of those pictures which exhibit men vanquishing lions, we should see lions feeding upon men. If the stonecutter could have written like Bruyere, what would he have replied? 'I look up,' says he, 'every day from my shop, upon a man whom the idlers, who stand still to gaze upon my work, often celebrate as a wit and a philosopher. I often perceive his face clouded with care, and am told that his taper is sometimes burning at midnight. The sight of a man who works so much harder than myself, excited my curiosity. I heard no sound of tools in his apartment, and, therefore, could not imagine what he was doing; but was told, at last, that he was writing descriptions of mankind, who, when he had described them, would live just as they had lived before; that he sat up whole nights to change a sentence because the sound of a letter was too often repeated; that he was often disquieted with doubts, about the propriety of a word which everybody understood; that he would hesitate between two expressions equally proper, till he could not fix his choice but by consulting his friends; that he will run from one end of Paris to the other for an opportunity of reading a period to a nice ear; that if a single line is heard with coldness and inattention, he returns home dejected and disconsolate; and that, by all this care and labour, he hopes only to make a little book which at last will teach no useful art, and which none who has it not will perceive himself to want. I have often wondered for what end such a being as this was sent into the world; and should be glad to see those who live thus foolishly, seized by an order of the government, and obliged to labour at some useful occupation.' Thus, by a partial and imperfect representation, He may every thing be made equally ridiculous. that gazed with contempt on human beings rubbing stones together, might have prolonged the same amusement by walking through the city, and seeing others, with looks of importance, heaping one brick upon another; or, by rambling into the country, where he might observe other creatures of the same kind driving in a piece of sharp iron into the clay, or in the language of men less enlightened, ploughing the field. As it is thus easy, by a detail of minute circumstances, to make every thing little, so it is not difficult by an aggregation of effects, to make every thing great. The polisher of marble may be forming ornaments for the palaces of virtue and the schools of science; or providing tables on which the actions of heroes and the discoveries of sages shall be recorded, for the incitement and instruction of future generations. The mason is exercising one of the principal arts by which reasoning beings are distinguished from the brute, the art to which life owes much of its safety and all its convenience, by which we are secured from the inclemency of the seasons, and fortified against the ravages of hostility; and the ploughman is changing the face of nature, diffusing plenty and happiness over kingdoms, and compelling the earth to give food to her inhabitants. Greatness and littleness are terms merely comparative; and we err in our estimation of things, because we measure them by some wrong standard. The trifler proposes to himself only to equal or excel some other trifler, and is happy or miserable as he succeeds or miscarries; the man of sedentary desire and unactive ambition sits comparing his power with his wishes; and makes his inability to perform things impossible, an excuse to himself for performing nothing. Man can only form a just estimate of his own actions, by making his power the test of his performance, by comparing what he does with what he can do. Whoever steadily perseveres in the exertion of all his faculties, does what is great with respect to himself; and what will not be despised by Him, who has given to all created beings their different abilities; he faithfully performs the task of life, within whatever limits his labours may be confined, or how soon soever they may be forgotten. We can conceive so much more than we can accomplish, that whoever tries his own actions by his imagination, may appear despicable in his own eyes. He that despises, for its littleness, any thing really useful, has no pretensions to applaud the grandeur of his conceptions; since nothing but narrowness of mind hinders him from seeing that, by pursuing the same principles, every thing limited will appear contemptible. He that neglects the care of his family, while his benevolence expands itself in scheming the happiness of imaginary kingdoms, might, with equal reason, sit on a throne dreaming of universal empire, and of the diffusion of blessings over all the globe; yet even this globe is little, compared with the system of matter within our view! and that system barely something more than nonentity, compared with the boundless regions of space, to which neither eye nor imagination can extend. From conceptions, therefore, of what we might have been, and from wishes to be what we are not, conceptions that we know to be foolish, and wishes which we feel to be vain, we must necessarily descend to the consideration of what we are. have powers very scanty in their utmost extent, but We which, in different men, are differently proportioned. Suitably to these powers we have duties prescribed, which we must neither decline for the sake of delighting ourselves with easier amusements, nor overlook in idle contemplation of greater excellence or more extensive comprehension. In order to the right conduct of our lives, we must remember that we are not born to please ourselves. He that studies simply his own satisfaction will always find the proper business of his station too hard or too easy for him. But if we bear continually in mind our relation to the Father of being, by whom we are placed in the world, and who has allotted us the part which we are to bear in the general system of life, we shall be easily persuaded to resign our own inclinations to Unerring Wisdom, and do the work decreed for us with cheerfulness and diligence. T No. 129. TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1754. Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas, JUV. SAT. i. 85. Whate'er excites our hatred, love, or joy, Or hope, or fear, these themes my muse employ. 66 SIR, 66 TO THE ADVENTURER. "LEONARDO DA VINCI, one of the most accomplished masters in the art of painting, was accus tomed to delineate instantly in his pocketbook every face in which he discovered any singularity of air or feature. By this method, he obtained a vast collection of various countenances, and escaped that barren uniformity and resemblance, so visible in the generality of history pieces, that the spectator is apt to imagine all the figures are of one family. "As a moralist should imitate this practice, and sketch characters from the life, at the instant in which they strike him; I amused myself yesterday, in the pump-room, by contemplating the different conditions and characters of the persons who were moving before me, and particularly the various motives that influenced them to crowd to the city. "Aphrodisius, a young nobleman of great hopes and large property, fell into a course of early debauchery at Westminster school, and at the age of sixteen privately kept an abandoned woman of the town, to whose lodgings he stole in the intervals of school hours, and who soon communicated to him a disease of peculiar power to poison the springs of life, and prevent the maturity of manhood. His body is enervated and emaciated, his cheek yellow and bloodless, his hand palsied, and his mind gloomy and dejected. It being thought, however, absolutely necessary for the welfare of his family that he should marry, he has been betrothed, in this dreadful condition, to a lady whose beauty and vivacity are in their meridian; and his physicians have ordered him to these salutary waters to try if it be possible for him to recover a little health before the marriage is celebrated. Can we wonder at the diminished race of half-formed animals, that crawl about our streets in the shape of men, when matches so unequal and so unnatural are not only permitted, |