ty afterwards to quarrel about a question of
real importance. Grave divines, great statesmen, and deep philosophers
are put out of their way by very little things: nay, discreet, worthy
people, without any pretensions but to good-nature and common sense,
readily surrender the happiness of their whole lives sooner than give
up an opinion to which they have committed themselves, though in all
likelihood it was the mere turn of a feather which side they should take
in the argument. It is the being baulked or thwarted in anything that
constitutes the grievance, the unpardonable affront, not the value
of the thing to which we had made up our minds. Is it that we despise
little things; that we are not prepared for them; that they take us
in our careless, unguarded moments, and tease us out of our ordinary
patience by their petty, incessant, insect warfare, buzzing about us and
stinging us like gnats, so that we can neither get rid of nor grapple
with them; whereas we collect all our fortitude and resolution to meet
evils of greater magnitude? Or is it that there is a certain stream of
irritability that is continually fretting upon the wheels of life, which
finds sufficient food to play with in straws and feathers, while great
objects are too much for it, either choke it up, or divert its course
into serious and thoughtful interest? Some attempt might be made to
explain this in the following manner.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole
or ace than if one has never had a chance of winning it. This is no
doubt in part or chiefly because the prospect of success irritates the
subsequent disappointment. But people have been known to pine and fall
sick from holding the next number to the twenty thousand pound prize in
the lottery. Now this could only arise from their being so near winning
in fancy, from there seeming to be so thin a partition between them and
success. When they were within one of the right number, why could they
not have taken the next--it was so easy: this haunts their minds and
will not let them rest, notwithstanding the absurdity of the reasoning.
It is that the will here has a slight imaginary obstacle to surmount
to attain its end; it should appear it had only an exceedingly trifling
effort to make for this purpose, that it was absolutely in its power
(had it known) to seize the envied prize, and it is continually
harassing itself by making the obvious transition from one numbe