danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little
to be found. I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to
digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb
the natural propension that inclined me to it:

"Jure perhorrui
Lath conspicuum tollere verticem."

["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high."
--Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]

All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of
mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is
worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that
I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
temperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavoured
to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;

"Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"

["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age."
--Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]

and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
'tis in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness of
mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care
and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any
unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the
utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew