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no want to break into its dwellings; it is the northwest passage, that brings the merchant's ships as soon to him as he can desire: in a word, it conquers all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay contribution. If this omnipotent engine were applied to all virtuous and worthy purposes, it would root out all vice from the world; for the industry of honest men is much more powerful than the industry of the wicked, which prevails not so much by its own activity, as by the remissness and supine laziness of their unwary enemies. The beauty and the brightness of it appear most powerfully to our observation, by the view of the contempt and deformity of that which is most opposite to it, idleness; which enfeebles and enervates the strength of the soundest constitutions, shrinks and stupifies the faculties of the most vigorous mind, and gives all the destroying diseases to body and mind, without the contribution from any other vice. Idleness is the sin and the punishment of beggars, and should be detested by all noble persons, as a disease pestilential to their fortune and their honour.

I know not how it comes to pass, but the world pays dear for the folly of it, that this transcendent qualification of industry is looked upon only as an assistant fit for vulgar spirits, to which nature hath not been bountiful in the distribution of her store; as the refuge for dull and heavy men, who have neither their conceptions nor apprehensions within any distance, nor can arrive at any ordinary design without much labour and toil, and many unnecessary revolvings, which men of sharp and pregnant parts stand in no need of, whose rich fancy presents to them in a moment the view of all contingencies, and all that occurs to formal and elaborate men after all their sweat; that they view and survey and judge and execute, whilst the others are tormenting themselves with imaginations of difficulty, till all opportunities are lost; that it is an affront to the liberality of nature, and to the excellent qualities she hath bestowed upon them, to take pains to find what they have about them, and to doubt that which is most evident to them, because men who have more dim sights cannot discern so far as they: and by this haughty childishness they quickly deprive themselves of the plentiful supplies which nature hath given them, for want of nourishment and recruits. If diligent and industrious men raise themselves, with very ordinary assistance from nature, to a great and deserved height of reputation and honour, by their solid acquired wisdom and confessed judgment, what noble flights would such men make with equal industry who are likewise liberally endowed with the advantages of nature! And without that assistance, experience makes it manifest unto us, that those early buddings, how vigorous soever they appear, if they are neglected and uncultivated by serious labour, they wither and fade away without producing any thing that is notable. Tully's rule to his orator is as true in all conditions of life, "Quantum detraxit ex studio, tantum amisit ex gloriâ."

XVI. OF SICKNESS.

Montpellier, 1670.

"HEALTH and a good estate of body are above all gold, and a strong body above infinite wealth," says

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