of a small cottage of stone, to the palace raised with ice by the empress of Russia; it was for a time splendid and luminous, but the first sunshine melted it to nothing.
Numb. 21. Tuesday, May 29, 1750.
Terra salutiferas herbas, eademque nocentes,
Nutrit; & urticæ proxima sæpe rosa est.
Ovid.
Our bane and physick the same earth bestows,
And near the noisome nettle blooms the rose.
Every man is prompted by the love of himself to imagine, that he possesses some qualities, superior, either in kind or in degree, to those which he sees allotted to the rest of the world; and, whatever apparent disadvantages he may suffer in the comparison with others, he has some invisible distinctions, some latent reserve of excellence, which he throws into the balance, and by which he generally fancies that it is turned in his favour.
The studious and speculative part of mankind always seem to consider their fraternity as placed in a state of opposition to those who are engaged in the tumult of publick business; and have pleased themselves, from age to age, with celebrating the felicity of their own condition, and with recounting the perplexity of politicks, the dangers of greatness, the anxieties of ambition, and the miseries of riches.
Among the numerous topicks of declamation, that their industry has discovered on this subject,
