nclined to anticipate futurity,
and exalt possibility to certainty, should avoid every kind of casual
adventure, since his grief must be always proportionate to his hope. You
have long wasted that time, which, by a proper application, would have
certainly, though moderately, increased your fortune, in a laborious and
anxious pursuit of a species of gain, which no labour or anxiety, no art
or expedient, can secure or promote. You are now fretting away your life
in repentance of an act, against which repentance can give no caution,
but to avoid the occasion of committing it. Rouse from this lazy dream
of fortuitous riches, which, if obtained, you could scarcely have
enjoyed, because they could confer no consciousness of desert; return to
rational and manly industry, and consider the mere gift of luck as below
the care of a wise man.

No. 182. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1751.

_--Dives qui fieri vult,
Et cilo vult fieri.--_ JUV. Sat. xiv. 176

The lust of wealth can never bear delay.

It has been observed in a late paper, that we are unreasonably desirous
to separate the goods of life from those evils which Providence has
connected with them, and to catch advantages without paying the price at
which they are offered us. Every man wishes to be rich, but very few
have the powers necessary to raise a sudden fortune, either by new
discoveries, or by superiority of skill, in any necessary employment;
and among lower understandings, many want the firmness and industry
requisite to regular gain and gradual acquisitions.

From the hope of enjoying affluence by methods more compendious than
those of labour, and more generally practicable than those of genius,
proceeds the common inclination to experiment and hazard, and that
willingness to snatch all opportunities of growing rich by chance,
which, when it has once taken possession of the mind, is seldom driven
out either by time or argument, but continues to waste life in perpetual
delusion, and generally ends in wretchedness and want.

The folly of untimely exultation and visionary prosperity, is by no
means peculiar to the purchasers of tickets; there are multitudes whose
life is nothing but a continual lottery; who are always within a few
months of plenty and happiness, and how often soever they are mocked
with blanks, expect a prize from the next adventure.

Among the most resolute and ardent of the votaries of chance, may be
numbered the mortals whose hope is to