All natural, and almost all political evils, are incident alike to the bad or good. They are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much distinguished in the fury of a faction. They sink together in a tempest, and are driven together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a steady prospect of a happier state, which will enable us to endure every calamity with patience. Prince of Abyssinia.

Whatever be the cause of happiness may be made likewise the cause of misery. The medicine which, rightly applied, has power to cure, has, when rashness or ignorance prescribes it, the same power to destroy. Dissertation on Authors.

It has been observed in all ages, that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, has placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station: whether it be, that apparent superiority incites great des gns, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal

miscarriages, or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more faithfully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have, in reality, been only more conspicuous than those of others more frequent or more severe. Life of Savage.

Domestic Happiness.

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate-those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels, in privacy, to be useful encumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition; the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution. It is indeed at home that every man must be known, by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional,

and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour, and fictitious benevolence. Rambler, vol. 2.

The highest panegyric that domestic virtue can receive is the praise of servants; for however vanity or insolence may look down with contempt on the suffrage of men undignified by wealth, and unenlightened by education, it very seldom happens that they commend or blame without justice.

Hope.

Ibid.

The understanding of a man, naturally sanguine, may be easily vitiated by the luxurious indulgence of hope, however necessary to the production of every thing great or excellent, as some plants are destroyed by too open an exposure to that sun, which gives life and beauty to the vegetable world.

Ibid. vol. 1.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing⚫

or that life, when the gifts of nature and fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall be at last satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent Yet hope is very fallacious, and promises what it seldom gives; but its promises are more valuable than the gifts of fortune, and it seldom frustrates us without assuring us of recompensing the delay by a great bounty. Rambler, vol. 2.

Health.

Health is so necessary to all the duties of life, as well as the pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly; and he that, for a short gratification, brings weakness and diseases upon himself, and, for the pleasure of a few years passed in the tumults of diversion and clamours of merriment, condemns the maturer and more experienced part of his life to the chamber and the couch, may be justly reproached, not only as a spendthrift of his own happiness, but as a robber of the public; as a wretch that has voluntarily disqualified himself for the business of his station, and refused that part which Provi

dence assigns him in the general task of

human nature.

History.

Rambler, vol. 1.

Those familiar histories, which draw the portraits of living manners, may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power of example is so great as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will, care ought to be taken, that, when the choice is unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited, and that which is likely to operate so strongly should not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects.

Good Humour.

Ibid

Surely nothing can be more unreasonable than to lose the will to please, when we are conscious of the power, or show more cruelty than to choose any kind of influence before that of kindness and good humour. He that regards the welfare of others should make his virtue approachable, that it may be loved and copied; and he that considers the wants which every