A SIBERIAN EXILE. 615

The Russian grandee looked a little surprised, and, fixing his eyes
steadily upon me, began to wonder what I meant.

I told him his wonder would cease when I had explained inyself.
First, I told him, I had’the absolute disposal of the lives and for-
tunes of all my subjects: that, notwithstanding my absolute power,
T had no 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, but tenants at will; that they would all fight for
me to the last drop; and that never tyrant, for such T acknowledged
myself to be, was ever s0 universally beloved, and yet so horribly
feared by his subjects.

After auusing 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 ourselves; that he would not have exchanged 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 first came 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 him 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