their fituation, that awful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by those circumftances which strike our fenfes, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miferable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the fun; to be fhut out from life and converfation; to be laid in the cold grave a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated in a little time from the affections and almoft from the memory of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for those who have fuffered fo dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellowfeeling feems doubly due to them now when they are in danger of being forgot by every body: and, by the vain honours which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own mifery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our fympathy can afford them no confolation feems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other diftrefs, the regret, the love and the lamentations of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, ferves only to exasperate our sense of their mifery. The happiness of the dead, however, most affuredly, is affected by none of thefe circumftances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the profound fecurity of their repofe. The idea of that dreary and endless melancholy, which

the

'the fancy naturally afcribes to their condition, arifes altogether from our joining to the change which has been produced upon them, our own consciousness of that change, from our putting ourselves in their fituation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to fay fo, our own living fouls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this cafe. It is from this very illufion of the imagination, that the forefight of our own diffolution is fo terrible to us, and that the idea of those circumftances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miferable while we are alive. And from thence arises one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poifon to the happiness, but the great restraint upon the injuftice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individual, guards and protects the fociety.

B

CHA P. II.

Of the Pleasure of mutual Sympathy.

UT whatever may be the caufe of fympathy, or however it may be excited, nothing pleases us more than to obferve in other men a fellow-feeling with all the emotions of our own breaft; nor are we ever fo much fhocked as by the appearance of the contrary.

contrary. Those who are fond of deducing all our fentiments from certain refinements of felf-love, think themselves at no loss to account, according to their own principles, both for this pleasure and this pain. Man, fay they, confcious of his own weakness and of the need which he has for the affistance of others, rejoices whenever he observes that they adopt his own paffions, because he is then affured of that affiftance; and grieves whenever he obferves the contrary, because he is then affured of their oppofition. But both the pleasure and the pain are always felt so instantaneously, and often upon fuch frivolous occafions, that it feems evident that neither of them can be derived from any fuch felf-interested confideration. A man is mortified when, after having endeavoured to divert the company, he looks round and fees that no-body laughs at his jefts but himself. On the contrary, the mirth of the company is highly agreeable to him, and he regards this correfpondence of their fentiments with his own as the greatest applause.

Neither does his pleasure seem to arise altogether from the additional vivacity which his mirth may receive from fympathy with theirs, nor his pain from the disappointment he meets with when he miffes this pleasure; though both the one and the other, no doubt, do in fome measure. When we have read a book or poem fo often that we can no longer find any amusement in reading it by ourselves, we can fill take pleasure in reading it to a companion.

companion. To him it has all the graces of novelty; we enter into the furprize and admiration which it naturally excites in him, but which it is no longer capable of exciting in us; we confider all the ideas which it prefents rather in the light in which they appear to him, than in that in which they appear to ourselves, and we are amufed by fympathy with his amusement which thus enlivens our own. On the contrary, we should be yexed if he did not feem to be entertained with it, and we could no longer take any pleasure in reading it to him. It is the fame cafe here. The mirth of the company, no doubt, enlivens our own mirth, and their filence, no doubt, difappoints us. But though this may contribute both to the pleasure which we derive from the one, and to the pain which we feel from the other, it is by no means the fole caufe of either; and this correfpondence of the fentiments of others with our own appears to be a cause of pleafure, and the want of it a cause of pain, which cannot be accounted for in this manThe fympathy, which my friends exprefs with my joy, might, indeed, give me pleafure by enlivening that joy; but that which they exprefs with my, grief could give me none, if it ferved only to enliven that grief. Sympathy, however, enlivens joy and alleviates grief. It enlivens joy by prefenting another fource of fatisfaction; and it alleviates grief by infinuating into the heart almoft the only agreeable fenfation

ner.

which it is at that time capable of receiving.

It is to be obferved accordingly, that we are still more anxious to communicate to our friends our difagreeable than our agreeable paffions, that we derive ftill more fatisfaction from their fympathy with the former than from that with the latter, and that we are ftill more shocked by the want of it.

How are the unfortunate relieved when they have found out a person to whom they can communicate the cause of their forrow? Upon his fympathy they feem to disburthen themselves of a part of their distress: he is not improperly faid to share it with them. He not only feels a forrow of the fame kind with that which they feel, but as if he had derived a part of it to himself, what he feels feems to alleviate the weight of what they feel. Yet by relating their misfortunes they in fome measure renew their grief. They awaken in their memory the remembrance of thofe circumstances which occafion their affliction. Their tears accordingly flow fafter than before, and they are apt to abandon themselves to all the weakness of forrow. fure, however, in all this, are fenfibly relieved by it; nefs of his fympathy more than compenfates the bitterness of that forrow, which, in order to excite this fympathy, they had thus enlivened and renewed. The crueleft infult, on the contrary, which can be offered to the unfortunate, is to appear to make light of

They take pleaand, it is evident, because the fweet