Virtue is sufficiently difficult with any
circumstances, but the difficulty is increased when reproof
and advice are frighted away. In common life, reason
and conscience have only the appetites and
passions to encounter; but in higher stations, they
must oppose artifice and adulation. He, therefore,
that yields to such temptations, cannot give those
who look upon his miscarriage much reason for
exultation, since few can justly presume that from the
same snare they should have been able to escape.
No. 173. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1751
Quo virtus, quo ferat error. HOR. De Ar. Poet. 308.
Now say, where virtue stops, and vice begins?
AS any action or posture, long continued, will
distort and disfigure the limbs; so the mind
likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual
application to the same set of ideas. It is easy to guess
the trade of an artizan by his knees, his fingers, or
his shoulders: and there are few among men of
the more liberal professions, whose minds do not
carry the brand of their calling, or whose conversation
does not quickly discover to what class of the
community they belong.
These peculiarities have been of great use, in the
general hostility which every part of mankind exercises
against the rest, to furnish insults and sarcasms.
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