Sir Arthur Haselrigge is sayed to have used; or runne the fortune of somme others, whoe have shewed themselves more resolute. I hope my being here, will in a short time shewe that the place was not ill chosen, and that besides the liberty and quiet which is generally granted to all persons here, I may be admitted into that company, the knowledge of which will very well recompence my iourney. I was extreamely unwilling to stay in Hamburg or any place in Germany, finding myself too apt to fall too deepe into melancholy, if I have neither businesse nor company to divert me; and I have such an aversion to the conversation and entertainements of that country, that if I had stayed in it I must have lived as a her mite, though in a populous citty. I am here well enough at ease, and believe I may continue soe. Unlesse somme boddy from the court of England doth think it worth theire paines to disturb me, I see nothing likely to arise here to trouble me. I have already visited severall cardinalls. To morrowe I intend to pay the same respect to the cardinal Ghigi, nephew to the Pope. He hath already granted me

secure him in his life and estate, and doubted not to effect it. This being made known at a following conference by the House of Commons, was justified with great modesty by the Duke of Albemarle in the House of Peers, and his life was thereupon pardoned in the act; and a small time after his estate also was, at the mediation of the Duke, granted to his heir, a man averse to his father's disloyal principles, Sir Arthur himself a while after his imprisonment dying of a fever in the tower.

Bishop Kennet's hist. reg. p. 136.

the liberty of waiting upon him, which was signified unto me by an other eminent person of the same robe and degree. They are all generally civill, and I ask no more.'

His correspondence with his father during his stay at Rome, will be seen in the letters taken from the Sydney papers, now first added, with the letters to Mr. Savile and his tryal, to this edition.

Several of his friends having been importunate with him for his return to England, he wrote * the following letter; but the want of date makes the particular time of writing it uncertain,

'SIR,

"I AM Sorry I cannot in all things conform myself to the advices of my friends. If theirs had any joint concernment with mine, I should willingly submit my interest to theirs; but when I alone am interested, and they only advise me to come over as soon as the act of indemnity is passed, because they think it best for me, I cannot wholly lay aside my own judgment and choice. I confess, we are naturally inclined to delight in our own country, and I have a particular love to mine. I hope I have given some testimony of it. I think that being exiled from it is a great evil, and would redeem myself from it with the loss of a great deal of my blood. But when that country of mine, which used to be esteemed a paradise, is now like to be made a stage of injury; the

* Familiar letters of John, late Earl of Rochester, etc.

liberty which we hoped to establish, oppressed; luxury and lewdness set up in its height, instead of the piety, virtue, sobriety, and modesty, which we hoped God, by our hands, would have introduced; the best of our nation made a prey to the worst; the Parliament, court, and army, corrupted; the people enslaved; all things vendible; no man safe, but by such evil and infamous means, as flattery and bribery; what joy can I have in my own country in this condition? Is it a pleasure to see, that all I love in the world is sold and destroyed? Shall I renounce all my own principles, learn the vile court arts, and make my peace by bribing some of them? Shall their corruptions and vice be my safety? Ah! no; better is a life among strangers, than in my own country upon such conditions. Whilst I live, I will endeavour to preserve my liberty; or at least, not consent to the destroying of it. I hope I shall die in the same principles in which I have lived, and will live no longer than they can preserve me. I have in my life been guilty of many follies; but, as I think, of no meanness. I will not blot and defile that which is past, by endeavouring to provide for the future. I have ever had in my mind, that when God should cast me into such a condition, as that I cannot save my life but by doing an indecent thing, he shews me the time is come wherein I should resign it: and when I cannot live in my own country but by such means as are worse than dying in it, I think he shews me, I ought to keep myself out of it. Let them please themselves with making the king glorious, who think a whole people may justly be sacrificed for the

interest and pleasure of one man, and a few of his followers; let them rejoice in their subtilty, who by betraying the former powers, have gained the favour of this, not only preserved, but advanced themselves in these dangerous changes. Nevertheless, perhaps they may find, the king's glory is their shame; his plenty the people's misery; and that the gaining of an office or a little money, is a poor reward for destroying a nation, *which, if it were preserved in

(* Which, if it were preserved in liberty and virtue,) And now that I am fallen unawares into such profound reflections on the periods of government, and the flourishing and decay of liberty and letters; I cannot be contented to consider merely of the inchantment which wrought so powerfully upon mankind, when first this universal monarchy was established. I must wonder still more, when I consider how after the extinction of this Cesarian and Claudian family, and a short interval of princes raised and destroyed with much disorder and public ruin, the Romans should regain their perishing dominion and retrieve their sinking state, by an after race of wise and able princes successively adopted, and taken from a private state to rule the empire of the world. They were men who not only possessed the military virtues, and supported that sort of discipline in the highest degree; but as they sought the interest of the world, they did what was in their power to restore liberty,. and raise again the perishing arts, and decayed virtue of mankind. But the season was now past! The fatal form of government was become too natural; and the world, which had bent under it, and was become slavish and dependant, had neither power nor will to help itself. The only deliverance it could expect, was from the merciless hands of barbarians, and a total dissolution of that enormous empire and despotic power, which the best hands could not preserve from being destructive to human nature. For even barbarity and Gothicism were already entered into arts, e'er the savages had made any impression on

liberty and virtue, would truly be the most glorious in the world; and that others may find, they have with much pains purchased their own shame and misery, a dear price paid for that which is not worth

the empire. All the advantage which a fortuitous and almost miraculous succession of good princes could procure their highly favoured arts and sciences, was no more than to preserve, during their own time, those perishing remains which had for a while with difficulty subsisted, after the decline of liberty. Not a statue, not a medal, not a tolerable piece of architecture could shew itself afterwards. Philosophy, wit and learning, in which some of these good princes had themselves been so renowned, fell with them. And ignorance and darkness overspread the world, and fitted it for the chaos and ruin which ensued.

The Earl of Shaftsbury, in his " Advice to an Author."

From their railleries of this kind on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting, on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms. How Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance and poverty; enslaved to the most cruel, as well as the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and religious imposture. While this remote country, evidently the jest and contempt of the polite Romans, is become the happy seat of liberty, plenty, and letters; flourishing in all the arts and refinement of civil life; yet running, perhaps, the same course which Rome itself had run before it; from virtuous industry to wealth; from wealth to luxury; from luxury to an impatience of discipline and corruption of morals; till by a total degeneracy and loss of virtue, being grown ripe for destruction, it falls a prey at last to some hardy oppressor, and with the loss of liberty, losing every thing else that is valuable, sinks gradually again into its original barbarity.

Dr. Conyers Middleton, the excellent, in

his "Life of Cicero," vol. 1. p. 494.