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conviction, and adequate knowledge; and therefore fluctuation of will is not more wondersul, when they are proposed to the election, than ofcillations of a beam charged with equal weights. The mind no sooner imagines itself determined by some prevalent advantage, than some convenience of equal weight is discovered on the other side, and the resolutions which are suggested by the nicest examination, are osten repented as soon as they are taken.

Eumenes, a young man of great abilities, inherited a large estate from a sather, long eminent in conspicuous employments. His sather, harassed with competitions and perplexed with multiplicity of busi•v s-, recommended the quiet of a private station with so much force, that Eumenes for some years refisted ''very motion of ambitious wishes; but being once provoked by the sight of oppression, which he c ould not redress, he began to think it the duty of an honest man to enable himself to protect others, and gradually felt a defue os greatness, excited by a thouland projects of advantage to his country. 11;s sortune placed him in the senate, his knowledge and eloquence advanced him at court, and he possessed that authority and influence which he had resolved to exert for the happ 1 ' ss of mankind.

1 le now became acqu.v . d with greatness, and was in a short time convinced, that in proportion as the power ot doing well is enlarged, the temptations to do ill are multiplied and enforced. He selt himself every moment in danger of being either seduced or driven from his honest purpofes. Sometimes a sriend was to be gratisied, and sometimes a rival to be crushed, by means which his conscience could

not not approve. Sometimes he was forced to comply with the prejudices of the publick, and sometimes with the schemes of the ministry. He was by degrees wearied with perpetual struggles to unite policy and virtue, and went back to retirement as the shelter of innocence, persuaded that he could only hope to benefit mankind by a blameless example of private virtue. Here he spent some years in tranquillity ai d beneficence; but finding that corruption increased, and salse opinions in government prevailed, he thought himself again summoned to posts of publick trust, from which new evidence of his own weakness again determined him to retire.

Thus men may be made inconstant by virtue and by vice, by too much or too little thought; yet inconstancy, however dignified by its motives, is.always to be avoided, because lise allows us but a small time for enquiry and experiment, and he that steadily endeavours at excellence, in whatever employment, will more benefit mankind than he that hesitates in chusing his part till he is called to the performance. The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of daylight in looking for smoother ground, and shorter passages.

'without malice, and to betray without treachery. Any of these may be useful to the community, and pass through the world with the reputation ot' good purposes and uncorrupted morals, but they are unfit for close and tender intimacies. He cannot properly be chosen for a friend, whose kindness is exhaled by its own warmth, or frozen by the first Wast of slander; he cannot be a usesul counsellor, who will hear no opinion but his own; he will not muca invite confidence whose principal maxim is to suspect; nor can the candour and frankness of that maa be much esteemed, who spreads his arms to humankind, and makes every man, without distinction, a denizen of his bosom.

That friendship may be at once fond and lasting, there must not only be equal virtue on each part, bat virtue of the fame kind; not only the fame end must be proposed, but the fame means must be approved by both. We are often, by superficial accomplishments and accidental endearments, induced to lore those whom we cannot esteem; we arc sometimes, by great abilities, and incontestable evidences of virtue, compelled to esteem those whom we cannot love. But friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the other; and theresore requires nut only that its candidates should gain the judgment, but that they should attract the affections; that they should not only be firm in the day of distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only usesul in exigencies, but pleasing in familiar lise; their presence should give cheersulness as well as courage, and dispel alike the gloom os sear and of melancholy.

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To this mutual complacency is generally requisito an uniformity of opinions, at least of thole active and conspicuous principles which discriminate parties in government, and sects in religion, and which every day operate more or less on the common bullness of lise. For though great tenderness has, per. haps, been sometimes known to continue between men eminent in contrary sactions i yet such friends are to be shewn rather as prodigies than examples, and it is no more proper to regulate our conduct by fuch instances, than to leap a precipice, because some have sallen from it and escaped with lise,

It cannot but be extremely disficult to preserve private kindness in the midst of publick oppofition, in which will necessarily be involved a thousand incidents, extending their influence to conversation and privacy. Men engaged, by moral or religious motives, in contrary parties, will generally look with different eyes upon every man, and decide almost every question upon different principles. When such occasions of dispute happen, to comply is to betray our cause, and to maintain friendship by ceasing to deserve it; to be silent, is to lofe the happiness and dignity of independence, to live in perpetual constraint, and to desert, if nor to betray: and who shall determine which of two siiends shall yield, where neither believes himself mistaken, and both consess the importance of the question? What then remains but contradiction and debate? and from those what can be expected, but acrimony and vehemence, the insolence of triumph, the vexation of deseat, and, in time, a weariness of contest, and an extinction

tinction of benevolence? Exchange of endearments and intercourse of civility may continue, indeed, as boughs may for a while be verdant, when the root is wounded; but the poison of discord is infused, and though the countenance may preserve its Imik, the heart is hardening and contracting.

That man will not' be long agreeable, whom we fee only in times of seriousness and severity; and theresore to maintain the softness and serenity of benevolence, it is necessary that friends partake each others pleasures as well as cares, and be led to the fame diversions by similitude of taste. This is, however, not to be considered as equally indispenfable with consormity of principles, because any man may honestly, according to the precepts of Horace, resign the gratifications of taste to the humour of another, and sriendship may well deserve the sacrifice of plealure, though not of conscience.

It was once consessed to me, by a painter, that no prosessor of his art ever loved another. This declaration is so far justified by the knowledge of lite, as to damp the hopes of warm and constant friendship, between men whom their studies have made competitors, and whom every favourer and every censurer arc hourly inciting against each other. The utmost expectation that experience can warrant, is, that they should forbear open hostilities and secret machinations, and when the whole fraternity is attacked, be able to unite against a common foe. Some however, though sew, may perhaps be found, in whom emulation has not been able to overpower generosity, who are distinguished from lower beings by

nobler

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