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 intensely 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, e