Some writers in casting up the goods most desirable in life have given them this rank: health, beauty, and riches. Of the first I find no dispute, but to the two others much may be said: for beauty is a good when it makes others happy rather than one’s self; and, how riches should claim so high a rank, I just cannot tell, when so great, so wise, and so good a part of mankind have in all ages preferred poverty before them. When I was young and in some idle company, it was proposed that every one should tell what their three wishes should be, if they were sure to be granted. Some were very pleasant, and some very extravagant; mine were health, and peace and fair weather; which, though out of the way among young men, yet perhaps might pass well enough among old. They are all of a strain, for health in the body is like peace in the State and serenity in the air. Peace is a public blessing, without which no man is safe in his fortunes, his liberty, or his life; neither innocence nor law are a guard of defence; no possessions are enjoyed but in danger on fear, which equally lose the pleasure and ease of all that fortune can give us. Health is the soul that animates all enjoyments of life, which fade an dare tasteless, if no dead, without it. A man starves ate the best and the greatest tables, makes faces at the noblest and the most delicate wines, beauties, poor and wretched in the midst of the greatest treasures fortunes; with common diseases strength grows decrepit, youth loses all vigour, and beauty all charms; music grow harsh, and conversation disagreeabale; palaces are prisons, or of equal confinement, riches are useless, honour and attendance are cumbersome, and crown themselves are burden. But, if diseases are painful and violent, they equal all conditions of life, make no difference between a Prince and a beggar, and a fit of the colic puts a king to the rack, and makes him as miserable as it does the meanest of his subjects.