If we view past ages in the reflection of history what do they offer to our meditation but crimes and calamities? One year is distinguished by a famine, another by an earthquake: kingdoms are made desolate, sometimes by wars, and sometimes by pestilence; the peace of the world is interrupted at one time by the caprices of a tyrant, at another by the rage of the conqueror, The memory is stored only with vicissitudes of evil; and the happiness, such as it is, of one part of mankind, is found to arise commonly from upon them the power, not so much of improving life by any new enjoyment, as of inflicting misery on others, and gratifying their own pride by comparative greatness. we believe ourselves to want, torments us not in proportion to its real value, but according to the estimation by which we have rated it in our own minds; in some diseases, the patient has been observed to long for food, which scarce any extremity of hunger would in health have compelled him to swallow; but while his organs were thus depraved, the craving was irresistible, nor could any rest be obtained till it was appeased by compliance. Of the same nature are the irregular appetites of the mind: though they are often excited by trifles, they are equally dis-sanguinary success, from victories which confer quieting with real wants; the Roman, who wept at the death of his lamprey, felt the same degree of sorrow that extorts tears on other occasions. Inordinate desires, of whatever kind, ought to be repressed upon a yet higher consideration; they must be considered as enemies not only to happiness but to virtue. There are men, among those commonly reckoned the learned and the wise, who spare no stratagems to remove a competitor at an auction, who will sink the price of a rarity at the expense of truth, and whom it is not safe to trust alone in a library or cabinet. These are faults, which the fraternity seem to look upon as jocular mischiefs, or to think excused by the violence of temptation: but I shall always fear that he who accustoms himself to fraud in little things, wants only opportunity to practise it in greater; "he that has hardened himself by killing a sheep," says Pythagoras, "will with less reluctance shed the blood of a man." THE numerous miseries of human life have extorted in all ages a universal complaint. The wisest of men terminated all his experiments in search of happiness, by the mournful confession, that "all is vanity," and the ancient patriarchs lamented, that "the days of their pilgrimage were few and evil." There is, indeed, no topic on which it is more superfluous to accumulate authorities, nor any assertion of which our own eyes will more easily discover, or our sensations more frequently impress the truth, than, that misery is the lot of man, that our present state is a state of danger and infelicity. When we take the most distant prospect of life, what does it present us but a chaos of unhappiness, a confused and tumultuous scene of labour and contest, disappointment and defeat? But by him that examined life with a more close attention, the happiness of the world will be found still less than it appears. In some intervals of public prosperity, or to use terms more proper, in some intermissions of calamity, a general diffusion of happiness may seem to overspread a people; all is triumph and exultation, jollity and plenty; there are no public fears and dangers, and no complainings in the streets." But the condition of individuals is very little mended by this general calm; pain and malice and discontent still continue their havoc; the silent depredation goes incessantly forward; and the grave continues to be filled by the victims of sorrow. He that enters a gay assembly, beholds the cheerfulness displayed in every countenance, and finds all sitting vacant and disengaged, with no other attention than to give or receive pleasure, would naturally imagine that he had reach ed at last the metropolis of felicity, the place sacred to gladness of heart, from whence all fear and anxiety were irreversibly excluded. Such, indeed, we may often find to be the opinion of these, who from a lower station look up to the pomp and gayety which they cannot reach; but who is there of those who frequent these luxurious assemblies, that will not confess his own uneasiness, or cannot recount the vexations and distresses that prey upon the lives of his gay companions? The world, in its best state, is nothing more than a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel, employing every art and contrivance to embellish life, and to hide their real condition from the eyes of one another. The species of happiness most obvious to the observation of others, is that which depends upon the goods of fortune; yet even this is often ficti tious. There is in the world more poverty than is generally imagined; not only because many whose possessions are large have desires still larger, and many measure their wants by the gratifications which others enjoy: but great numbers are pressed by real necessities which it is their chief ambition to conceal, and are forced to purchase the appearance of competence and cheerfulness at the expense of many comforts and conveniences of life. Many, however, are confessedly rich, and many more are sufficiently removed from all danger of real poverty: but it has been long ago remarked, that money cannot purchase quiet; the highest of mankind can promise themselves no exemption from that discord or suspicion, by which the sweetness of domestic retirement is destroyed; and must always be even more exposed, in the same degree as they are elevated above others, to the treachery of dependents, the calumny of defamers, and the violence of opponents. Affliction is inseparable from our present state; it adheres to all the inhabitants of this world, in different proportions indeed, but with an allotment which seems very little regulated by our own conduct. It has been the boast