tainment, exhibit examples of
strength wasting in riot, and beauty withering in irregularity; nor is
it easy to enter a house in which part of the family is not groaning in
repentance of past intemperance, and part admitting disease by
negligence, or soliciting it by luxury.

There is no pleasure which men of every age and sect have more generally
agreed to mention with contempt, than the gratifications of the palate;
an entertainment so far removed from intellectual happiness, that
scarcely the most shameless of the sensual herd have dared to defend it:
yet even to this, the lowest of our delights, to this, though neither
quick nor lasting, is health with all its activity and sprightliness
daily sacrificed; and for this are half the miseries endured which urge
impatience to call on death.

The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of
poverty. Who, then, would not imagine that such conduct as will
inevitably destroy what all are thus labouring to acquire, must
generally be avoided? That he who spends more than he receives, must in
time become indigent, cannot be doubted; but, how evident soever this
consequence may appear, the spendthrift moves in the whirl of pleasure
with too much rapidity to keep it before his eyes, and, in the
intoxication of gaiety, grows every day poorer without any such sense of
approaching ruin as is sufficient to wake him into caution.

Many complaints are made of the misery of life; and indeed it must be
confessed that we are subject to calamities by which the good and bad,
the diligent and slothful, the vigilant and heedless, are equally
afflicted. But surely, though some indulgence may be allowed to groans
extorted by inevitable misery, no man has a right to repine at evils
which, against warning, against experience, he deliberately and
leisurely brings upon his own head; or to consider himself as debarred
from happiness by such obstacles as resolution may break or dexterity
may put aside.

Great numbers who quarrel with their condition, have wanted not the
power but the will to obtain a better state. They have never
contemplated the difference between good and evil sufficiently to
quicken aversion, or invigorate desire; they have indulged a drowsy
thoughtlessness or giddy levity; have committed the balance of choice to
the management of caprice; and when they have long accustomed themselves
to receive all that chance offered them, without examination, lament