niform and diversified; to the
commander of armies and the writer at a desk; to the sailor who resigns
himself to the wind and water, and the farmer whose longest journey is
to the market.

In the present state of the world man may pass through Shakespeare's
seven stages of life, and meet nothing singular or wonderful. But such
is every man's attention to himself, that what is common and unheeded,
when it is only seen, becomes remarkable and peculiar when we happen to
feel it.

It is well enough known to be according to the usual process of nature,
that men should sicken and recover, that some designs should succeed and
others miscarry, that friends should be separated and meet again, that
some should be made angry by endeavours to please them, and some be
pleased when no care has been used to gain their approbation; that men
and women should at first come together by chance, like each other so
well as to commence acquaintance, improve acquaintance into fondness,
increase or extinguish fondness by marriage, and have children of
different degrees of intellects and virtue, some of whom die before
their parents, and others survive them.

Yet let any man tell his own story, and nothing of all this has ever
befallen him according to the common order of things; something has
always discriminated his case; some unusual concurrence of events has
appeared, which made him more happy or more miserable than other
mortals; for in pleasures or calamities, however common, every one has
comforts and afflictions of his own.

It is certain that without some artificial augmentations, many of the
pleasures of life, and almost all its embellishments, would fall to the
ground. If no man was to express more delight than he felt, those who
felt most would raise little envy. If travellers were to describe the
most laboured performances of art with the same coldness as they survey
them, all expectations of happiness from change of place would cease.
The pictures of Raphael would hang without spectators, and the gardens
of Versailles might be inhabited by hermits. All the pleasure that is
received ends in an opportunity of splendid falsehood, in the power of
gaining notice by the display of beauties which the eye was weary of
beholding, and a history of happy moments, of which, in reality, the
most happy was the last.

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the
lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and