man suspicious who was extremely careful of his health; and who was always believing, when he walked out, that it was going to thunder, or rain: but we should call that person suspicious, who believed that every person with whom he lived, was laying plots to defraud and deceive him. Fear, is certainly a strong predisposing cause to suspicion. It is highly probable that a suspicious man is naturally a timid man; though the converse is not equally probable, that a timid person should be suspicious. Women are timid, but not suspicious; much the contrary.

The particular kind of grief we feel for the loss of reputation, is called shame; the aversion occasioned by which feeling, the desire to escape it, is perhaps, the most powerful of all the passions. The most curious offspring of shame, is shyness; - a word always used, I fancy, in a bad sense, to signify misplaced shame; for a person who felt only diffident, exactly in proportion as he ought, would never be called shy. But a shy person feels more shame, than it is graceful, or proper, he should feel; generally, either from ignorance or pride. A young man, in making his first entrance into society, is so ignorant as to imagine he is the object of universal attention; and that every thing he does is subject to the most rigid criticism. Of course, under such a supposition, he is shy and embarrassed: he regains his ease, as he becomes aware of his insignificance. An excessive jealousy of reputation, is the very frequent parent of shyness, and makes us all afraid of saying and doing, what we might say and do, with the utmost propriety and grace. We are afraid of hazarding anything; and the game stands still, because no man will venture any stake: whereas, the object of living together, is not security only, but enjoyment. Both objects are promoted by a moderate dread of shame; both destroyed by that passion, when it amounts to shyness; for a shy person not only feels pain, and gives pain; but, what

is worst, he incurs blame, for a want of that rational and manly confidence, which is so useful to those who possess it, and so pleasant to those who witness it. I am severé against shyness, because it looks like a virtue without being a virtue; and because it gives us false notions of what the real virtue is. I admit that it is sometimes an affair of body, rather than of mind; that where a person wishes to say what he knows will be received with favour, he cannot command himself enough to do it. But this is merely the effect of habit, where the cause that created the habit has for a moment ceased. When the feelings respecting shame, are disciplined by good sense, and commerce with the world, to a fair medium, the body will soon learn to obey the decisions of the understanding.

Nor let any young man imagine, (however it may flatter the vanity of those who perceive it,) that there can be anything worthy of a man, in faltering, and tripping, and stammering, and looking like a fool, and acting like a clown. A silly college pedant believes that this highest of all the virtues, consists in the shame of the body; in losing the ease and possession of a gentleman; in turning red; and tumbling down; in saying this thing, when you mean that; in overturning every body within your reach, out of pure bashfulness; and in a general stupidity and ungainliness, and confusion of limb, and thought, and motion. But that dread of shame, which virtue and wisdom teach, is, to act so, from the cradle to the tomb, that no man can cast upon you the shadow of reproach; not to swerve on this side for wealth, or on that side for favour; but to go on speaking truly, and acting justly: no man's oppressor, and no man's sycophant and slave. This is the shame of the soul; and these are the blushes of the inward man; which are worth all the distortions of the body, and all the crimson of the face.

I come now to the pain of inactivity, or ennui. All

young animals have a great pleasure in motion; and when they have moved for a long time, they have a great pleasure in remaining at rest. In the one feeling, nature secures the activity of animals, and distinguishes them from the vegetable and the mineral kingdom; by the other, prevents that activity from destroying them. When the mind entertains no desire nor aversion strong enough to induce us to act, either with the body, or by thinking, we are ennuied, and in a state bordering upon the greatest misery. The solitary imprisonment recommended by Howard, has, I fancy, been given up, from its having driven several persons to insanity. The absence of desire and aversion, or, which includes them both, motive, destroyed their reason. A man much given to speculation might have supported himself, perhaps, in such a situation; or a mind fertile in inventing occupations; but it is such a strain upon human nature, that none but its choicest and strongest materials can support it. Baron Trenck, in his dreadful imprisonment, took to engraving pewter pots, which, I believe, was his sole occupation before he began to contrive his escape. Count Saxe, in his solitary cell, formed a strict friendship with a large spider, provided it with flies and gnats, and every dainty that was on the wing; and had so far familiarised the creature to him, that it would crawl upon his hand with the most perfect security, and come out of its hiding-place upon a noise which the count was accustomed to make. It is added, that the jailer, when he perceived the amusement which the count derived from the spider, killed it!

Count Rumford availed himself, in a very ingenious manner, of the pain of ennui. He compelled all the new-comers in his school to sit quite idle, and do nothing. The misery they felt from remaining entirely without occupation, operated as the strongest stimulus in them, to desire work; and they received his

Y

permission to labour in the manufactory, as a liberation from the most painful feelings they had ever experienced. "I have already mentioned," says the Count, "that "those children who were too young to work, were placed upon seats, built round the hall, where other "children worked. This was done in order to inspire "them with a desire to do that, which other children, "apparently more favoured, more caressed, and more "praised than themselves, were permitted to do; and " of which, they were obliged to be idle spectators: and "this had the desired effect. As nothing is so tedious "to a child as being obliged to sit still in the same "place for a considerable time; and as the work which "the other more favoured children were engaged in was

66

light and easy, and appeared rather amusing than "otherwise, (being the spinning of hemp and flax, with "small light wheels, turned with the foot,) these chil"dren who were obliged to be spectators of this busy "and entertaining scene, became so very uneasy in "their situations, and so jealous of those who were "permitted to be more active, that they frequently "solicited, with the greatest importunity, to be al"lowed to work; and often cried most heartily, if this "favour was not instantly granted them. How sweet "these tears were to me, can easily be imagined; "and I always found that the joy they showed upon "being permitted to descend from their benches, and "mix with the working children below, was equal to "the solicitude with which they had demanded that "favour."

It is remarkable, when the body requires rest, the mind is very easily amused: after severe toil in hunting, or war, savages will remain whole days in a state of inactivity. Anything which occupies the mind agreeably, or disagreeably, is an antidote to ennui: severe pain is not compatible with it. There is a story of

a very respectable tradesman, who had retired from business, and who confessed to a friend of his, that the happiest month in the year to him, was the month in which his fit of the gout came on, He was so totally unable to fill up his time, that even the occupation afforded by pain, was a relief to him.

There is no word in our language to signify the remembrance of evil that is past, as there is to signify the anticipation of the evil which is to come; no word contrasted to this meaning of fear: probably because the recollection of pain, is not very painful, as being contrasted with present ease; and because such recollection produces no events, and leads to nothing; whereas, fear -the anticipation of evil — is a very remarkable passion, and immediately leads to a state of activity. Remorse is not the recollection of any past grief, but the sensation of present grief, for past faults, now irremediable.

It appears, then, from this enumeration of the ungrateful passions, which lead men to act from feelings of aversion, that they are all referable to the memory of evil, the actual sensation, the future anticipation of it, or the resentment which any one of these notions is apt to excite. The remembrance of past evils, produces melancholy the sensation of present evils, if they be referred to the body, pain; if to the mind, grief. Envy, hatred, and malice, are all modifications of resentment, differing in the causes which have excited that resentment, as well as in the degree in which it is entertained. Shame is that particular species of grief, which proceeds from losing the esteem of our fellow-creatures: fear, the anticipation of future evils. This is the catalogue of human miseries and pains; and it is plain why they have been added to our nature. By the miseries of the body, man is controlled within his proper sphere, and learns what manner of life it was intended he should