ment is every moment rising in the mind of
him that walks the streets of London, however inferior in philosophy to
Socrates: he beholds a thousand shops crowded with goods, of which he
can scarcely tell the use, and which, therefore, he is apt to consider
as of no value: and indeed, many of the arts by which families are
supported, and wealth is heaped together, are of that minute and
superfluous kind, which nothing but experience could evince possible to
be prosecuted with advantage, and which, as the world might easily want,
it could scarcely be expected to encourage.

But so it is, that custom, curiosity, or wantonness, supplies every art
with patrons, and finds purchasers for every manufacture; the world is
so adjusted, that not only bread, but riches may be obtained without
great abilities or arduous performances: the most unskilful hand and
unenlightened mind have sufficient incitements to industry; for he that
is resolutely busy, can scarcely be in want. There is, indeed, no
employment, however despicable, from which a man may not promise himself
more than competence, when he sees thousands and myriads raised to
dignity, by no other merit than that of contributing to supply their
neighbours with the means of sucking smoke through a tube of clay; and
others raising contributions upon those, whose elegance disdains the
grossness of smoky luxury, by grinding the same materials into a. powder
that may at once gratify and impair the smell.

Not only by these popular and modish trifles, but by a thousand unheeded
and evanescent kinds of business, are the multitudes of this city
preserved from idleness, and consequently from want. In the endless
variety of tastes and circumstances that diversify mankind, nothing is
so superfluous, but that some one desires it: or so common, but that
some one is compelled to buy it. As nothing is useless but because it is
in improper hands, what is thrown away by one is gathered up by another;
and the refuse of part of mankind furnishes a subordinate class with the
materials necessary to their support.

When I look round upon those who are thus variously exerting their
qualifications, I cannot but admire the secret concatenation of society
that links together the great and the mean, the illustrious and the
obscure; and consider with benevolent satisfaction, that no man, unless
his body or mind be totally disabled, has need to suffer the
mortification of seeing himself useless or burthe