one, must take from another. Wealth enables its owner to give to others, by taking only from himself. Power pleases the violent and the proud; wealth delights the placid and the timorous. Youth therefore flies at power, and age grovels after riches.

Western Islands, p. 216.

RIDICULE.

THE affertion of Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the test of truth, is foolish. If ridicule be applied to any pofition as the test of truth, it will then become a queftion, whether fuch ridicule be just, and this can only be decided by the application of truth, as the test of ridicule. Two men fearing, one a real, and the other a fancied danger, will be, for a while, equally expofed to the inevitable confequences of cowardice, contemptuous cenfure, and ludicrous reprefentation; and the true estate of both cafes must be known, before it can be decided whose terror is rational, and whofe is ridiculous, who is to be pitied, and who to be defpifed.

He that indulges himself in ridiculing the little imperfections and weakneffes of his friends, will, in time, find mankind united against him. The man who fees another ridiculed before him, though he may, for the prefent, concur in the general laugh, yet in a cooler hour, will confider the fame trick might be played against himself; but when there is no fenfe of this danger, the natural pride of human nature rifes against him, who by general cenfures, lays claim to general fuperiority.

Rambler, v. 4. p. 81.

REFLECTION.

IT may be laid down as a pofition which will feldom deceive, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong. He must fly from himself, either because he finds a tedioufnefs in the equipoife of an empty mind, which having no tendency to one motion more than another, but as it is impelled by fome external power, must always have recourfe to foreign objects; or he must be afraid of the intrufion of fome unpleafing ideas, and perhaps is truggling to escape from the remembrance

of

of a lofs, the fear of a calamity, or fome other thought of greater horror.

Rambler, v. 1. p. 27.

There are fewer higher gratifications than that of reflection on furmounted evils, when they were not incurred nor protracted by our fault, and neither reproach us with cowardice nor guilt.

Ditto, v. 4. P. 233.

All useless mifery is certainly folly, and he that feels evils before they come, may be defervedly cenfured; yet furely to dread the future, is more reafonable than to lament the past. The business of life is to go forward; he who fees evils in profpect, meets it in his way; but he who catches it by retrospection, turns back to find it.

Idler, v. 11 p. 111.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life ufefully and virtuously employed; to trace our own progrefs in existence, by fuch tokens as excite neither fhame, nor forrow. It ought therefore to be the care of those who wish to pafs the last hours with comfort, to lay up fuch a treasure of pleafing ideas, as

fhall

fhall fupport the expences of that time, which is to depend wholly upon the fund

already acquired.

Rambler, v. 1, p. 250 & 252.

REBELLION.

TO bring mifery on those who have not deferved it, is part of the aggregated guilt of rebellion.

Taxation no Tyranny, p. 61.

Nothing can be more noxious to fociety, than that erroneous clemency, which, when a rebellion is fuppreffed, exacts no forfeiture, and establishes no fecurities, but leaves the rebels in their former state.

Ditto, p. 87.

REFINEMEN T.

HE that pleases himself too much with minute exactnefs, and fubmits to endure nothing in accommodations, attendance, or address, below the point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the croud of life,

be

L

be harraffed with innumerable diftreffes, from which thofe who have not, in the fame manner, increafed their fenfations, find no difturbance. His exotic foftness will shrink at the coarfeness of vulgar felicity, like a plant tranfplanted to Northern nurferies, from the dews and funfhine of the tropical regions. It is well known, that expofed to a microscope, the fmootheft polish of the moft folid bodies. difcovers cavities and prominencies; and that the fofteft bloom of rofeate virginity repels the eye with excrefcencies and difcolorations. Thus the fenfes, as well as the perceptions, may be improved to our own disquiet; and we may, by diligent cultivation of the powers of diflike, raise in time an artificial faftidiousness, which shall fill the imagination with phantoms of turpitude, fhew us the naked fkeleton of every delight, and prefent us only with the pains of pleasure, and the deformities of beauty.

Rambler, v. 3. P. 37.

RE