ince there is no
ambition however petty, no wish however absurd, that by indulgence will
not be enabled to overpower the influence of virtue. Many there are, who
openly and almost professedly regulate all their conduct by their love
of money; who have no other reason for action or forbearance, for
compliance or refusal, than that they hope to gain more by one than by
the other. These are indeed the meanest and cruellest of human beings, a
race with whom, as with some pestiferous animals, the whole creation
seems to be at war; but who, however detested or scorned, long continue
to add heap to heap, and when they have reduced one to beggary, are
still permitted to fasten on another.

Others, yet less rationally wicked, pass their lives in mischief,
because they cannot bear the sight of success, and mark out every man
for hatred, whose fame or fortune they believe increasing.

Many who have not advanced to these degrees of guilt are yet wholly
unqualified for friendship, and unable to maintain any constant or
regular course of kindness. Happiness may be destroyed not only by union
with the man who is apparently the slave of interest, but with him whom
a wild opinion of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause,
disposes to pursue every injury with unwearied and perpetual resentment;
with him whose vanity inclines him to consider every man as a rival in
every pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts his friend's
affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and who thinks his forgetfulness
of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose
inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice through varieties
of friendship, and who adopts and dismisses favourites by the sudden
impulse of caprice.

Thus numerous are the dangers to which the converse of mankind exposes
us, and which can be avoided only by prudent distrust. He therefore
that, remembering this salutary maxim, learns early to withhold his
fondness from fair appearances, will have reason to pay some honours to
Bias of Priene, who enabled him to become wise without the cost of
experience.

No. 176. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1751

--_Naso suspendis adunco_. HOR. Lib. i. Sat. vi. 5.

On me you turn the nose.--

There are many vexatious accidents and uneasy situations which raise
little compassion for the sufferer, and which no man but those whom they
immediately distress can regard with seriousness. Petty mischiefs, that
have no