["Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened, there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the influence of fear."--Lucretius, iii. 155.] he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice: "Humani a se nihil alienum putet." ["Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to men in general."--Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.] The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their greatest heroes of tears: "Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas." ["Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet." --Aeneid, vi. i.] 'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for totally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other passion.--[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c. 3.] --All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister interpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what is above than with what is below it. Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of scornful superiority--[The Stoics.]--: but when even in that sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of Metrodorus: "Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;" ["Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the avenues so sure thou canst not come at me." --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]