the power of forgetting is capable of improvement. Reason will, by a refolute conteft, prevail over imagination, and the power may be obtained of tranfferring the attention as judgment fhall direct. The incurfions of troublefore thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not eafy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been once overpowered and ejected, feldom returns with any formidable vehemence. Employment is the great inftrument of intellectual dominion. The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn afide from one object but by paffing to another. The gloomy and the refentful are always found among those who have nothing to do, or who do nothing. We must be bufy about good or evil, and he to whom the prefent offers nothing will often be looking backward or the paft. NUMB. 73. SATURDAY, September 8, 1759. AHAT every man would be rich if a with TH lieve few will contest, at least in a nation like ours, in which commerce has kindled an univerfal emulation of wealth, and in which money receives all the honours which are the proper right of knowledge and of virtue. Yet though we are all labouring for gold as for the chief good, and, by the natural effort of unwearied diligence, have found many expeditious methods of obtaining it, we have not been able to improve the art of ufing it, or to make it produce more happiness than it afforded in former times, when every declaimer expatiated on its mifchiefs, and every philofopher taught his followers to despise it. Many of the dangers imputed of old to exorbitant wealth, are now at an end. The rich are neither waylaid by robbers, nor watched by informers; there is nothing to be dreaded from proscriptions, or feizures. The neceffity of concealing treasure has long ceased; no man now needs counterfeit mediocrity, and condemn his plate and jewels to caverns and darkness, or feaft his mind with the confciousness of clouded fplendour, of finery which is ufelefs till it is fhewn, and which he dares not fhew. . In our time the poor are strongly tempted to affume the appearance of wealth, but the wealthy very rarely defire to be thought poor; for we are all at full liberty to difplay riches by every mode of oftentation. We fill our houfes with useless ornaments, only to fhew that we can buy them; we cover our coaches with gold, and employ artists in the difcovery of new fashions of expence; and yet it cannot be found that riches produce happiness. Of riches, as of every thing else, the hope is more than the enjoyment; while we confider them as the means to be used, at fome future time, for the attainment of felicity, we prefs on our purfuit ardently and vigorously, and that ardour fecures us from wearinefs of ourfelves; but no fooner do we fit down to enjoy our acquifitions, than we find them infufficient to fill up the vacuities of life. One caufe which is not always observed of the infufficiency of riches, is, that they very seldom make their owner rich. To be rich, is to have more than is defired, and more than is wanted; to have fomething which may be spent without relụctance, and scattered without care, with which the fudden demands of defire may be gratified, the cafual freaks of fancy indulged, or the unexpected opportunities of benevolence improved. Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own fault. There is another poverty to which the rich are exposed with lefs guilt by the officiousness of others. Every man, eminent for exuberance of fortune, is furrounded U 3 furrounded from morning to evening, and from evening to midnight, by flatterers, whofe art of adulation confifts in exciting artificial wants, and in forming new schemes of profufion. Tom Tranquil, when he came to age, found himfelf in poffeffion of a fortune, of which the twentieth part might perhaps have made him rich. His temper is eafy, and his affections foft; he receives every man with kindness, and hears him with credulity. His friends took care to fettle him by giving him a wife, whom, having no particular inclination, he rather accepted than chofe, becaufe he was told that fhe was proper for him. He was now to live with dignity proportionate to his fortune. What his fortune requires or admits. Tom does not know, for he has little fkill in computation, and none of his friends think it their intereft to improve it. If he was fuffered to live by his own choice, he would leave every thing as he finds it, and pass through the world diftinguished only by inoffenfive gentleness. But the minifters of luxury have marked him out as one at whofe expence they may exercise their arts. A companion, who had just learned the names of the Italian masters, runs from fale to fale, and buys pictures, for which Mr. Tranquil pays, without enquiring where they fhall be hung. Another fills his garden with statues, which Tranquil wishes away, but dares not remove. One of his friends is learning architecture by building him a houfe, which he paffed by, and enquired to whom it belonged; another has been for three years digging canals and raifing mounts, mounts, cutting trees down in one place, and planting them in another, on which Tranquil looks with ferene indifference, without afking what will be the coft. Another projector tells him that a waterwork, like that of Verfailles, will complete the beauties of his feat, and lays his draughts before him; Tranquil turns his eyes upon them, and the artist begins his explanations; Tranquil raifes no objections, but orders him to begin the work, that he may escape from talk which he does not underftand. Thus a thousand hands are bufy at his expence, without adding to his pleasures. He pays and receives vifits, and has loitered in publick or in folitude, talking in fummer of the town, and in winter of the country, without knowing that his fortune is impaired, till his fteward told him this morning, that he could pay the workmen no longer but by mortgaging a manor. |