in company euer they are in feare. Alone they looke behinde them: in company they haue an eye on euery side of them. They drinke in gould and siluer; but in those, not in earth or glasse is poison prepared and dronke. They haue their beds soft and well made: when they lay them to sleepe you shall not heare a mouse stur in the chamber: not so much as a flie shall come neere their faces. Yet neuertheles, where the countreyman sleepes at the fall of a great riuer, at the noise of a market, hauing no other bed but the earth, nor couering but the heauens, these in the middest of all this silence and delicacie, do nothing but turne from side to side, it seemes still that they heare some body, there rest it selfe is without rest. Lastly, will you knowe what the diuersitie is betwene the most hardly intreated prisoners and them? both are inchained, both loaden with fetters, but that the one hath them of iron, the other of gould, and that the one is tied but by the body, the other by the mind. The prisoner drawes his fetters after him, the courtier weareth his vpon him. The prisoners minde sometimes comforts the paine of his body, and sings in the midst of his miseries: the courtier tormented in minde weerieth incessantly his body, and can neuer giue it rest. And as for the contentment you imagine they haue, you are therein yet more deceiued. You iudge and esteeme them great, because they are raised high: but as fondly, as who should iudge a dwarfe great, for being set on a tower, or on the top of a mountaine. You measure (so good a Geometrician you are) the image with his base, which were conuenient, to knowe his true height, to be measured by itselfe: whereas you regard not the height of the image, but the height of the place it stands vpon. You deeme them great (if in this earth there can be greatnes, which in respect of the whole heauens is but a point.) But could you enter into their mindes, you would iudge, that neither they are great, true greatnes consisting in contempt of those vaine greatnesses, wherevnto they are slaues: nor seeme vnto themselues so, seeing dayly they are aspiring higher, and neuer where they would be. Some one sets downe a bound in his minde. Could I attaine to such a degree, loe, I were content: I would then rest my selfe. Hath he attained it? he geues himselfe not so much as a breathing: he would yet ascend higher. That which is beneath he counts a toy: it is in his opinion but one step. He reputes himselfe lowe, because there is some one higher, in stead of reputing himselfe high, because there are a million lower. And so high he climes at last, that either his breath failes him by the way, or he slides from the top to the bottome. Or if he get vp by all his trauaile, it is but as to finde himselfe on the top of the Alpes: not aboue the cloudes, windes and stormes: but rather at the deuotion of lightnings, and tempests, and whatsoeuer else horrible, and dangerous is engendred, and conceiued in the aire: