themselves; it disposes them to rejoice with the happy, and by partaking to increase their pleasure. It frequently excludes the malignant passions, which are the sources of the greatest misery in life. It excites a pleasing sensation in our own breast, which, if its duration be considered, may be placed among the highest gratifications of sense. The only ill consequence that can be apprehended from it is, an effeminacy of mind, which may disqualify us for vigorous pursuits and manly exertions.

In the most successful course of things, obstacles will impede, and disagreeable circumstances disgust. To bear these without feeling them is sometimes necessary in the right conduct of life: but he who is tremblingly alive all over, and whose sensibility approaches to soreness, avoids the contest in which he knows he must be hurt. He feels injuries never committed, and resents affronts never intended. Disgusted with men and manners, he either seeks retirement to indulge his melancholy, or, weakened by continual chagrin, conducts himself with folly and imprudence.

How then shall we avoid the extreme of a disposition, which in the due medium is productive of the most salutary consequences? In this excess, as well as all others, reason must be called in to moderate. Sensibility must not be permitted to sink us into such a state of indolence as effectually represses those manly sentiments, which may very well consist with the most delicate. The greatest mildness is commonly united with the greatest fortitude in the true hero. Tenderness, joined with resolution, forms indeed a finished character, to which reason, cooperating with nature, may easily attain.

The affectation of great sensibility is extremely It is however as odious as the reality is

common.

amiable. It renders a man detestable, and a woman ridiculous. Instead of relieving the afflicted, which is the necessary effect of genuine sympathy, a character of this sort flies from misery, to show that it is too delicate to support the sight of distress. The appearance of a toad or the jolting of a carriage will cause a paroxysm of fear. It pretends to a superior share of refinement and philanthropy. But it is remarkable, that this delicacy and tenderness often disappear in solitude, and the pretender to uncommon sensibility is frequently found in the absence of witnesses to be uncommonly unfeeling.

To have received a tender heart from the hand of Nature is to have received the means of the highest enjoyment. To have guided its emotions by the dictates of reason is to have acted up to the dignity of man, and to have obtained that happiness of which the heart was constituted susceptible. May

a temper, thus laudable in itself, never be rendered contemptible by affectation, or injurious to its possessor and to others, through the want of a proper guidance.

No. CLXIII.

On true Patience, as distinguished from Insensibility.

HOWEVER common, and however intense, the evils of human life may be, certain it is, that evils equally great do not affect all men with an equal degree of anguish; and the different manner of sustaining evils arises from one of these two causes; a natural insensibility, or an adventitious fortitude, acquired by the exertion of the virtue of Patience.

Apathus, when a schoolboy, was not remarkable for quickness of apprehension or brilliancy of wit; but though his progress was slow, it was sure; and the additional opportunities of study, which he enjoyed by being free from those avocations which vivacity and warmth of constitution occasion, made him a tolerably good scholar. The sullenness of his deportment, however, alienated the affections of his teachers; and, upon the slightest misdemeanours, he often underwent the punishment of the rod; which he always bore without a tear and without complaint.

He had not long been at school before his father and mother died of a contagious fever. Preparatory to the disclosure of so mournful an event to an orphan son, many precautions were taken, many phrases of condolence studied. At length, the master took him aside, and after several observations on the instability of human affairs, the suddenness of death, the necessity of submission to Providence, and the inefficacy of sorrow, told him that his parents were no more. To this young Apathus

replied, by observing, without any visible alteration in his countenance, that he suspected something of that kind had happened, as he had not received his letters at the usual time; but that he had not said any thing on the subject, as he thought his being possessed of a fine fortune by the event, was a matter that concerned nobody but himself: "For (says he) as the death was sudden, there probably was no will, and my father being pretty warm, as they call it, and I being an only son, I think I shall be very well off." Here he was interrupted by his master, who was now desirous of some degree of that grief which he had before been solicitous to prevent.- "And are you not affected (said he) with the loss of the dearest friends you had in the world?" "Why, Sir, (replied the insensible) you have just now been teaching me to submit to Providence, and telling me, we must all die, and the like; and do I not practise your precepts?" The master was too much astonished to be able to answer, and hastily left the young man; who probably concluded the day with a feast of gingerbread, or a game at marbles.

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Soon after he left school, he took it into his head to enter into the state of matrimony. But here let the gentle reader be informed, that he was not induced to submit his neck to the yoke by any of those fine feelings which constitute love. The object of his choice had ten thousand pounds; and he considered that ten thousand pounds would pay for the lady's board. When the little prattlers were arrived at that age when none can behold them without pleasure, they were seized with an unfavourable smallpox, and severally carried from the cradle to the grave. The constant attendance of the mother, on this occasion, brought on a fever, which, together with a weakness occasioned by an

advanced state of pregnancy, proved fatal. Then, at last, Apathus was observed to fetch a sigh, and lift up his hands to heaven-at the sight of the modertaker's bill. A thousand misfortunes in business have fallen to his lot, all which he has borne with seeming fortitude. He is now, at length, reduced to that state, in which gentlemen choose to take lodgings within the purlieus of St. George's Fields: but there is no alteration in his features; he still sings his song, takes his glass, and laughs at those silly mortals who weary themselves in wandering up and down the world without control.

Thus Apathus affords a striking instance of that power of bearing afflictions which arises from natural insensibility. Stoicus will give us a better idea of Patience as a virtue.

From that period at which the mind begins to think, Stoicus was remarkable for a quality, which, in children, is called shamefacedness. He could never enter a room full of company without showing his distress, by a violent suffusion of blushes. At school, he avoided the commission of faults, rather through fear of shame than of punishment. In short, an exquisite sensibility, at the same time that it gave him the most exalted delight, frequently exposed him to the keenest affliction. Thus, from being acquainted with grief, though a stranger to misfortune, he acquired a habit of bearing evils before any heavy ones befell him.

Stoicus was designed for a literary life, which, to the generality of mankind, appears almost exempt from the common attacks of ill fortune; but if there were no other instances of the peculiar miseries of the student, Stoicus alone might evince the groundlessness of such an opinion. From a sanguine temper, he was prone to anticipate success; and from