506 THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES

 

 

First, I told him, I had the absolute disposal of the lives and fortunes
of all my subjects; that notwithstanding my absolute power, I had
not one person disaffected to my government, or to my person, in all
my dominions. He shook his head at that, and said, there, indeed,
I outdid the Czar of Muscovy. I told him, that all the lands in my
kingdom were my own, and all my subjects were not only my tenants,
Lat tenants at will; that they would all fight for me to the last drop;
and that never tyrant, for such I acknowledged myself to be, was ever
so universally beloved, and yet so horribly feared, by his subjects.
After amusing them with these riddles in government for a while, I
opened the case, and told them the story at large of my living in the
island, and how I managed both myself and the people there that
were under me, just as I have since minuted it down. They were
exceedingly taken with the story, and especially the prince, who told
me with a sigh, that the true greatness of life was to be master of our-
selves,—that he would not have changed such a state of life as mine,
to have been Czar of Muscovy; and that he found more felicity in the
retirement he seemed to be banished to there, than ever he found in
the highest authority he enjoyed in the court of his master the Czar ;
that the height of human wisdom was to bring our tempers down to our
circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the
greatest storm without. When he came first hither, he said, he used
to tear the hair from his head, and the clothes from his back, as others
had done before him: but a little time and consideration had made him
look into himself, as well as round himself, to things without; that he
found.the mind of man, if it was but once brought to reflect upon the
state of universal life, and how little this world was concerned in its
true felicity, was perfectly capable of making a felicity for itself, fully
satisfying to itself, and suitable to its own best ends and desires, with
but very little assistance from the world; that air to breathe in, food
to sustain life, clothes for warmth, and liberty for exercise, in order to
health, completed, in his opinion, all that the world could do for us:
and though the greatness, the authority, the riches, and the pleasures
which some enjoyed in the world, and which he had enjoyed his share
of, had much in them that was agreeable to us, yet he observed, that
wll those things chiefly gratified the coarsest of our affections; such as
our ambition, our particular pride, our avarice, our vanity, and our
sensuality ; all which were, indeed, the mere product of the worst part
of man, were in themselves crimes, and had in them the seeds of all
manner of crimes; but neither were related to, or concerned with, any
of those virtues that constituted us wise men, or of those graces which
distinguished us ay Christians: that being now deprived of all the fan-