An image should appear at this position in the text. To use the entire page scan as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|The works of Monsieur de St. Evremond (1728) Vol. 2.pdf/63}}". Otherwise, if you are able to provide the image then please do so. For guidance, see Wikisource:Image guidelines and Help:Adding images. |  |
TO THE
MARESCHAL DE CREQUI
WHEN we are young, the popular Opinion sways us, and we are more solicitous to gain the esteem of others than of our selves. But when arriv'd to old Age, we are apt to have a less value for foreign things; and are most taken up with our selves, when we are ready to be wanting to our selves. It is with Life as with our other Possessions: all is wasted when we think our stock greatest; and we are seldom frugal, but when there remains little to be managed. Hence we see young men squander (as it were) their being, in which they think they have a long term of years to come: but we become more dear to our selves, as we are nearest losing our selves. Heretofore my roving, wandring fancy, rambled after all manner of foreign objects: at present my mind contracts it self to the body, and unites more straitly with it: not, indeed, out of any sense of pleasure from such an alliance, but out of necessity of the mutual succour and assistance, which they endeavour to afford one another.
In this languishing condition, I yet retain some Pleasures; but I have lost all sense of Vice, without knowing whether this change be owing to the in-
