althy city is filled
with innumerable employments, for which the greater part of mankind is
without a name; with artificers, whose labour is exerted in producing
such petty conveniencies, that many shops are furnished with
instruments, of which the use can hardly be found without inquiry, but
which he that once knows them quickly learns to number among necessary
things.

Such is the diligence with which, in countries completely civilized, one
part of mankind labours for another, that wants are supplied faster than
they can be formed, and the idle and luxurious find life stagnate for
want of some desire to keep it in motion. This species of distress
furnishes a new set of occupations; and multitudes are busied, from day
to day, in finding the rich and the fortunate something to do.

It is very common to reproach those artists as useless, who produce only
such superfluities as neither accommodate the body, nor improve the
mind; and of which no other effect can be imagined, than that they are
the occasions of spending money, and consuming time.

But this censure will be mitigated, when it is seriously considered,
that money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and that the
unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they
know how to use. To set himself free from these incumbrances, one
hurries to Newmarket; another travels over Europe; one pulls down his
house and calls architects about him; another buys a seat in the
country, and follows his hounds over hedges and through rivers; one
makes collections of shells; and another searches the world for tulips
and carnations.

He is surely a publick benefactor who finds employment for those to whom
it is thus difficult to find it for themselves. It is true, that this is
seldom done merely from generosity or compassion; almost every man seeks
his own advantage in helping others, and therefore it is too common for
mercenary officiousness to consider rather what is grateful, than what
is right.

We all know that it is more profitable to be loved than esteemed; and
ministers of pleasure will always be found, who study to make themselves
necessary, and to supplant those who are practising the same arts.

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of
close attention, and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish
is not to be studied, but to be read.

No species of literary men has lately been so much multiplied as the