animated our ancestors to prefer their country's good before all other earthly advantages -is now no more; and the natural effect ensues: For honour is to the body-politic, what the soul is to man; we cannot describe exactly what it is, but it contains the principle of life; and when it departs, the frame to which it gave power and virtue, falls, corrupts, and dissolves to nothing.

KINGS AND TYRANTS.

1.

WHETHER your time call you to live or die, do both like a prince.

2.

Some froward princes, whose doings have been smoothed with good success, think nothing so absurd which they cannot make honourable.

3.

How easy a thing is it for a prince, deeply to sink into the souls of his subjects a more lively monument than Mausolus's tomb!

4.

Being a prince and father of a people, you ought, with the eye of wisdom, the hand of fortitude, and the heart of justice, to set down all private conceits, in comparison with what for the public is profitable.

5.

Betwixt prince and subject, there is as necessary a relation as between father and

son.

6.

As the sun disdains not to give light to the smallest worm, so a virtuous prince protects the life of his meanest subject.

7.

A king who deserves the name, will never stir up old titles (how apparent so ever), whereby the public peace (with the loss of many guilty souls) should be broken; but contenting himself to guide that ship wherein the heavens have placed him, he will shew no

less magnanimity in dangerless despising, than others, in dangerous affecting the multiplying of kingdoms. And as he is most wise to see what is best, he is most just in performing what he sees; and temperate in abstaining from things which are any way contrary.Such a prince, especially measureth his greatness by his goodness; and if for any thing he love greatness, it is because therein he may exercise his goodness.

8.

When a good king is newly come to a throne, wherein his predecessors held the reins too loose for the headstrong spirit of violent natures, he must straightway take upon himself the regimen to cure the dire wounds of the state; and by reason of the long course of abuse, be forced to 'stablish his will by even some extreme severity. But so soon as some few (but indeed notable) examples have thundered a duty into the subjects' hearts, he soon shews no baseness of suspicion; nor the basest baseness of envy, can any whit rule such a ruler! Then shineth forth indeed all love among the people, when

an awful fear, engendered by justice, does make that love most lovely. His first and principal care being to appear unto his subjects such as he would have them to be, and they be such as he appears; he makes his life the example of his laws, and his laws, as it were, his axioms arising out of his deeds. Thus is made a blessed people: for how can they choose but love him, whom they find so truly loves them? He, in reason, disdaining that they who have charge of beasts, should love their charge and care for them, and that he, who is to govern the most excellent crea ture, man, should not love so noble a charge! and therefore, where most princes (seduced by flattery to build upon false grounds of government) make themselves another thing from the people, and so count it gain what they get from them; and (as it were two counter-balances, that their estate goes highest when the people's goes lowest), by a fallacy of argument, thinking themselves most kings, when the subject is most basely subjected. The good king, contrariwise, virtuously and wisely acknowledging that he, with

his people, make all but one politic body, whereof himself is the head, even so he cares for them as he would for his own limbs; never restraining their liberty, without it stretches to licentiousness; nor pulling from them goods which they find are not employed to be the purchase of a greater good: but in all his affections he shews a delight in their welfare; and by persuasion brings that to pass which tyrants seek to compel :-while by force he takes nothing, by the love of his subjects he may take all.

9.

An evil mind in authority, doth not only follow the sway of the desires already within it, but frames to itself new desires not before thought of.

10.

How desperate is the state of the tyrant! wickedly sad, ever musing of horrible matters; suspecting, or rather condemning all men of evil, because his mind has no eye to espy goodness. He is an object as much of scorn as of detestation; fearful, and never secure; while the fear he has figured in his