tide on the object of it, whether good or bad. If good, it is the cruellest of all robberies to withhold one moment of happiness which is the right of another and if bad, suspense being at an end, the ranging spirits collect, and form that faculty of bearing a determined and visible evil, which uncertainty and indistinctness totally dissipate. Who is there that would not rather be led out to the axe, than live for days and weeks, with the expectation of death or torture?

DESPONDENCE.

1.

LOVE is careful; and misfortune is subject to doubtfulness.

2.

Nothing is achieved, before it be thoroughly attempted.

3.

Lying still doth never go forward.

4.

Who only sees the ill, is worse than blind.

5.

No man doth speak aright, who speaks in fear.

6.

Solitary complaints do no good to him whose help stands without himself.

7.

How weakly they do, that rather find fault with what cannot be amended, than seek to amend wherein they have been faulty!

Remark.

These thoughts on Despondency are not less admonitory to men who delight in obscuring the prospects of others, than to that despairing disposition, which inclines some persons to regard their own views through similar clouds. Such friends may verily be called Job's comforters: they are the mildews of life; the blights which wither the spring

of Hope, and encumber sorrow with weeds of deeper mourning. Instead of consoling the afflicted, they irritate his grief by dwelling on the circumstances of its cause: instead of encouraging the unfortunate to new enterprizes, they lead him to lamentable meditation on old disappointments; and to waste that time in regret, which might have been used to repair loss or earn acquisition. These lachrymal counsellors, with one foot in the cave of despair, and the other invading the peace of their friends, are the paralizers of action, the pests of society, and the subtlest homicides in the world; they poison with a tear; and convey a dagger to the heart, while they press you to their bosoms. Life is a warfare; and he who easily desponds, deserts a double duty; he betrays the noblest property of man, which is dauntless resolution; and he rejects the providence of that All-gracious Being, who guides and rules the universe.

PATIENCE.

WITHOUT Mounting by degrees, a man cannot attain to high things; and the breaking of the ladder still casteth a man back, and maketh the thing wearisome, which was easy.

Remark.

But, in being patient, a man must not be supine: he should not stand when he ought to move his progress forward must be persevering; and at length he will see the steep hills of his long journey, far behind him.

CONTENT.

1.

HAPPY are the people who want little, because they desire not much.

Remark.

As truth is but one, she must speak the same language wherever she resides; neither time nor situation can alter her decrees : what was truth before the flood, is truth now; and what she utters by the lips of a peasant, will be echoed, by absolute necessity, in the lectures of the sage. That happiness (which is the emanation of content,) springs in the mind, has been a maxim with all reflecting men. And what Sir Philip Sidney says upon the subject, is nearly repeated by the pious and amiable Louis XVI. "To be happy is to make our own fortune; and that fortune consists in good dispositions, good principles, and good actions." As happiness depends upon the