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look up to them from a lower station. Whether it be, that apparent superiority incites great designs, 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.

It seldom happens that all circumstances con cur to happiness or fame.

Rambler, vol. 3, p. 106.

Happiness is not found in self-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another.

Idler, vol. 1, p. 232.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS.

The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilirate; 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 incumbrances, 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,

casional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour, and fictitious benevolence. Rambler, vol. 2, p. 82.

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.

Ibid. p. 4.

HABITS

No man forgets his original trade; the rights of nations and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.

Life of Milton.

The disproportions of absurdity grow less and less visible, as we are reconciled by degrees to the deformity of a mistress; and falsehood, by long use, is assimilated to the mind, as poison to the body.

Rambler, vol. 2, p. 245.

It is not easy, when we converse much with one whose general character excites our veneration, to escape all contagion of his peculiarities, even when we do not deliberately think them worthy of our notice, and when they would have excited laughter or disgust, had they not been protected by their alliance to nobler qualities, and accidentally consorted with knowledge or with virtue,

Ibid. vol. 4, p. 26.

It is the peculiar artifice of habit, not to suffer her power to be felt at first. Those whom - she leads, she has the address of only appearing to attend.

HOPE.

Vifion of Theodore, p. 85.

Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; possunt quia posse videntur.

Life of Milton.

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.

Rambler, vol. 1, p. 10.

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. 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 ús without assuring us of recompensing the delay by a great bounty.

Yet

Ibid. vol. 2. p. 75.

Where

Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavour. Ibid. vol. 3, p. 26.

Hope is the chief blessing of man, and that hope only is rational, of which we are certain that it cannot deceive us..

Ibid. vol. 4, p. 36.

Without hope there can be no caution.

Ibid. vol. 3, p. 81.

It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. He that has pictured a prospect upon his fancy, will receive little pleasure from his eyes; he that has anticipated the conversation of a wit, will wonder to what prejudice he owes his reputation. Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction..

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He does nothing who endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity.

Prince of Abyffinia, p. 179.

HEALTH..

Such is the power of health, that, without its co-operation, every other comfort is torpid and lifeless, as the power of vegetation without the

sun..

L-5

Rambler, vol, I, P. 291

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 tumúlts 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 Providence assigns him in the general task of human nature.

Ibid. p. 289.

The valetudinarian race have made the care of health ridiculous, by suffering it to prevail over all other considerations; as the miser has brought frugality into contempt, by permitting the love of money not to share but to engross his mind.

Ibid.

HISTORY.

Ile that records transactions in which himself was engaged, has not only an opportunity of knowing innumerable particulars which escape spectators, but has his natural powers exalted by that ardour which always rises at the remembrance of our own importance, and by which every man is enabled to relate his own actions better than another's.

Idler, vol. 2, p. 69.

He that writes the history of his own times, if he adheres strictly to truth, will write that which his own times will not easily endure. He must

be

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