I warrant he will make something of it, he would get meal even from a statue, nor is there any thing so mean and worthless, but he will reap some profit from it. But the adage was more usually applied to princes, and governors, exacting large tributes from poor, and almost desolate places, or obliging the inhabitants of their principal cities to pay such immense sums as to reduce the most wealthy and prosperous of them, to beggary. Of both these, we have now abundant instances in the conduct of Buonaparte and his myrmidons. It was also applied, Erasmus says, to covetous priests, «apud quos ne sepulchrum quidem gratis conceclitur», who extracted profit even from funerals; but these dues are now usually paid readily enough, either out of respect to the deceased, or from the consoling consideration that it will be the last cost the survivor will be put to on their account.

Ill luck is good for something. From a small evil, to extract a considerable advantage, is the property of a sound and prudent mind. It is next to profiting by the errors and mischances of others, to take warning by some check we may meet with in our progress, and thence to alter our course. El hombre mancebo, perdiendo gana seso, a young man by losing, gains knowledge. If persons, who are living more expensively than their income permits, would be wanted by the first difficulty or disgrace they suffer, and would institute modes of living more suitable to their circumstances, they would soon recover what by their improvidence they had wasted. But pride, a fear of shewing to their companions they are not so wealthy as they had boasted, or had appeared to be, prevents their following this salutary counsel, and they go on until their fall becomes inevitable. «Si quid feceris honestum cum labore, labor abit, honestum manet. Si quid feceris turpe cum voluptate, voluptas abit, turpitude manet» which may be thus rendered: if by labour and difficulty you have procured to yourself an advantage, the benefit will remain, when the labour with which it was acquired will be forgotten. But if in pursuit of pleasure you have degraded yourself, the disgrace will remain, while no traces of the pleasure will be retained in your memory.