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thofe sentiments which the great Author of nature has decreed the concomitants or followers of good or bad actions.

XlAt Tut n;xtfum issm Tji; txctror iv&dui'

n» wasi'Cu»; T! i Ss I{»! Ti f*« iUy ex iTi>.iV9n!

£rf »«f Pythagoras, H£oh /Æy eyes till thou hast

thrice reviewed the tranfactions of the past day. JVhere have I turned afde from reclitv.de? What have I been doing? What have I left undone, which I ought to have done? Begin thus from the sirjl ad, and proceed; and in conclufon, at the ill which thou hast done be troubled, and rejoice for the gtod.

Our thoughts on present things being determined by the objects besore us, sall not under thofe indulgences, or excursions, which I am now considering. But I cannot forbear, under this head, to caution pious and tender minds, that are disturbed by the irruptions of wicked imaginations, against too great dejection, and too anxious alarms; for thoughts are only criminal, when they are first cho* sen, and then voluntarily continued.

Evil into the mind of god or man

May come and go, so unapprov'd, and leave

No spot or stain behind. MilToN.

In futurity chiefly are the snares lodged, by which the imagination is intangled. Futurity is the proper abode of hope and sear, with all their train and progeny of subordinate apprehensions and desires. In futurity events and chances are yet floating at large, without apparent connexion with their causes,

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and we therefore easily indulge the liberty of gratifying ourselves with a pleasing choice. To pick and cull among possible advantages is, as the civil law terms it, in vacuum venire, to take what belongs to nobody; but it has this hazard in it, that we shall be unwilling to quit what we have seized, though an owner ihould be found. It is easy to think on that which may be pained, till at last we resolve to gain it, and to image the happiness of particular conditions till we can be easy in no other. We ought, at least, to let our desires fix upon nothing in another's power for the lake of our quiet, or in another's possession for the sake of our innocence. When a man finds himself led, though by a train of honest sentiments, to wish for that to which he has no right, he Ihould start back as from a pitsal covered with flowers. He that sancies he should benefit the publick more in a great station than the man that fills it, will in time imagine it an act of virtue to supplant him; and as oppofition readily kindles into hatred, his eagerness to do that good, to which he is not called, will betray him to crimes, which in his original scheme were never propofed.

He therefore that would govern his actions by the laws of virtue, must regulate his thoughts by thofe 01 reason; he must keep guilt from the recedes of his heart, and remember that the pleasures of fancy, and the emotions of desire, are more dangerous as they are more hidden, since they escape the awe of observation, and operate equally in every situation, without the concurrence of external opportunities.

Numb. 9. Tuesday, April 17, 1750.

Chuse what you are; no other state preser. Elphinstov.

IT is justly remarked by Horace, that howsoever every man may complain occasionally of the hardships of his condition, he is seldom willing to change it for any other on the same level: for whether it be that he, who follows an employment, made choice of it at first on account of its suitableness to his inclination; or that when accident, or the determination of others, have placed him in a particular station, he, by endeavouring tp reconcile himself to it, gets the custom of viewing it only on the sairest side; or whether every man thinks that class to which he belongs the most illustrious, merely because he has honoured it with his name; it is certain that, whatever be the reason, most men have a very strong and active prejudice in savour of their own vocation, always working upbn their minds, and influencing their behaviour.

This partiality is sufficiently visible in every rank of the human species; but it exerts itself more frequently and with greater force among thofe who have never learned to conceal their sentiments for reasons of policy, or to model their expressions by the laws of politeness; and therefore the chief contests of wit among artificers and handicrastsmen arise

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from. from a mutual endeavour to exalt one trade by depreciating another.

From the same principles are derived many consolations to alleviate the inconveniencies to which every calling is peculiaily expofed. A blacksmith was lately pleasing himsels at his anvil, with observing that, though his trade was hot and sooty, laborious and unhealthy, yet he had the honour of living by his hammer, he got his bread like a man, and if his son mould rile in the world, and keep his coach, nobody could reproach him that his sather was a tailor.

A man, truly zealous for his fraternity, is never so irresistibly Battered, as when some rival calling is mentioned with contempt. Upon this principle .1 linen-draper boasted that he had got a new customer, whom he could sasely trust, for he could have no doubt of his honesty, since it was known, from unquestionable authority, that he was now siling a bill in chancery to delay payment for the ciorhes which he had worn the last seven years; and he himself had heard him declare, in a publick cosFee-house, that lie looked upon the whole generation os woollendrapers to be such despicable wretches, that no gentleman ought to pay the,P..

It has been observed that physicians and lawyers are no friends to religion; and many conjectures have been funned to discover the reason of such a combination between iv,cn who agree in nothing else, and who seem less to be ailected, in their own provinces, by religiousopinions, than any other part of the commu:;:ry. The truth is, very sew of them have thought about religion; but '.hey have all seen

3. parson; a parson; seen him in a habit disferent from their own, and therefore declared war agamst him. A young student from the inns of court, who has often attacked the curate of his sather's parish with such arguments as his acquaintances could surnish, and returned to town without success, is now gone down with a resolution to destroy him; sor he has learned at last: how to manage a prig, and if he pretends to hold him again to syllogism, he. has a catch in reserve, which neither logick nor metaphysicks can resist. . ""

1 laugh to think how your unshaken Cato
Will look aghast, when unforeseen destruction
Pours in upon him thus.

The malignity of soldiers and sailors against each other has been often experienced at the cost of their country; and, perhaps, no orders of men have an enmity of more acrimony, or longer continuance. When, upon our late successes at sea, some new regulations were concerted for establishing the rank of the naval commanders, a captain of foot very acutely remarked, that nothing was more absurd than to give any honorary rewards to seamen, "for ho

nour," says he, "ought only to be won by bra"very, and all the .world knows that in a sea-fight "there is no danger, and therefore no evidence of "courage."

But although this general desire of aggrandizing themselves by raising their prosession, betrays men to a thousand ridiculous and mischievous acts of supplantation and detraction, yet as almost all passions have their good as well as bad effects, it like

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