of some swelling moralists, that every man's fortune was in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But, surely, the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows, against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain: we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected by our innocence. be filled, and none shall be wretched but by his own fault. In the mean time, it is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed upon a better state. Prosperity, allayed and imperfect as it is, has power to intoxicate the imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honours forget the hand by which they were bestowed. It is seldom that we are otherwise, than by affliction, awakened to a sense of our own imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can conduce to safety or to quiet; and how justly we may ascribe to the superintendence of a higher Power, those blessings which in the wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of our policy or courage. Nothing confers so much ability to resist the temptations that perpetually surround us, as an habitual consideration of the shortness of life, A good man is by no means exempt from the and the uncertainty of those pleasures that sodanger of suffering by the crimes of others; even licit our pursuit; and this consideration can be his goodness may raise him enemies of implaca- inculcated only by affliction. "O Death! how ble malice and restless perseverance: the good bitter is the remembrance of thee, to a man that man has never been warranted by Heaven from lives at ease in his possessions!" If our present the treachery of friends, the disobedience of chil-state were one continued succession of delights, dren, or the dishonesty of a wife; he may see his cares made useless by profusion, his instructions defeated by perverseness, and his kindness rejected by ingratitude: he may languish under the infamy of false accusations, or perish reproachfully by an unjust sentence. or one uniform flow of calmness and tranquillity, we should never willingly think upon its end death would then surely surprise us as "a thief in the night;" and our task of duty would remain unfinished, till "the night came when no man can work." A good man is subject, like other mortals, to all the influences of natural evil; his harvest is not spared by the tempest, nor his cattle by the murrain; his house flames like others in a conflagration; nor have his ships any peculiar power of resisting hurricanes: his mind, however elevated, inhabits a body subject to innumerable casualties, of which he must always share the dangers and the pains; he bears about him the seeds of disease, and may linger away a great part of his life under the tortures of the gout or No. 126.] SATURDAY, JAN. 19, 1754. stone; at one time groaning with insufferable anguish, at another dissolved in listlessness and languor. While affliction thus prepares us for felicity, we may console ourselves under its pressures, by remembering, that they are no particular marks of divine displeasure: since all the distresses of persecution have been suffered by those "of whom the world was not worthy ;" and the Redeemer of mankind himself was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief!" From this general and indiscriminate distribution of misery, the moralists have always derived one of their strongest moral arguments for a future state; for since the common events of the present life happey alike to the good and bad, it follows from the justice of the Supreme Being, that there must be another state of existence, in which a just retribution shall be made, and every man shall be happy and miserable according to his works. The miseries of life may, perhaps, afford some proof of a future state, compared as well with the mercy as the justice of God. It is scarcely to be in.agined that Infinite Benevolence would create a being capable of enjoying so much more than is here to be enjoyed, and qualified by nature to prolong pain by remembrance, and anticipate it by terror, if he was not designed for something nobler and better than a state, in which many of his faculties can serve only for his torment: in which he is to be importuned by desires that never can be satisfied, to feel many evils which he had no power to avoid, and to fear many which he shall never feel: there will surely come a time, when every capacity of happiness shall Steriles nec legit arenas Ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum. Canst thou believe the vast eternal Mind THERE has always prevailed among that part of propensity to talk much of the delights of retirement: and some of the most pleasing compositions produced in every age contain descriptions of the peace and happiness of a country life. I know not whether those who thus ambitiously repeat the praises of solitude, have always considered, how much they depreciate mankind by declaring, that whatever is excellent or desirable is to be obtained by departing from them; that the assistance which we may derive from one another, is not equivalent to the evils which we have to fear; that the kindness of a few is overbalanced by the malice of many; and that the protection of society is too dearly purchased by encountering its dangers and enduring its oppressions. These specious representations of solitary happiness, however opprobrious to human nature, have so far spread their influence over the world, that almost every man delights his imagination with the hopes of obtaining some time an opportunity of retreat. Many, indeed, who enjoy retreat only in imagination, content themselves 'with believing, that another year will transport them to rural tranquillity, and die while they talk of doing what, if they had lived longer, they would never have done. But many likewise there are, either of greater resolution or more credulity, who in earnest try the state which they have been taught to