ions
insensibly displace or smother the rising apprehension. Professional and
commercial men perhaps, especially when they happen to be persons of
more than ordinary reflection, or of early habits of piety not quite
worn away, easily quiet their consciences by the plea, that necessary
attention to their business leaves them no time to think on these
serious subjects at present. "Men of leisure they confess should
consider them; they themselves will do it hereafter when they retire;
meanwhile they are usefully or at least innocently employed." Thus
business and pleasure fill up our time, and the "one thing needful," is
forgotten. Respected by others, and secretly applauding ourselves,
(perhaps congratulating ourselves that we are not like such an one who
is a spendthrift or a mere man of pleasure, or such another who is a
notorious miser) the true principle of action is no less wanting in us,
and personal advancement or the acquisition of wealth is the object of
our supreme desires and predominant pursuit.

It would be to presume too much on the reader's patience to attempt a
delineation of the characters of the politician, the metaphysician, the
scholar, the poet, the virtuoso, the man of taste, in all their
varieties. Of these and many other classes which might be enumerated,
suffice it to remark, and to appeal to every man's own experience for
the truth of the observation, that they in like manner are often
completely engrossed by the objects of their several pursuits. In many
of these cases indeed a generous spirit surrenders itself wholly up with
the less reserve, and continues absorbed with the fuller confidence,
from the consciousness of not being led to its object by self-interested
motives. Here therefore these men are ardent, active, laborious,
persevering, and they think, and speak, and act, as those, the whole
happiness of whose life turns on the success or failure of their
endeavours. When such, as we have seen it, is the undisturbed composure
of mere triflers, it is less wonderful that the votaries of learning and
of taste, when absorbed in their several pursuits, should be able to
check still more easily any growing apprehension, silencing it by the
suggestion, that they are more than harmlessly, that they are
meritoriously employed. "Surely the thanks of mankind are justly paid to
those more refined spirits who, superior alike to the seductions of
ease, and the temptations of avarice, devote their time an