought to be especially directed:  a scholar shall be taught to know—­

                    “Quid fas optare:  quid asper
          Utile nummus habet:  patrix carisque propinquis
          Quantum elargiri deceat:  quern te Deus esse
          Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;
          Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur.”

["Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we are ant to what purpose engendered.”—­Persius, iii. 69]

what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end and design of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the difference betwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence and liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how far death, affliction, and disgrace are to be apprehended;

          “Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem.”

          ["And how you may shun or sustain every hardship.” 
          —­Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.]

by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations and irresolutions:  for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners and his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig and well to live.  Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that which makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to the instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also do; but let