privacy, and gratify himself once
more by scenes with which nature has formed him to be delighted?

Many moral sentiments likewise are so adapted to our state, that they
find approbation whenever they solicit it, and are seldom read without
exciting a gentle emotion in the mind: such is the comparison of the
life of man with the duration of a flower, a thought which perhaps every
nation has heard warbled in its own language, from the inspired poets of
the Hebrews to our own times; yet this comparion must always please,
because every heart feels its justness, and every hour confirms it by
example.

Such, likewise, is the precept that directs us to use the present hour,
and refer nothing to a distant time, which we are uncertain whether we
shall reach: this every moralist may venture to inculcate, because it
will always be approved, and because it is always forgotten.

This rule is, indeed, every day enforced, by arguments more powerful
than the dissertations of moralists: we see men pleasing themselves with
future happiness, fixing a certain hour for the completion of their
wishes, and perishing, some at a greater and some at a less distance
from the happy time; all complaining of their disappointments, and
lamenting that they had suffered the years which heaven allowed them, to
pass without improvement, and deferred the principal purpose of their
lives to the time when life itself was to forsake them.

It is not only uncertain, whether, through all the casualties and
dangers which beset the life of man, we shall be able to reach the time
appointed for happiness or wisdom; but it is likely, that whatever now
hinders us from doing that which our reason and conscience declare
necessary to be done, will equally obstruct us in times to come. It is
easy for the imagination, operating on things not yet existing, to
please itself with scenes of unmingled felicity, or plan out courses of
uniform virtue; but good and evil are in real life inseparably united;
habits grow stronger by indulgence; and reason loses her dignity, in
proportion as she has oftener yielded to temptation: "he that cannot
live well to-day," says Martial, "will be less qualified to live well
to-morrow."

Of the uncertainty of every human good, every human being seems to be
convinced; yet this uncertainty is voluntarily increased by unnecessary
delay, whether we respect external causes, or consider the nature of our
own minds. He that now feels a desire t