Even Corsica had often changed its owners; Greeks
from Marseilles had first lived there, then Ligurians and Spaniards,
then some Roman colonists, whom the aridity and thorniness of the rock
had not kept away.
"Varro thought that nature, Brutus that the consciousness of virtue,
were sufficient consolations for any exile. How little have I lost in
comparison with those two fairest possessions which I shall everywhere
enjoy--nature and my own integrity! Whoever or whatever made the
world--whether it were a deity, or disembodied reason, or a divine
interfusing spirit, or destiny, or an immutable series of connected
causes--the result was that nothing, except our very meanest
possessions, should depend on the will of another. Man's best gifts lie
beyond the power of man either to give or to take away. This Universe,
the grandest and loveliest work of nature, and the Intellect which was
created to observe and to admire it, are our special and eternal
possessions, which shall last as long as we last ourselves. Cheerful,
therefore, and erect, let us hasten with undaunted footsteps
whithersoever our fortunes lead us.
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