tions, extasies, and despair; has been handed by dukes to her chair; has been the occasion of innumerable quarrels; has paid twenty visits in an asternoon; been invited to fix balls in an evening, and been forced to retire to lodgings in the country from the importunity of courtship, and the satigue of pleasure.

I tell you, Mr. Rambler, I will stay here no longer. I have at last prevailed upon my mother to send me to town, and shall set out in three weeks on the grand expedition. I intend to live in publick, and to crowd into the winter every pleasure which money can purchase, and every honour which beauty can obtain.

But this tedious interval how shall 1 endure ? Cannot you alleviate the misery of delay by some pleasing description of the entertainments of the town? I can read, I can talk, I can think of nothing else; and if you will not sooth my impatience, heighten my ideas, and animate my hopes, you may write for thofe who have more leisure, but are not to expect any longer the honour of being read by thofe eyes which are now intent only on conquest and destruction.

Rhodoclia.

Numb. 63. Tuesday, OElober 22, 1750.

—' . Habebat firpe ducentei,

Sæpe decent ftrvos; modo reges al jut telrarchat,

Omni a magna hquens: modo, Jit mibi men/a tripes, et

Concha Jalis ftiri, et toga, nuæ defendtre frigus,

Qnamins crajfa, qutat. Hon.

New with two hundred skives he crowds his train;

Now walks with ten. In high and haughty strain

At morn, of kings and governors he prates;

At night,—" A frugrJ table, O ye fates,

"A little shell the sacred salt to hold,

*' And clothes, tho' coarse, to keep me from the cold."

Francis.

IT has been remarked, perhaps, by every writer, who has left behind him observations upon lise, that no man is pleased with his present Hate, which proves equally unsatissactory, says Horace, whether s allen upon by chance, or chofen with deliberation; we are always disgusted with some circumstance or other of our situation, and imagine the condition of others more abundant in blessings, or less expofed to calamities.

This universal discontent has been generally mentioned with great severity of censure, as unreasonable in itself, since of two, equally envious of each other, both cannot have the larger share of happiness, and as tending to darken lise with unnecessary gloom, by withdrawing our minds from the contemplation and enjoyment of that happiness which our state affords us, and fixing our attention upon foreign objects, which we only behold to depress press ourselves, and increase our misery by injurious comparisons.

'When this opinion of the selicity of others predominates in the heart, so as to excite resolutions of obtaining, at whatever price, the condition to which such transcendent privileges are suppofed to be annexed; when it bursts into action, and produces fraud, violence, and injustice, it is to be pursued with all the rigour of legal punishments. But while operating only upon the thoughts, it disturbs none but him who has happened to admit it, and, however it may interrupt content, makes no attack on piety or virtue, I cannot think it so far criminal or ridiculous, but that it may deserve some pity, and admit some excuse.

That all are equally happy, or miserable, I sup«. pose none is sufficiently enthusiastical to maintain; because though we cannot judge of the condition of others, yet every man has found frequent vicissitudes in his own state, and must theresore be convinced that lise is susceptible of more or less selicity. What then mall forbid us to endeavour the alteration of that which is capable of being improved, and to grasp at augmentations of good, when we know it possible to be increased, and believe that any particular change of situation will increase it?

If he that finds himself uneasy may reasonably make efforts to rid himself from vexation, all mankind have a sufficient plea for some degree of restlessness, and the fault seems to be little more than too much temerity of conclusion, in favour of something not yet experienced, and too much readiness to believe, that the misery which our own passions Vol. V. D d and and appetites produce, is brought upon us by accidental causes, and external efficients.

It is, indeed, frequently discovered by us, that we complained too hastily of peculiar hardships, and imagined ourselves distinguished by embarrassments, in which other classes of men are equally entangled. We often change a lighter for a greater evil, and wish ourselves restored again to the state from which we thought it desirable to be delivered. But this knowledge, though it is easily gained by the trial, is not always attainable any other way^ and that error cannot justly be reproached, which reason could not obviate, nor prudence avoid.

To take a view at once distinct and comprehensive of human life, with all its intricacies of combination, and varieties os connexion, is beyond the power of mortal intelligences. Of the state with which practice has not acquainted us, we snatch a glimpse, we discern a point, and regulate the rest by passion, and by sancy. In this enquiry every savourite prejudice, every innate desire, is busy to deceive us. We are unhappy, at least less happy than our nature seems to admit; we necessarily desire the melioration of our lot; what we desire, we very reasonably seek, and what we seek we are naturally eager to believe that we have found. Our confidence is often disappointed, but our reason is not convinced, and there is no man who does not hope for something which he has not, though perhaps hij wishes lie unactive, because he foresees the difficulty of attainment. As among the numerous students of Hermetick philofophy, not one appears to have desisted from the task of transmutation, from conviction

of

of its impossibility, but from weariness of toil, or impatience of delay, a broken body, or exhausted fortune.

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men, whofe views are wide, and whofe imagination is vigorous and excursive, because they cannot confine their thoughts within their own boundaries of action, but are continually ranging over all the scenes of human existence, and consequently are often apt to conceive that they fall upon new regions of pleasure, and start new impossibilities of happiness. Thus they are busied with a perpetual succession of schemes, and pass their lives in alternate elation and sorrow, for want of that calm and immoveable acquiescence in their condition, by which men of slower understandings are fixed for ever to a certain point, or led on in the plain beaten track, which their fathers and grand-fires have trod besore them.

Of two conditions of lise equally inviting to the profpect, that will always have the difadvantage which we have already tried; because the evils which we have felt we cannot extenuate; and though we have, perhaps from nature, the power as well of aggravating the calamity which we sear, as of heightening the blessing we expect, yet in thofe meditations which we indulge by choice, and which are not forced upon the mind by necessity, we have always the art of fixing our regard upon the more pleasing images, and sufser hope to dispofe the lights by which we look upon suturity.

The good and ill of difserent modes of lise are

sometimes so equally oppofed, that perhaps no man

ever yet made his choice between them upon a full

D d 2 conviction,