VI. On the comparative sum of happiness and misery in the present life.

In estimating the measure of misery which the world contains, we may admit mistake both concerning the sum of that CIRCUMSTANCE which inspires it, and the degree in which the circumstance is accompanied by the sense of it.

We We are liable to imagine, that there are more painful SITUATIONS in human life than there are, from a variety of causes. We are so formed, (and in this part, as in every other of the human fabric, the wisdom of the hand that constructed us is conspicuous,) as to be much more deeply impressed by scenes of distress, than of content. ment and happiness. Those that rejoice want nothing of us, but to rejoice along with them; those that weep, beside our tears, want often a hand to wipe away theirs. Nor is congratulation so necessary to the happy, as sim ple condolence to the distress, whose cause we cannot For this reason, our creator has ordained, that sympathy with sorrow should be a more powerful feeling than sympathy with joy. In consequence of this, in contemplating human life, the afflictions which are scattered over it, are the appearances that strike us most. These are the strong parts of the picture; the figures that project from the piece; that catch and oc, cupy the eye: and, without attending to the forms of fe licity, which are far more numerous, but which make more faint impressions upon us, we take the character of the scene from those parts of it that are most prominent to the eye.

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Writers of plaintive romance have co-operated with this tendency of the misery of human life to press forward to the attention, and leave the happiness of it in the back ground, by perpetually bringing the former before the eye of their readers, and preferring it as a subject of representation. Aware that distress is a more striking and interesting object to the human mind than felicity, they have presented a multitude of sad and tragical scenes to the imagination; the collective impression of which, assisted by a supposition, perhaps, that the fiction has its foundation in fact, and took its hint from truth,

melts and blends itself, in a mind possessed of a lively fancy, with the image of actual life: what has been strongly imagined mixes itself, in the memory, with what has been really seen or heard: and thus the world of shadows and phantoms stands before the eyes of those, who are in habits of perusing the pages which paint fictitious affliction, as connected with the region of reality, and constituting a part of the prospect of nature. Poets, also, and sentimental writers, influenced, in the same manner, by the persuasion, that gloom is more allied to eloquence than gaiety; and, that to complain is more moving than to rejoice; in the reflections upon human life which have fallen from their pens, have endeavoured to excite that sigh of melancholy, which sooths the sensibility of pensive spirits.

All these causes have operated to magnify the figure of human afflictions; to lead the imagination to dwell and rest upon the pains of life, and to take off the attention from its pleasures. These causes of misconception upon this subject call aloud for counteraction. While, therefore, these are conspiring to confine your eye to the dark parts of human life, to thrust its afflictions before you, and to keep back its brighter scenes; its brighter scenes let me be permitted to put forward; to push into your view that human happiness, which is so apt to retire from your attention; and to entreat you to consider, what perhaps you may not have sufficiently reflected upon, or be enough in the habit of recollecting; what is yet manifest, at the door of the inquiry into the comparative good and evil of human life; that, whatever be the sum of misery in the world, there is a much larger sum of happiness.

The weather is sometimes foul; but it is oftener fair. Storms and hurricanes are frequent; but calms are more common. There is some sickness; but there is more health. There is some pain; but there is more ease. There is some mourning: but there is more joy. There is complexional depression that asks, wherefore is light given to him that is in misery?" but it bears no proportion to the native cheerfulness, which is open to the agreeable impressions of surrounding nature. Multitudes have been crushed under the foot of cruelty; but greater multitudes have remained unmolested by the op

