Most people, I believe, will naturally, without premeditation, assent to the definition of the elegant and judicious poet: 

Virtue (for mere good-nature is a fool)
Is sense and spirit with humanity.

[Footnote:  The Art of preserving Health.  Book 4]

What pretensions has a man to our generous assistance or good offices, who has dissipated his wealth in profuse expenses, idle vanities, chimerical projects, dissolute pleasures or extravagant gaming?  These vices (for we scruple not to call them such) bring misery unpitied, and contempt on every one addicted to them.

Achaeus, a wise and prudent prince, fell into a fatal snare, which cost him his crown and life, after having used every reasonable precaution to guard himself against it.  On that account, says the historian, he is a just object of regard and compassion:  his betrayers alone of hatred and contempt [Footnote:  Polybius, lib. iii. cap. 2].

The precipitate flight and improvident negligence of Pompey, at the beginning of the civil wars, appeared such notorious blunders to Cicero, as quite palled his friendship towards that great man.  In the same manner, says he, as want of cleanliness, decency, or discretion in a mistress are found to alienate our affections.  For so he expresses himself, where he talks, not in the character of a philosopher, but in that of a statesman and man of the world, to his friend Atticus. [Lib. ix. epist. 10].  But the same Cicero, in imitation of all the ancient moralists, when he reasons as a philosopher, enlarges very much his ideas of virtue, and comprehends every laudable quality or endowment of the mind, under that honourable appellation.  This leads to the third reflection, which we proposed to make, to wit, that the ancient moralists, the best models, made no material distinction among the different species of mental endowments and defects, but treated all alike under the appellation of virtues and vices, and made them indiscriminately the object of their moral reasonings.  The prudence explained in Cicero’s Offices [Footnote:  Lib. i. cap. 6.] is that sagacity, which leads to the discovery of truth, and preserves us from error and mistake.  Magnanimity, temperance, decency, are there also at large discoursed of.  And as that eloquent moralist followed the common received division of the four cardinal virtues, our social duties form but one head, in the general distribution of his subject.

[Footnote:  The following passage of Cicero is worth quoting, as being the most clear and express to our purpose, that any thing can be imagined, and, in a dispute, which is chiefly verbal, must, on account of the author, carry an authority, from which there can be no appeal.