X. But how are we to know the hearts, and what passes in the breasts of persons in the one and the other state? Nothing is more easy. Nero erected a temple to Fortune, which he built with transparent stones, found in his days in Capadocia; so that from the outside, although the doors were shut, you could see all that passed within the temple. And nature has so made mankind, that from without, you may discern their good or bad interior situation, their looks for this purpose supplying the use of transparent stones, and their lips expressing their pleasures and vexations. Observe, says Seneca, (Epist. 80.) through the crystal of their countenances, the recesses of the bosoms of the rich and the poor: _compara inter se pauperum & divitum vultus_, and you will most frequently find the last more chearful than the first: _sæpius pauper, & fidelius ridet_. In this instance, he gives the preference to the condition of the poor; in other respects, he supposes the benefits of both stations to be equal: observe, says he, the greatest part of the poor people, and you will find, that they are in no respect more sad or oppressed than the rich: _primum aspice quanto major pars sit pauperum, quos nihilo notabis tristiores, solicitioresque divitibus_. (In consolat. ad Helviam.) XI. Saint Austin found great benefit, from a reflection he made, upon seeing a Mendicant Friar go through a village in the state of Milan, to all appearance quite chearful and happy. He compared his own fortune with that of the poor man, and found, that he was joyous, and himself oppressed; that he was free from apprehensions, and himself full of terrors: _Et certè ille lætabatur, ego anxius eram; securus ille, ego trepidus_; and from thence he concluded, the fortune of that Mendicant was much better than his own: _Nimirum quippe ille felicior erat._ (Confess. lib. 6. cap. 6.)