of difficulty; it is more, heroick as the objects of guilty
gratification are more familiar, and the recurrence of solicitation more
frequent. He that, from experience of the folly of ambition, resigns his
offices, may set himself free at once from temptation to squander his
life in courts, because he cannot regain his former station. He who is
enslaved by an amorous passion, may quit his tyrant in disgust, and
absence will, without the help of reason, overcome by degrees the desire
of returning. But those appetites to which every place affords their
proper object, and which require no preparatory measures or gradual
advances, are more tenaciously adhesive; the wish is so near the
enjoyment, that compliance often precedes consideration, and, before the
powers of reason can be summoned, the time for employing them is past.

Indolence is therefore one of the vices from which those whom it once
infects are seldom reformed. Every other species of luxury operates upon
some appetite that is quickly satiated, and requires some concurrence of
art or accident which every place will not supply; but the desire of
ease acts equally at all hours, and the longer it is indulged is the
more increased. To do nothing is in every man's power; we can never want
an opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft and
imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity; but the
return to diligence is difficult, because it implies a change from rest
to motion, from privation to reality:

--_Facilis descensus Averni:
Noctes atque dies patet atri junua ditis;
Sed revocare gradum, saperasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est_.--VIR. Aen. Lib. vi. 126.

The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies. DRYDEN.

Of this vice, as of all others, every man who indulges it is conscious:
we all know our own state, if we could be induced to consider it, and it
might perhaps be useful to the conquest of all these ensnarers of the
mind, if, at certain stated days, life was reviewed. Many things
necessary are omitted, because we vainly imagine that they may be always
performed; and what cannot be done without pain will for ever be
delayed, if the time of doing it be left unsettled. No corruption is
great but by long negligence, which can scarcely prevail in a mind
regularly and frequentl