that, in the society of their common danger his innocence might serve to protect him, and to recommend him to the divine favour, that they might get safe to shore.  ’Tis not that a wise man may not live everywhere content, and be alone in the very crowd of a palace; but if it be left to his own choice, the schoolman will tell you that he should fly the very sight of the crowd:  he will endure it if need be; but if it be referred to him, he will choose to be alone.  He cannot think himself sufficiently rid of vice, if he must yet contend with it in other men.  Charondas punished those as evil men who were convicted of keeping ill company.  There is nothing so unsociable and sociable as man, the one by his vice, the other by his nature.  And Antisthenes, in my opinion, did not give him a satisfactory answer, who reproached him with frequenting ill company, by saying that the physicians lived well enough amongst the sick, for if they contribute to the health of the sick, no doubt but by the contagion, continual sight of, and familiarity with diseases, they must of necessity impair their own.

Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one’s ease:  but men do not always take the right way.  They often think they have totally taken leave of all business, when they have only exchanged one employment for another:  there is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.  Wherever the mind is perplexed, it is in an entire disorder, and domestic employments are not less troublesome for being less important.  Moreover, for having shaken off the court and the exchange, we have not taken leave of the principal vexations of life: 

              “Ratio et prudentia curas,
               Non locus effusi late maris arbiter, aufert;”

["Reason and prudence, not a place with a commanding view of the
great ocean, banish care.”—­Horace, Ep., i. 2.]

ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires, do not leave us because we forsake our native country: 

“Et
Post equitem sedet atra cura;”

               ["Black care sits behind the horse man.” 
               —­Horace, Od., iii. 1, 40].

they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools; nor deserts, nor caves, hair-shirts, nor fasts, can disengage us from them: 

“Haeret lateri lethalis arundo.”

["The fatal shaft adheres to the side.”—­AEneid, iv. 73.]

One telling Socrates that such a one was nothing improved by his travels:  “I very well believe it,” said he, “for he took himself along with him”

                   “Quid terras alio calentes
                    Sole mutamus? patriae quis exsul
                    Se quoque fugit?”

["Why do we seek climates warmed by another sun?  Who is the man
that by fleeing from his country, can also flee from himself?”
—­Horace, Od., ii. 16, 18.]