evil is the great end
of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly
employed. But surely those whom passion or interest has already
depraved, have some claim to compassion, from beings equally frail and
fallible with themselves. Nor will they long groan in their present
afflictions, if none were to refuse them relief, but those that owe
their exemption from the same distress only to their wisdom and their
virtue.

I am, &c.

AMICUS[a].

[Footnote a: The letter from Amicus was from an unknown correspondent.
It breathes a tenderness of spirit worthy of Johnson himself. But he
practised the lesson which it inculcates;--a harder task! Sterne could
_write_ sentiment.]

No. 108. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1751.

_--Sapere aude:
Incipe. Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam,
Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum_. HOR. Lib. i. Ep. ii. 39.

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise;
He who defers this work from day to day,
Does on a river's bank expecting stay,
Till the whole stream, which stopp'd him, should be gone,
That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. COWLEY.

An ancient poet, unreasonably discontented at the present state of
things, which his system of opinions obliged him to represent in its
worst form, has observed of the earth, "that its greater part is covered
by the uninhabitable ocean; that of the rest some is encumbered with
naked mountains, and some lost under barren sands; some scorched with
unintermitted heat, and some petrified with perpetual frost; so that
only a few regions remain for the production of fruits, the pasture of
cattle, and the accommodation of man."

The same observation may be transferred to the time allotted us in our
present state. When we have deducted all that is absorbed in sleep, all
that is inevitably appropriated to the demands of nature, or
irresistibly engrossed by the tyranny of custom; all that passes in
regulating the superficial decorations of life, or is given up in the
reciprocations of civility to the disposal of others; all that is torn
from us by the violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by
lassitude and languor; we shall find that part of our duration very
small of which we can truly call ourselves masters, or which we can
spend wholly at our own choice. Many of our hours are lost in a rotation
of petty cares, in a constant recurrence of the same employments; ma