Vice will indeed always produce contempt. The dignity of Alexander,
though nations fell prostrate before him, was certainly held in little
veneration by the partakers of his midnight revels, who had seen him, in
the madness of wine, murder his friend, or set fire to the Persian
palace at the instigation of a harlot; and it is well remembered among
us, that the avarice of Marlborough kept him in subjection to his wife,
while he was dreaded by France as her conqueror, and honoured by the
emperour as his deliverer.

But though, where there is vice there must be want of reverence, it is
not reciprocally true, that where there is want of reverence there is
always vice. That awe which great actions or abilities impress will be
inevitably diminished by acquaintance, though nothing either mean or
criminal should be found.

Of men, as of every thing else, we must judge according to our
knowledge. When we see of a hero only his battles, or of a writer only
his books, we have nothing to allay our ideas of their greatness. We
consider the one only as the guardian of his country, and the other only
as the instructor of mankind. We have neither opportunity nor motive to
examine the minuter parts of their lives, or the less apparent
peculiarities of their characters; we name them with habitual respect,
and forget, what we still continue to know, that they are men like other
mortals.

But such is the constitution of the world, that much of life must be
spent in the same manner by the wise and the ignorant, the exalted and
the low. Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick
qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the
senses are consulted, the same pleasures. The petty cares and petty
duties are the same in every station to every understanding, and every
hour brings some occasion on which we all sink to the common level. We
are all naked till we are dressed, and hungry till we are fed; and the
general's triumph, and sage's disputation, end, like the humble labours
of the smith or ploughman, in a dinner or in sleep.

Those notions which are to be collected by reason, in opposition to the
senses, will seldom stand forward in the mind, but lie treasured in the
remoter repositories of memory, to be found only when they are sought.
Whatever any man may have written or done, his precepts or his valour
will scarcely overbalance the unimportant uniformity which runs through
his time. We do not