pressor. Many have perished with hunger and naked, ness, but more have been supplied with food and rai ment: Some have counted the days of captivity; but the majority were never in prison. Numbers have lost their reason; but larger numbers have retained it. The list is long of the forsaken and the forlorn; but still longer is the catalogue of those, that have never failed, in some one or other, to find a friend, Sometimes we are told of towns, agitated to pieces by the terrible quaking of the ground; but more frequently, of cities that know no enemies but time. Sometimes, we hear of ships that are destroyed by the storm; but more commonly of vessels that arrive safely in port. We have read, and read with horror, of failing harvests; our hair has stood up, our pulses have stopped, over the horrible picture of famine; the craving of factitious delicacy for food offensive to plain-fed nature! the frightful conflict between the force of affection, and the phrensy of want! between the agonies of hunger, and of the heart! -but, fruitful seasons, and shouting reapers, and "hearts filled with food and gladness," are the cheerful forms, with which mankind have been familiar. We have trembled to contemplate the terrible figure of pestilence, "walking in darkness;" travelling through the air in awful invisibility; striking with an unseen hand, and strewing the street with dead: but the accounts, that have most occupied our attention, have been of benignant constitutions in nature; of qualities in things that are calculated to recall departed health, and heal the diseases of man; of restorative temperatures of air; of kindly and genial climes; of medicinal herbs, and of physical fountains. A melancholy proportion of mankind have perished by the sword; or taken from its edge the worse than mor tal wound; or pined in the sickness attendant on its way; or deplored the plunder and desolation it has spread over their plains; or, at a distance from the theatre of its ravages, been pierced through, by its stroke, with sorrows far sharper than its point:-but the greater part of mankind have passed their days in the seat of peace; sat under their roofs in serenity and security; reaped their fields without any fear of the soldier's sic kle or his flame; exercised their affections in social uni. ous, that have felt no cut but from nature's hand; and

resigned their breath at last in the quiet and domestic bed.

If we thus survey the checkered face of human life at large, we shall find its bright spaces more numerous than its shadows. Congratulation is more exercised than pity. The countenances that have sorrow upon them, are fewer than the faces which do not want to be wiped. And if the whole histories of individuals whom we see in circumstances of distress were to be laid before us, perhaps, we should find few of them, in which there was not a greater number of pleasant than painful passages: in which there was not, upon the whole, more cheerfulness than depression; more tranquillity than trouble; more corporal ease than sufferance. Whatever pain, whatever care may lie in wait for the man,-childhood is careless and sportive; 66 a stranger yet to pain." Whatever clouds remain for the brow of manhood, the forehead of youth is clear and smooth. The first years of almost every life, however dark and stormy it afterward becomes, are all sunshine and serenity. Then, at least, how many soever the sicknesses, the sorrows, and the solicitudes, the " months of vanity," and the "wearisome nights," that await maturer years, then, at least, every pulse is health; every pillow, peace; every feeling, rapture; every object, novelty; every prospect, hope!

VII. Erroneous views of the happiness attending virtue and vice.

I CONFINE myself to those false views of the compara tive happiness of virtue and vice in the present world, discovered by the electors of the latter, which proceed from unacquaintance with the influences of these opposite characters upon the mental, and their more secret and occult effects upon the animal enjoyment of man; that erroneous judgment which springs, not from deficiency of attention to evidence that is before the mind, but from the want of proofs themselves; proofs, which, though they are to be procured, have never been collected and presented to their understanding, either by themselves or by

others; in short, that wrong judgment which arises from ignorance; ignorance of the nature of man, of the nature of happiness, and the absolute necessity of virtue to the happiness of such a creature.

He who determines to lead a life of indolence, or of licentious pleasure, or to devote his days to the pursuits of avarice, or of ambition, does not know, at the time that he forms this determination, that the certain attendants upon intemperance, if it should not be attended by untimely mortality, are satiety, languor, and dull enjoy. ment; the death of vivacity, if not of life; the expiration of the spirit, if not of the breath of existence: that the infallible and invariable effect of inactivity is melancholy; that the immoderate desire of superfluous possessions, even when crowned with prosperity, must be accompa nied with anxiety, with dissatisfaction, and, while a sin gle superior can be seen in the fortune, the fame, or the power, upon which the supreme affections are placed, with the fretfulness of envy: that evil passions cannot, even in the smoothest situations in which human life can lap them, find a secure assylum from the roughnesses that irritate and torment them: that conscience, even when most successfully muffled, must, at moments, recover her voice, remonstrate with all her authority, and reprove with all her thunder, so as to disturb the repose of the most tranquil, and embitter the reward of the most suc cessful guilt. Such a one does not know, when he thus dedicates his life to folly, in consequence of having re ceived no convincing instruction from others, and having made no close observations himself concerning human nature, that temperate pleasures, innocent employment, moderate desires, generous affections, and an approving conscience, compose the greatest present happiness of which man is capable.

Upon entering the world, he is deceived by the dresses; he is dazzled by the glare of things. He looketh upon their outward appearance," and is imposed upon by their plausible surfaces. He mistakes height of sta tion, for superiority to care; affluence of possessions, for fulness of joy; the arm of power, for capacity to execute whatever inclination can prompt. He has no idea of the indigence which it is possible for the rich, or of the impotence which it is possible for the great, to experience.