manity which more than any thing interests our pity. There is nothing in itself which renders it either ungraceful or difagreeable. We only regret that it is unfit for the world, because the world is unworthy of it, and because it must expose the person who is endowed with it as a prey to the perfidy and ingratitude of infinuating falfhood, and to a thousand pains and uneafineffes, which, of all men, he the leaft deferves to feel, and which generally too he is, of all men, the least capable of fupporting. It is quite otherwise with hatred and refentment. Too violent a propensity to those deteftable paffions, renders a perfon the object of univerfal dread and abhorrence, who, like a wild beaft, ought, we think, to be hunted out of all civil fociety. B CHA P. V. Of the Selfish paffions. ESIDES those two oppofite fets of paffions, the focial and unfocial, there is another which holds a fort of middle place between them; is never either fo graceful as is fometimes the one fet, nor is ever fo odious as is sometimes the other. Grief and joy, when conceived upon account of our own private good or bad fortune, constitute this third fet of paffions. Even when exceffive, they are never fo difagreeable as exceffive re fentment, fentment, because no oppofite fympathy can ever interest us against them and when most fuitable to their objects they are never fo agreeable as impartial humanity and just benevolence; because no double sympathy can ever interest us for them. There is, however, this difference between grief and joy, that we are generally most disposed to fympathife with fmall joys and great forrows. The man, who by fome fudden revolution of fortune, is lifted up all at once into a condition of life, greatly above what he had formerly lived in, may be affured that the congratulations of his best friends are not all of them perfectly fincere. An upftart, though of the greatest merit, is generally disagreeable, and å fentiment of envy commonly prevents us from heartily fympathifing with his joy. If he has any judgment he is fenfible of this, and instead of appearing to be elated with his good fortune, he endeavours, as much as he can, to fmother his joy, and keep down that elevation of mind with which his new circumstances naturally infpire him. He affects the fame plainnefs of drefs, and the fame modefty of behaviour, which became him in his former ftation. He redoubles his attention to his old friends, and endeavours more than ever to be humble, affiduous, and complaifant. And this is the behaviour which in his fituation we most approve of; because we expect, it seems, that he fhould have more fympathy with our envy and averfion to his happiness, than we have with his happiness. It is feldom that with all this he fucceeds. We fufpect the fincerity of his humility, and he grows weary of this conftraint. In a little time, therefore, he generally leaves all his old friends behind him, fome of the meanest of them excepted, who may, perhaps, condefcend to become his dependents: nor does he always acquire any new ones; the pride of his new connections is as much affronted at finding him their equal, as that of his old ones had been by his becoming their superior : and it requires the most obftinate and perfevering modefty to attone for this mortification to either. He generally grows weary too foon, and is provoked, by the fullen and fufpicious pride of the one, and by the faucy contempt of the other, to treat the firft with neglect, and the fecond with petulance, till at laft he grows habitually infolent, and forfeits the esteem of all. If the chief part of human happiness arifes from the consciousness of being beloved, as I believe it does, thofe fudden changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness. He is happiest who advances more gradually to greatness, whom the public destines to every step of his preferment long before he arrives at it, in whom, upon that account, when it comes, it can excite no extravagant joy, and with regard to whom it cannot reasonably create either any jealoufy in thofe he overtakes, or any envy in thofe he leaves behind. Mankind, however, more readily fympathise with those finaller joys which flow from lefs lefs important causes. It is decent to be humble amidst great profperity; but we can scarce express too much fatisfaction in all the little occurrences of common life, in the company with which we spent the evening last night, in the entertainment that was set before us, in what was faid and what was done, in all the little incidents of the present conversation, and in all those frivolous nothings. which fill up the void of human life. Nothing is more graceful than habitual chearfulness, which is always founded upon a peculiar relish for all the little pleasures which common occurrences afford. We readily fympathise with it: it infpires us with the fame joy, and makes every trifle turn up to us in the fame agreeable afpect in which it prefents itself to the perfon endowed with this happy difpofition. Hence it is that youth, the feafon of gaiety, so easily engages our affections. That propenfity to joy which feems even to animate the bloom, and to sparkle from the eyes of youth and beauty, though in a person of the fame sex, exalts, even the aged, to a more joyous mood than ordinary. They forget, for a time, their infirmities, and abandon themselves to those agreeable ideas and emotions to which they have long been ftrangers, but which, when the prefence of fo much happiness recalls them to their breast, take their place there, like old acquaintance, from whom they are forry to have ever been parted, and whom they embrace more heartily upon account of this long separation. It is quite otherwife with grief. Small vexations excite no fympathy, but deep affliction calls forth the greateft. The man who is made uneafy by every little difagreeable incident, who is hurt if either the cook or the butler have failed in the least article of their duty, who feels every defect in the highest ceremonial of politeness, whether it be shewn to himself or to any other person, who takes it amiss that his intimate friend did not bid him good-morrow when they met in the forenoon, and that his brother hummed a tune all the time he himself was telling a story; who is put out of humour by the badness of the weather when in the country, by the badnefs of the roads when upon a journey, and by the want of company, and dullness of all public diverfions when in town; fuch a perfon, I fay, though he should have fome reason, will feldom meet with much fympathy. Joy is a pleasant emotion, and we gladly abandon ourselves to it upon the flighteft occafion. We readily, therefore, fympathise with it in others, whenever we are not prejudiced by envy. But grief is painful, and the mind, even when it is our own misfortune, naturally refifts and recoils from it. We would endeavour either not to conceive it at all, or to shake it off as foon as we have conceived it. Our averfion to grief will not, indeed, always hinder us from conceiving it in our own cafe upon very trifling occafions, but it constantly prevents us from sympathifing with it in others when excited by the like frivolous causes: for our |