by public celebrations. Self-love has indeed many
powers of seducement; but it surely ought not to exalt any individual to
equality with the collective body of mankind, or persuade him that a
benefit conferred on him is equivalent to every other virtue. Yet many,
upon false principles of gratitude, have ventured to extol wretches,
whom all but their dependents numbered among the reproaches of the
species, and whom they would likewise have beheld with the same scorn,
had they not been hired to dishonest approbation.

To encourage merit with praise is the great business of literature; but
praise must lose its influence, by unjust or negligent distribution; and
he that impairs its value may be charged with misapplication of the
power that genius puts into his hands, and with squandering on guilt the
recompense of virtue.

No. 137. TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1751.

_Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt_.
Hor. Lib. i. Sat. ii. 24.

--Whilst fools one vice condemn,
They run into the opposite extreme. CREECH.

That wonder is the effect of ignorance, has been often observed. The
awful stillness of attention, with which the mind is overspread at the
first view of an unexpected effect, ceases when we have leisure to
disentangle complications and investigate causes. Wonder is a pause of
reason, a sudden cessation of the mental progress, which lasts only
while the understanding is fixed upon some single idea, and is at an end
when it recovers force enough to divide the object into its parts, or
mark the intermediate gradations from the first agent to the last
consequence.

It may be remarked with equal truth, that ignorance is often the effect
of wonder. It is common for those who have never accustomed themselves
to the labour of inquiry, nor invigorated their confidence by conquests
over difficulty, to sleep in the gloomy quiescence of astonishment,
without any effort to animate inquiry, or dispel obscurity. What they
cannot immediately conceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or
too extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content themselves with
the gaze of folly, forbear to attempt what they have no hopes of
performing, and resign the pleasure of rational contemplation to more
pertinacious study, or more active faculties.

Among the productions of mechanick art, many are of a form so different
from that of their first materials, and many consist of parts so
numerous and so nicely adapted to ea