Inordinate desires, of whatever kind, ought to be repressed upon yet a higher consideration; they must be considered as enemies not only to happiness but to virtue.  There are men, among those commonly reckoned the learned and the wise, who spare no stratagems to remove a competitor at an auction, who will sink the price of a rarity at the expense of truth, and whom it is not safe to trust alone in a library or cabinet.  These are faults, which the fraternity seem to look upon as jocular mischiefs, or to think excused by the violence of the temptation:  but I shall always fear that he, who accustoms himself to fraud in little things, wants only opportunity to practise it in greater; “he that has hardened himself by killing a sheep,” says Pythagoras, “will with less reluctance shed the blood of a man.”

To prize every thing according to its real use ought to be the aim of a rational being.  There are few things which can much conduce to happiness, and, therefore, few things to be ardently desired.  He that looks upon the business and bustle of the world, with the philosophy with which Socrates surveyed the fair at Athens, will turn away at last with his exclamation, “How many things are here which I do not want!”

No. 120.  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1753.

_—­Ultima semper
  Expectanda dies homini:  dicique beatus
  Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet._ OVID.  Met.  Lib. iii. 135.

  But no frail man, however great or high,
  Can be concluded blest before he die.  ADDISON.

The numerous miseries of human life have extorted in all ages an universal complaint.  The wisest of men terminated all his experiments in search of happiness, by the mournful confession, that “all is vanity;” and the ancient patriarchs lamented, that “the days of their pilgrimage were few and evil.”

There is, indeed, no topick on which it is more superfluous to accumulate authorities, nor any assertion of which our own eyes will more easily discover, or our sensations more frequently impress the truth, than, that misery is the lot of man, that our present state is a state of danger and infelicity.

When we take the most distant prospect of life, what does it present us but a chaos of unhappiness, a confused and tumultuous scene of labour and contest, disappointment and defeat?  If we view past ages in the reflection of history, what do they offer to our meditation but crimes and calamities?  One year is distinguished by a famine, another by an earthquake; kingdoms are made desolate, sometimes by wars, and sometimes by pestilence; the peace of the world is interrupted at one time by the caprices of a tyrant, at another by the rage of the conqueror.  The memory is stored only with vicissitudes of evil; and the happiness, such as it is, of one part of mankind, is found to arise commonly from sanguinary success, from victories which confer upon them the power, not so much of improving life by any new enjoyment, as of inflicting misery on others, and gratifying their own pride by comparative greatness.