think thus secure from cares and dangers; and retire to privacy, either that they may improve their happiness, increase their knowledge, or exalt their virtue. The greater part of the admirers of solitude, as of all other classes of mankind, have no higher or remoter view, than the present gratification of their passions. Of these, some, haughty and impetuous, fly from society only because they cannot bear to repay to others the regard which themselves exact; and think no state of life eligible, but that which places them out of the reach of censure or control, and affords them opportunities of living in a perpetual compliance with their own inclinations, without the necessity of regulating their actions by any other man's convenience or opinion. portance, who having known nothing can find no entertainment in reviewing the past, and who intending nothing can form no hopes from pros pects of the future? He can, surely, take no wiser course than that of losing himself again in the crowd, and filling the vacuities of his mind with the news of the day. Others consider solitude as the parent of phi losophy, and retire in expectation of greater intimacies with science, as Numa_repaired to the groves when he conferred with Egeria. These men have not always. reason to repent. Some studies require a continued prosecution of the same train of thought, such as is too often inter rupted by the petty avocations of common life. sometimes, likewise, it is necessary, that a mul tiplicity of objects be at once present to the mind; and every thing, therefore, must be kept at a distance, which may perplex the memory, or dissipate the attention. But though learning may be conferred by soli tude, its application must be attained by general converse. He has learned to no purpose, that is not able to teach; and he will always teach unsuccessfully, who cannot recommend his sentiments by his diction or address. Even the acquisition of knowledge is often much facilitated by the advantages of society: he that never compares his notions with those of others readily acquiesces in his first thoughts, There are others, of minds more delicate and and very seldom discovers the objections which tender, easily offended by every deviation from may be raised against his opinions: he, therefore, rectitude, soon disgusted by ignorance or imper- often thinks himself in possession of truth, when tinence, and always expecting from the conver- he is only fondling an error long since exploded. sation of mankind more elegance, purity, and He that has neither companions nor rivals in his truth, than the mingled mass of life will easily studies, will always applaud his own progress, afford. Such men are in haste to retire from and think highly of his performances, because grossness, falsehood, and brutality; and hope to he knows not that others have equalled or excellfind in private habitations at least a negative feed him. And I am afraid it may be added, that licity, an exemption from the shocks and perturbations with which public scenes are continually distressing them. To neither of these votaries will solitude afford that content, which she has been taught so lavishly to promise. The man of arrogance will quickly discover, that by escaping from his opponents he has lost his flatterers, that greatness is nothing where it is not seen, and power nothing where it cannot be felt: and he whose faculties are employed in too close an observation of failings and defects, will find his condition very little mended by transferring his attention from others to himself: he will probably soon come back in quest of new objects, and be glad to keep his captiousness employed on any character rather than his own. Others are seduced into solitude merely by the authority of great names, and expect to find those charms in tranquillity which have allured statesmen and conquerors to the shades: these likewise are apt to wonder at their disappointment, for want of considering, that those whom they aspire to imitate, carried with them to their country seats minds full fraught with subjects of reflection, the consciousness of great merit, the memory of illustrious actions, the knowledge of important events, and the seeds of mighty designs to be ripened by future meditation Solitude was to such men a release from fatigue, and an opportunity of usefulness. But what can reLrement confer upon him, who having done nothing, can receive no support from his own im the student who withdraws himself from the world, will soon feel that ardour extinguished which praise and emulation had enkindled, and take the advantage of secrecy to sleep, rather than to labour. There remains yet another set of recluses, whose intention entitles them to higher respect, and whose motives deserve a more serious consi deration. These retire from the world, not merely to bask in ease or gratify curiosity; but that being disengaged from common cares, they may employ more time in the duties of religion: that they may regulate their actions with stricter vigilance, and purify their thoughts by more fre quent meditation. To men thus elevated above the mists of mortality, I am far from presuming myself qualified to give directions. On him that appears "to pass through things temporary," with no other care than "not to lose finally the things eternal," I look with such veneration as inclines me to approve his conduct in the whole, without a minute examination of its parts; yet I could never for bear to wish, that while vice is every day multiplying seducements, and stalking forth with more hardened effrontery, virtue would not withdraw the influence of her presence, or forbear to assert her natural dignity by open and undaunted per severance in the right. Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the deserts, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men ; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and nowever free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence. idle; we see things coveted merely because they are rare, and pursued because they are fugitive; we see men conspire to fix an arbitrary value Our Maker, who though he gave us such va- on that which is worthless in itself, and then conrieties of temper and such difference of powers, tend for the possession.. One is a collector of yet designed us all for happiness, undoubtedly fossils, of which he knows no other use than to ntended, that we should obtain that happiness show them; and when he has stocked his own by different means. Some are unable to resist repository, grieves that the stones which he has she temptations of importunity, or the impetuosi- left behind him should be picked up by another. ty of their own passions incited by the force of The florist nurses a tulip, and repines that his present temptations: of these it is undoubtedly rival's beds enjoy the same showers and sunshine the duty to fly from enemies which they cannot with his own. This man is hurrying to a conconquer, and to cultivate, in the calm of solitude, cert, only lest others should have heard the new that virtue which is too tender to endure the tem- musician before him; another bursts from his pest of public life. But there are others, whose company to the play, because he fancies himself passions grow more strong and irregular in pri- the patron of an actress; some spend the mornvacy; and who cannot maintain a uniform te-ing in consultations with their tailor, and some nour of virtue, but by exposing their manners to in directions to their cook; some are forming the public eye, and assisting the admonitions of parties for cards, and some laying wagers at å conscience with the fear of infamy: for such, it is horse-race. dangerous to exclude all witnesses of their conduct till they have formed strong habits of virtue, and weakened their passions by frequent victories. But there is a higher order of men so inspired with ardour, and so fortified with resolution, that the world passes before them without influence or regard these ought to consider themselves as appointed the guardians of mankind: they are placed in an evil world, to exhibit public examples of good life: and may be said, when they withdraw to solitude, to desert the station which Providence assigned them. When in a wood we leave the certain way, Ir is common among all the classes of mankind, A man who considers the paucity of the wants of nature, and who, being acquainted with the various means by which all manual occupations are now facilitated, observes what numbers are supported by the labour of a few, would, indeed, be inclined to wonder, how the multitudes who are exempted from the necessity of working either for themselves or others, find business to fill up the vacuities of life. The greater part of mankind neither card the fleece, dig the mine, fell the wood, nor gather in the harvest; they neither tend herds nor build houses; in what then are they employed? It cannot, I think, be denied, that some of these lives are passed in trifles, in occupations by which the busy neither benefit themselves nor others, and by which no man could be long engaged, who seriously considered what he was doing, or had knowledge enough to compare what he is with what he might be made. However, as people who have the same inclination generally flock together, every trifler is kept in countenance by the sight of others as unprofitably active as himself; by kindling the heat of competition, he in time thinks himself important, and by having his mind intensely engaged, he is sccured from weariness of himself. Some degree of self approbation is always the reward of diligence; and I cannot, therefore, but consider the laborious cultivation of petty pleasures, as a more happy and more virtuous disposition, than that universal contempt and haughty negligence, which is sometimes associated with powerful faculties, but is often assumed by indolence when it disowns its name, and aspires to the appellation of greatness of mind. It has been long observed, that drollery and ridicule is the most easy kind of wit: let it be added, that contempt and arrogance is the easiest philosophy. To find some objection to every thing, and to dissolve in perpetual laziness under pretence that occasions are wanting to call forth activity, to laugh at those who are ridiculously busy without setting an example of more rational industry, is no less in the power of the meanest than of the highest intellects. Our present state has placed us at once in such different relations, that every human employ ment, which is not a visible and immediate act of goodness, will be in some respect or other subject to contempt: but it is true, likewise, that almost every act, which is not directly vi cious, is in some respect beneficial and laudable. "I often," says Bruyere, "observe from my This is certainly a question, which a distant window, two beings of erect form and amiable prospect of the world will not enable us to an- countenance, endowed with the powers of reaswer. We find all ranks and ages mingled to- son, able to clothe their thoughts in language, gether in a tumultuous confusion, with haste in and convey their notions to each other. They their motions, and eagerness in their looks; but rise early in the morning, and are every day what they have to pursue or avoid, a more mi-employed till sunset in rubbing two smooth nute observation must inform us. stones together, or, in other terms, in polishing marble." When we analyze the crowd into individuals, it soon appears that the passions and imaginasions of men will not easily suffer them to be "If lions could paint," says the fable, "in the room of those pictures which exhibit men van man of sedentary desire and unactive ambition sits comparing his power with his wishes; and makes his inability to perform things impossible, an excuse to himself for performing nothing. Man can only form a just