absolute power of the Emperor of the Russians: I interrupted him,
and told him I was a greater and more powerful prince than ever the
Czar was, though my dominion were not so large, or my people so
many. The Russian grandee looked a little surprised, and, fixing
his eyes steadily upon me, began to wonder what I meant. I said
his wonder would cease when I had explained myself, and told him
the story at large of my living in the island; and then how I
managed both myself and the people that were under me, just as I
have since minuted it down. They were exceedingly taken with the
story, and especially the prince, who told me, with a sigh, that
the true greatness of life was to be masters of ourselves; that he
would not have exchanged such a state of life as mine to be Czar of
Muscovy; and that he found more felicity in the retirement he
seemed to be banished to there, than ever he found in the highest
authority he enjoyed in the court of his master the Czar; that the
height of human wisdom was to bring our tempers down to our
circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the
greatest storms without. When he came first hither, he said, he
used to tear the hair from his head, and the clothes from his back,
as others had done before him; but a little time and consideration
had made him look into himself, as well as round him to things
without; that he found the mind of man, if it was but once brought
to reflect upon the state of universal life, and how little this
world was concerned in its true felicity, was perfectly capable of
making a felicity for itself, fully satisfying to itself, and
suitable to its own best ends and desires, with but very little
assistance from the world. That being now deprived of all the
fancied felicity which he enjoyed in the full exercise of worldly
pleasures, he said he was at leisure to look upon the dark side of
them, where he found all manner of deformity; and was now convinced
that virtue only makes a man truly wise, rich, and great, and
preserves him in the way to a superior happiness in a future state;
and in this, he said, they were more happy in their banishment than
all their enemies were, who had the full possession of all the
wealth and power they had left behind them. “Nor, sir,” says he,
“do I bring my mind to this politically, from the necessity of my
circumstances, which some call miserable; but, if I know anything
of myself, I would not now go back, though the Czar my master
should call me, and reinstate me in all my former grandeur.”
He spoke this with so much warmth in his temper, so much
earnestness and motion of his spirits, that it was evident it was
the true sense of his soul; there was no room to doubt his
sincerity. I told him I once thought myself a kind of monarch in
my old station, of which I had given him an account; but that I
thought he was not only a monarch, but a great conqueror; for he
that had got a victory over his own exorbitant desires, and the
absolute dominion over himself, he whose reason entirely governs
his will, is certainly greater than he that conquers a city.
I had been here eight months, and a dark, dreadful winter I thought
it; the cold so intense that I could not so much as look abroad
without being wrapped in furs, and a kind of mask of fur before my
face, with only a hole for breath, and two for sight: the little
daylight we had was for three months not above five hours a day,
and six at most; only that the snow lying on the ground
continually, and the weather being clear, it was never quite dark.
Our horses were kept, or rather starved, underground; and as for
our servants, whom we hired here to look after ourselves and
horses, we had, every now and then, their fingers and toes to thaw