quipage, the sweets of
luxury, the liberality of general promises, the softness of habitual
affability, fill his imagination; and he soon ceases to have any other
wish than to be well received, or any measure of right and wrong but the
opinion of his patron.

A man flattered and obeyed, learns to exact grosser adulation, and
enjoin lower submission. Neither our virtues nor vices are all our own.
If there were no cowardice, there would be little insolence; pride
cannot rise to any great degree, but by the concurrence of blandishment
or the sufferance of tameness. The wretch who would shrink and crouch
before one that should dart his eyes upon him with the spirit of natural
equality, becomes capricious and tyrannical when he sees himself
approached with a downcast look, and hears the soft address of awe and
servility. To those who are willing to purchase favour by cringes and
compliance, is to be imputed the haughtiness that leaves nothing to be
hoped by firmness and integrity.

If, instead of wandering after the meteors of philosophy, which fill the
world with splendour for a while, and then sink and are forgotten, the
candidates of learning fixed their eyes upon the permanent lustre of
moral and religious truth, they would find a more certain direction to
happiness. A little plausibility of discourse, and acquaintance with
unnecessary speculations, is dearly purchased, when it excludes those
instructions which fortify the heart with resolution, and exalt the
spirit to independence.

[Footnote j: "Such are a sort of sacrilegious ministers in the temple of
intellect. They profane its shew-bread to pamper the palate, its
everlasting lamp they use to light unholy fires within their breast, and
show them the way to the sensual chambers of sense and worldliness."
IRVING.]

No. 181. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1751.

_--Neu fluitem dubue spe pendulus horae_. HOR. Lib. i. Ep. xviii. 110.

Nor let me float in fortune's pow'r,
Dependent on the future hour. FRANCIS.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

As I have passed much of my life in disquiet and suspense, and lost many
opportunities of advantage by a passion which I have reason to believe
prevalent in different degrees over a great part of mankind, I cannot
but think myself well qualified to warn those who are yet uncaptivated,
of the danger which they incur by placing themselves within its
influence.

I served an apprenticeship to a linen-draper, with uncommon reputatio