touched with his tears, declared, that she thought him
too much of a man to be any longer confined to his book, and he
therefore begins his travels to-morrow under a French governour.
I am, &c.
EUMATHES.
No. 196. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1752.
_Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum,
Multa recedentes adimunt.--_ HOR. De Ar. Poet. 175.
The blessings flowing in with life's full tide,
Down with our ebb of life decreasing glide. FRANCIS.
Baxter, in the narrative of his own life, has enumerated several
opinions, which, though he thought them evident and incontestable at his
first entrance into the world, time and experience disposed him to
change.
Whoever reviews the state of his own mind from the dawn of manhood to
its decline, and considers what he pursued or dreaded, slighted or
esteemed, at different periods of his age, will have no reason to
imagine such changes of sentiment peculiar to any station or character.
Every man, however careless and inattentive, has conviction forced upon
him; the lectures of time obtrude themselves upon the most unwilling or
dissipated auditor; and, by comparing our past with our present
thoughts, we perceive that we have changed our minds, though perhaps we
cannot discover when the alteration happened, or by what causes it was
produced.
This revolution of sentiments occasions a perpetual contest between the
old and young. They who imagine themselves entitled to veneration by the
prerogative of longer life, are inclined to treat the notions of those
whose conduct they superintend with superciliousness and contempt, for
want of considering that the future and the past have different
appearances; that the disproportion will always be great between
expectation and enjoyment, between new possession and satiety; that the
truth of many maxims of age gives too little pleasure to be allowed till
it is felt; and that the miseries of life would be increased beyond all
human power of endurance, if we were to enter the world with the same
opinions as we carry from it.
We naturally indulge those ideas that please us. Hope will predominate
in every mind, till it has been suppressed by frequent disappointments.
The youth has not yet discovered how many evils are continually hovering
about us, and when he is set free from the shackles of discipline, looks
abroad into the world with rapture; he sees an elysian region open
before him, so variegated with beauty, and so stored w
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