V. I don’t mean to inculcate, that a judge should be fierce, unfeeling, and harsh; but that he should be firm, spirited, and a man of integrity. It is rare, but not impossible, for a man to possess a soul of wax for the duties of private life, and a mind of brass for the administration of public ones; although the heart may be susceptible of its tendernesses, the sacred castle of justice should be inaccessible to such feelings. It is said, that friendships may be permitted to approach even to the altar; but they should not be so much as suffered to enter the doors of the temple of Astrea. VI. I contemplate you, my Son, as having some advantageous dispositions for exercising this office; you are disinterested, an important quality in a judge; but that does not quiet my fears; for how can I be certain you will continue so in future? Disinterestedness, like beauty, is an endowment and ornament of youth, and rarely accompanies life in old age. I have read but of two women who preserved their beauty till seventy; the one was Diana of Poitiers, Dutchess of Valentine, who lived in the reign of Henry the IId. King of France; the other was Aspasia of Miletus, concubine of Cyrus King of Persia. I do not know whether you can reckon many more men, who left totally to their natural dispositions, without the invention or assistance of other helps, preserved their contempt for gold till they arrived at that age. The soul fades with the body, and the narrowness and contractions of avarice are its wrinkles. VII. The danger of people in exalted stations in the law, falling into this vice, is greater, because they are exposed to more frequent temptations. Elizabeth of England used to say, that the office of a Judge at his first elevation, seemed to fit on him like new cloaths, which appear tight and strait at the beginning, but after a little time they stretch and become easy and familiar. The same may be said of Judges in all other kingdoms. Many, who at first scruple to accept an apple, in the course of a few years, are capable of swallowing the whole orchard of the Hesperides; and you know the apples of that orchard were golden ones. The same thing happens to them that happens to rivulets, which rarely fall into, and are swallowed by the sea, with the scanty stock they contained in their first passages.