they are often excited by trifles, they are equally disquieting 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 yet a 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 the 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.' "" To prize every thing according to its real use ought to be the aim of a rational being. There are few things which can much conduce to happiness, and, therefore, few things to be ardently desired. He that looks upon the business and bustle of the world with the philosophy with which Socrates surveyed the fair at Athens will turn away at last with his exclamation, "How many things are here which I do not want!" T. No. 120. SATURDAY, DEC. 29, 1753. -Ultima semper Expectanda dies homini, dicique beatus Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet. OVID. ADDISON. 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? 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 a 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 sanguinary success, from victories which con fer 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. But by him that examines 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 reached 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 those who, from a lower station look up to the pomp and gaiety 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 fictitious. There is in the world more poverty than is generally imagined; not only because many whose possession 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. A good man is by no means exempt from the danger of suffering by the crimes of others; even his goodness may raise him enemies of implacable malice and restless perseverance: the good man has never been warranted by Heaven from the treachery of friends, the disobedience of children, 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. 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 stone; at one time groaning with insufferable anguish, at another dissolved in listlessness and languor. 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 happen 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 VOL. III. P |