Gazette Of The United States

FOR THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES.

DISCOURSES ON DAVILA.-NO. XII.

Order is Heav'ns first law—and this confess'd,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest:
More rich, more wise. But who infers from hence,
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.

THE world is sensible of the necessity of supporting their favourites under the first onsets of misfortune—lest the fall should be dreadful and irrecoverable—for according to the great Master of Nature,

'Tis certain greatness, once fallen out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too: What the declin'd is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
As feel in his own fall: For men, like butterflies,
Shew not their mealy wings but to the summer;
And not a man for being simply man,
Hath any honor; but's honor'd for those honors
That are without him, as place, riches, favor,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit.
Mankind are so sensible of these things, that by a kind of instinct or intuition, they generally follow the advice of the same author.
Take the instant way
For honor travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast: Keep then the path,
For Emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue: if you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right,
Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;
Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O'errun and trampled on.
The inference from all the contemplations and experiments which have been made, by all nations, upon these dispositions to imitation, emulation, and rivalry, is expressed by the same great teacher of morality and politics.
Degree being vizarded,
Th' unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.
The Heavens themselves, the Planets and this center,
Observe degree, priority and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol,
In noble eminence, enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the others; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts, like the commandment of a King
Sans check, to good and bad; but when the planets
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! Shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,
The unity and married calm of states,
Quite from their fixture? O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprize is sick! how could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
The primogeniture and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away; untune that string
And hark! what discord follows! each thing meets
In meer oppugnancy: the bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms, higher than the shores,
And make a sop, of all this solid globe:
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead:
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong
Should loose their names, and so should justice too.
Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite an universal wolf,
Must make per force an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
This chaos, when degree is suffocate
Follows the choking,
The General's disdain'd.
By him one step below; he by the next;
That next by him beneath: so every step
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation.
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.
Most wisely hath Ulysses here discovered
The Fever, whereof all our power is sick.