There are few higher
gratifications, than that of reflection on surmounted evils,
when they are not incurred nor protracted by our
fault, and neither approach us with cowardice nor
guilt.
But this felicity is almost always abated by the
reflection that they with whom we should be most
pleased to share it are now in the grave. A few years
make such havock in human generations, that we
soon see ourselves deprived of those with whom we
entered the world, and whom the participation of
pleasures or fatigues had endeared to our remembrance.
The man of enterprise recounts his adventures
and expedients, but is forced, at the close of
the relation, to pay a sigh to the names of those
that contributed to his success; he that passes his
life among the gayer part of mankind, has his
remembrance stored with remarks and repartees of
wits, whose sprightliness and merriment are now
lost in perpetual silence; the trader, whose industry
has supplied the want of inheritance, repines in
solitary plenty at the absence of companions, with whom
he had planned out amusements for his latter years;
and the scholar, whose merit, after a long series of
efforts, raises him from obscurity, looks round in
vain from his exaltation for his old friends or enemies,
whose applause or mortification would heighten his
triumph.
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