NUMB. 128. SATURDAY, January 26, 1754. Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit; unus utrique HOR. When in a wood we leave the certain way, One errour fools us, though we various stray, Some to the left, and some to t' other side. FRANCIS. IT T is common among all the classes of mankind, to charge each other with trifling away life: every man looks on the occupation or amusement of his neighbour, as something below the dignity of our nature, and unworthy of the attention of a rational being. A man who considers the paucity of the wants of nature, and who, being acquainted with the various means by which all manual occupations are now facilitated, observes what numbers are supported by the labour of a few, would, indeed, be inclined to wonder, how the multitudes who are exempted from the necessity of working either for themselves or others, find business to fill up the vacuities of life. The greater part of mankind neither card the fleece, dig the mine, fell the wood, nor gather in the harvest; they neither tend herds nor build houses; in what then are they employed? This is certainly a question, which a distant prospect of the world will not enable us to answer. We find all ranks and ages mingled together in a tumul tuous confusion, with haste in their motions, and eagerness in their looks; but what they have to pursue or avoid, a more minute observation must inform them. When we analyse the crowd into individuals, it soon appears that the passions and imaginations of men will not easily suffer them to be idle we see things coveted merely because they are rare, and pursued because they are fugitive; we see, men conspire to fix an arbitrary value on that which is worthless in itself, and then contend for the possession. One is a collector of fossils, of which he knows no other use than to show them; and when he has stocked his own repository, grieves that the stones which he has left behind him should be picked up by another. The florist nurses a tulip, and repines that his rival's beds enjoy the same showers and sunshine with his own. This man is hurrying to a concert, only lest others should have heard the new musician before him; another bursts from his company to the play, because he fancies himself the patron of an actress; some spend the morning in consultations with their tailor, and some in directions to their cook: some are forming parties for cards, and some laying wagers at a horse-race. It cannot, I think, be denied, that some of these lives are passed in trifles, in occupations by which the busy neither benefit themselves nor others, and by which no man could be long engaged, who seriously considered what he was doing, or had knowledge enough to compare what he is with what he might be made. However, as people who have the same inclination generally flock together, every trifler is kept in countenance by the sight of others as unprofitably active as himself; by kindling the heat of competition, he in time thinks himself important, and by having his mind in tensely engaged, he is secured from weariness of himself. Some degree of self-approbation is always the reward of diligence; and I cannot, therefore, but consider the laborious cultivation of petty pleasures, as a more happy and more virtuous disposition, than that universal contempt and haughty negligence, which is sometimes associated with powerful faculties, but is often assumed by indolence when it disowns its name, and aspires to the appellation of greatness of mind. It has been long observed, that drollery and ridicule is the most easy kind of wit: let it be added, that contempt and arrogance is the easiest philosophy. To find some objection to every thing, and to dissolve in perpetual laziness under pretence that occasions are wanting to call forth activity, to laugh at those who are ridiculously busy without setting an example of more rational industry, is no less in the power of the meanest than of the highest intellects... Our present state has placed us at once in such different relations, that every human employment, which is not a visible and immediate act of goodness, will be in some respect or other subject to contempt; but it is true, likewise, that almost every act, which is not directly vicious, is in some respect beneficial and laudable. "I often," says Bruyere, "observe from my window, two beings "of erect form and amiable countenance, endowed "with the powers of reason, able to clothe their "thoughts in language, and convey their notions "to each other. They rise early in the morning, "and are every day employed till sunset in rubbing "two smooth stones together, or, in other terms, "in polishing marble." "If lions could paint," says the fable, "in the "room 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 some "times 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 dis quieted with doubts, about the propriety of a "word which every body understood; that he "would hesitate between two expressions equally 86 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 won"dered 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, may every thing be made equally ridiculous. He 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 exerçising 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 |