174 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS
Life is Sweet, Brother
LIFE is sweet, brother. Do you think so ?
Think so ! There's night and day, brother, both sweet things ;
sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things ; there's likewise the
wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother ; who would wish
to die ? The gipsies in George Sorrow's Lavengro
The Good Of It
EXPELLED on account of his tyranny, Dionysius the Second of
Syracuse, who had been the host and pupil of Plato, was asked
by a cynic during his exile, " Of what service is the philosophy of
Plato to you now ? " to which he answered :
It assists me to behold the vicissitudes of fortune without astonish-
ment, and to suffer her severities without complaint.
The Bad Old Days
I KNOW it is an old folly to make peevish complaints of the times,
and charge the common failures of human nature on a particular
age. One may nevertheless venture to affirm that the present hath
brought forth new and portentous villainies, not to be paralleled
in our own or any other history.
We have been long preparing for some great catastrophe. Vice
and villainy have by degrees grown reputable among us; our
infidels have passed for fine gentlemen, and our venal traitors for
men of sense who knew the world. We have made a jest of public
spirit, and cancelled all respect for whatever our laws and religion
repute sacred. The old English modesty is quite worn off, and
instead of blushing for our crimes we are ashamed only of piety
and virtue. Our symptoms are so bad that, notwithstanding all the
care and vigilance of the legislature, It is to be feared the final period
of our State approaches.
God grant the time be not near when men shall say :
This island was once inhabited by a religious, brave, sincere people,
of plain, uncorrupt manners, respecting inbred worth rather than titles
and appearances, assertors of liberty, lovers of their country, jealous of
their own rights, and unwitting to infringe the rights of others; im-
provers of learning and useful arts, enemies to luxury, tender of other
men's lives and prodigal of their own; inferior in nothing to the old
Greeks or Romans.
Such were our ancestors during their rise and greatness; but they
degenerated, grew servile flatterers of men in power, became venalf
corrupt, injurious, which drew upon them the hatred of God and man,
and occasioned their final ruin. Bishop Berkeley writing in 1721