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throbbings of anguish, to hear that others are more miserable; others, perhaps, unknown or wholly indifferent, whofe profperity raises no envy, and whofe sall can gratify no resentment. Some topicks of comfort arising, like that which gave hope and spirit to the captive of Sefostris, from the perpetual vicissitudes of lise, and mutability of human affairs, may as properly raise the dejected as deprefs the proud, and have an immediate tendency to exhilarate and revive. But how can it avail the man who languishes in the gloom of sorrow, without profpect of emerging into the funshine of cheersulness, to hear that others are sunk yet deeper in the dungeon of misery, shackled with heavier chains, and surrounded with darker desperation?

The solace arising from this consideration seems indeed the weakest of all others, and is perhaps never properly applied, but in cases where there is no place for reflections of more speedy and pleasing efficacy. But even from such calamities lise is by no means free; a thousand ills incurable, a thousand losses irreparable, a thousand difficulties insurmountable, are known, or will be known, by all the sons of men. Native deformity cannot be rectified, a dead friend cannot return, and the hours of youth trifled away in folly, or lost in sickness, cannot be restored.

Under the oppression of such melancholy, it has been found usesul to take a survey of the world, to contemplate the various scenes of distress in which mankind are struggling round us, and acquaint ourselves with the terribilis vifu forma, the various sliapes of misery, which make havock of terrestrial

happihappiness, range all corners almost without restraint, trample down our hopes at the hour of harvest, and, when we have built our schemes to the top, ruin their foundations.

The first effect of this meditation is, that it furnishes a new employment for the mind, and engages the passions on remoter objects; as king9 have sometimes freed themselves from a subject too haughty to be governed and too powersul to be crushed, by posting him in a distant province, till his popularity has subsided, or his pride been repressed. The attention is dissipated by variety, and acts more weakly upon any single part, as that torrent may be drawn off to different channels, which, pouring down in one collected body, cannot be resisted. This species of comfort is, therefore, unavailing in severe paroxysms of corporal pain, when the mind is every instant called back to misery, and in the first shock of any sudden evil; but will certainly be of use against encroaching melancholy, and a settled habit of gloomy thoughts.

It is surther advantageous, as it supplies us with opportunities of making comparisons in our own savour. We know that very little of the pain, or pleasure, which does not begin and end in our lenses, is otherwise than relative; we are rich or poor, great or Iktfe, in proportion to the number that excel us, or sall beneath us, in any of these respects; and therefore, a man, whofe uneasiness arises from reflexion on any misfortune that throws him below thofe with whom he was once equal, is comforted by finding that he is not yet lowest.

There

There is another kind of comparison, less tending towards the vice of envy, very well illustrated "by an old poet, whofe system will not afford many reasonable motives to content. 'It is,' says he, 'pleasing to look from shore upon the tumults of 4 a storm, and to see a ship struggling with the 'billows; it is pleasing, not because the pain of 'another can mve us delight, but because we have 'a stronger impression of the happiness of sasety.' Thus, when we look abroad, and behold the multitudes that are groaning under evils heavier than those which we have experienced, we shrink back to our own state, and instead of repining that so much must be selt, learn to rejoice that we have not more to seel.

By this observation of the miseries of others, fortitude is strengthened, and the mind brought to a more extensive knowledge of her own powers. As the heroes of action catch the flame from one another, so they to whom providence has allotted the harder task of sufsering with calmness and dignity, may animate themselves by the remembrance of thofe evils which have been laid on others, perhaps naturally as weak as themselves, and bear up with vigour and resolution against their own oppressions, when they see it possible that more severe afflictions may be borne.

There is still another reason why, to many minds, the relation of other men's inselicity may give a lasting; and continual relief. Some, not well instrutted in the measures by which providence distributes happiness, are perhaps misted by divines,

6 who, who, as Bellarmine makes temporal profperity one of the characters of the true church, have represented wealth and ease as the certain concomitants of virtue, and the unsailing result of the divine approbation. Such sufferers are dejected in their misfortunes, riot so much for what they seel, as for what they dread; not because they cannot support the sorrows, or endure the wants, of their present condition, but because they consider them as only the beginnings of more sharp and more lasting pains. To these mourners it is an act of the highest charity to represent the calamities which not only virtue has sufsered, but virtue has incurred; to insorm them that one evidence of a suture state is the uncertainty of any present reward for goodness; and to remind them, from the highest authority, of the distresses and penury of men of whom the world was mot worthy.

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Numb. 53. Tuesday, 6V//. 18, 1750.

*.;«o T«» Ipigram. Vet.

Husband thy poircsfious.

THERE is scarcely among the evils of human life, any so generally dreaded as poverty. Every other species of misery, thofe, who are not rfmch accustomed to disturb the present moment 'with reflection, can easily forget, because it is not always forced upon their regard: but it is impossible to pass a day or an hour in the confluxes of men, without seeing how much indigence is expofed to contumely, neglect, and insult; and, in its lowest state, to hunger and nakedness; to injuries against which every passion is in arms, and to wants which nature cannot sustain.

Against other evils the heart is often hardened by true or by salse notions of dignity and reputation: thus we fee dangers of every kind saced with willingness, because bravery, in a good or bad cause, is never without its encomiasts and admirers. But in the profpect of poverty, there is nothing but gloom and melancholy; the mind and body suffer together; its miseries bring no alleviations; it is a state in which every virtue is obscured, and in which no conduct can avoid reproach: a state in which cheersulness is insensibility, and dejection sullenness, of which the hardships are without honour, and the labours without reward.

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