estimate of his own actions, by making his power the test of his performance, by comparing what he does with what he can do. Whoever steadily perseveres in the exertion of all his faculties, does what is great with respect to himself; and what will not be despised by Him, who has given to all created beings ther different abilities: he faithfully performs the task of life, within whatever limits his labours may be confined, or how soon soever they may be for gotten. quishing lions, we should see lions feeding upon | or miserable as he succeeds or miscarries: the men." If the stone-cutter could have written like Bruyere, what would he have replied? "I look up," says he, "every day from my shop upon a man whom the idlers, who stand still to gaze upon my work, often celebrate as a wit and a philosopher. I often perceive his face clouded with care, and am told that his taper is sometimes burning at midnight. The sight of a man who works so much harder than myself, excited my curiosity. I heard no sound of tools in his apartment, and, therefore, could not imagine what he was doing; but was told at last, that he was writing descriptions of mankind, who when he had described them would live just as they had lived before; that he sat up whole nights to change a sentence, because the sound of a letter was too often repeated: that he was often disquieted with doubts, about the propriety of a word which every body understood; that he would hesitate between two expressions equally proper, till he could not fix his choice but by consulting his friends; that he will run from one end of Paris to the other, for an opportunity of reading a period to a nice ear; that if a single line is heard with coldness and inattention, he returns home dejected and disconsolate; and that by all this care and labour, he hopes only to make a little book, which at last will teach no useful art, and which none who has it not will perceive himself to want. I have often wondered for what end such a being as this was sent into the world; and should be glad to see those who live thus foolishly, seized by an order of the government, and obliged to labour at some useful occupation." Thus, by a partial and imperfect representation, may every thing be made equally ridiculous. He that gazed with contempt on human beings rubbing stones together, might have prolonged the same amusement by walking through the city, and seeing others with looks of importance heaping one brick upon another; or by rambling into the country, where he might observe other creatures of the same kind driving in pieces of sharp iron into the clay, or, in the language of men less enlightened, ploughing the field. We can conceive so much more than we can accomplish, that whoever tries his own actions by his imagination, may appear despicable in his own eyes. He that despises for its littleness any thing really useful, has no pretensions to appland the grandeur of his conceptions; since nothing but narrowness of mind hinders him from seeing, that by pursuing the same principles every thing limited will appear contemptible. He that neglects the care of his family, while his benevolence expands itself in scheming the happiness of imaginary kingdoms, might with equal reason sit on a throne dreaming of universal empire, and of the diffusion of blessings over all the globe: yet even this globe is little, compared with the system of matter within our view; and that system barely something more than nonentity, compared with the boundless regions of space, to which neither eye nor imagination can extend. From conceptions, therefore, of what we might have been, and from wishes to be what we are not, conceptions that we know to be foolish, and wishes which we feel to be vain, we must necessarily descend to the consideration of what we are. We have powers very scanty in their utmost extent, but which in different men are differently proportioned. Suitably to these powers we have duties prescribed, which we must neither decline for the sake of delighting ourselves with easier amusements, nor overlook in idle contemplation of greater excellence or more extensive comprehension. As it is thus easy by a detail of minute circumstances to make every thing little, so it is not difficult by an aggregation of effects to make every thing great. The polisher of marble may be forming ornaments for the palaces of virtue, and the schools of science: or providing tables on which the actions of heroes and the discoveries of sages shall be recorded, for the incitement and instruction of future generations. The mason is exercising one of the principal arts by which reasoning beings are distinguished from the brute, the art to which life owes much of its safety and all its convenience, by which we are secured from the inclemency of the seasons, and fortified against the ravages of hostility; and the ploughman is changing the face of nature, dif- No. 131.] TUESDAY, Feb. 5, 1754. fusing plenty and happiness over kingdoms, and compelling the earth to give food to her inhabitants, In order to the right conduct of our lives, we must remember that we are not born to please ourselves. He that studies simply his own satisfaction, will always find the proper business of his station too hard or to easy for him. But if we bear continually in mind, our relation to The Father of Being, by whom we are placed in the world, and who has allotted us the part which we are to bear in the general system of life, we shall be easily persuaded to resign our own inclinations to Unerring Wisdom, and do the work decreed for us with cheerfulness and diligence. JUVENAL Misce Greatness and littleness are terms merely comparative; and we err in our estimation of things, because we measure them by some wrong standard. The trifler proposes to himself only to FONTENELLE, in his panegyric on Sir Isaac New equal or excel some other trifler, and is happy ton, closes a long enumeration of that great phi |