8 THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS 



the end of his wars with Spain. Thus the present 

 King of Morocco, after having subdued all his com- 

 petitors, passes his life in a country villa, gives audience 

 in a grove of orange-trees planted among purling 

 streams. And thus the King of France, after all the 

 successes of his councils or arms, and in the mighty 

 elevation of his present greatness and power, when 

 he gives himself leisure from such designs or pursuits, 

 passes the softer and easier parts of his time in country 

 houses and gardens, in building, planting, or adorning 

 the scenes, or in the common sports and entertainments 

 of such kind of lives. And those mighty emperors, 

 who contented not themselves with these pleasures 

 of common humanity, fell into the frantic or the 

 extravagant ; they pretended to be gods, or turned to 

 be devils, as Caligula and Nero, and too many others 

 known enough in story. 



Whilst mankind is thus generally busied or amused, 

 that part of them, who have had either the justice or 

 the luck to pass in common opinion for the wisest 

 and the best part among them, have followed another 

 and very different scent ; and instead of the common 

 designs of satisfying their appetites and their passions, 

 and making endless provisions for both, they have 

 chosen what they thought a nearer and surer way to the 



