On Monday evening we left Darien, and on Wednesday 5 Jan 1736, came to Frederica. Most here were, as we expected, cold and heartless: we found not one who retained his first love. O send forth thy light and thy truth, that they may guide them! Let them not yet follow their own imaginations!
After having ‘beaten the air’ in this unhappy place for twenty days, on January 26, I took my final leave of Frederica. It was not any apprehension of my own danger (though my life had been threatened many times) but an utter despair of doing good there, which made me content with the thought of seeing it no more.
In my passage home, having procured a celebrated book, the Works of Nicholas Machiavelli, I set myself carefully to read and consider it. I began with a prejudice in his favour, having been informed he had often been misunderstood, and greatly misrepresented. I weighed the sentiments that were less common, transcribed the passages wherein they were contained, compared one passage with another, and endeavoured to form a cool, impartial judgment. And my cool judgment is, that if all the other doctrines of devils which have been committed to writing since letters were in the world were collected together in one volume, it would fall short of this; and that should a prince form himself by this book, so calmly recommending hypocrisy, treachery, lying, robbery, oppression, adultery, whoredom, and murder of all kinds, Domitian or Nero would be an angel of light compared to that man.
CPAesthetics @Faces&Smiles and @77 Newmarket Road Norwich: Moving away from simply correcting the signs of ageing to the management of the entire ageing process
