the most
pleasant employment to every one to do his particular affairs without
wrong to another.

When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself, and the laying out
my money; which is disposed of by one single precept; too many things are
required to the raking it together; in that I understand nothing; in
spending, I understand a little, and how to give some show to my expense,
which is indeed its principal use; but I rely too ambitiously upon it,
which renders it unequal and difform, and, moreover, immoderate in both
the one and the other aspect; if it makes a show, if it serve the turn,
I indiscreetly let it run; and as indiscreetly tie up my purse-strings,
if it does not shine, and does not please me. Whatever it be, whether
art or nature, that imprints in us the condition of living by reference
to others, it does us much more harm than good; we deprive ourselves of
our own utilities, to accommodate appearances to the common opinion:
we care not so much what our being is, as to us and in reality, as what
it is to the public observation. Even the properties of the mind, and
wisdom itself, seem fruitless to us, if only enjoyed by ourselves, and if
it produce not itself to the view and approbation of others. There is a
sort of men whose gold runs in streams underground imperceptibly; others
expose it all in plates and branches; so that to the one a liard is worth
a crown, and to the others the inverse: the world esteeming its use and
value, according to the show. All over-nice solicitude about riches
smells of avarice: even the very disposing of it, with a too systematic
and artificial liberality, is not worth a painful superintendence and
solicitude: he, that will order his expense to just so much, makes it too
pinched and narrow. The keeping or spending are, of themselves,
indifferent things, and receive no colour of good or ill, but according
to the application of the will.

The other cause that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for
the present manners in our state. I could easily console myself for this
corruption in regard to the public interest:

"Pejoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;"

["And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no
similitude in any of Nature's metals."--Juvenal, xiii. 28.]

but not to my own. I am, in particular, too much oppr