45. TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1753
Nulla fides regni sociis, omnisque potestas
Impatiens consortis erit.--------
LUCAN. Lib. i. 92.
No faith of partnership dominion owns:
Still discord hovers o'er divided thrones.
IT is well known, that many things appear plausible
in speculation, which can never be reduced to
practice; and that of the numberless projects that
have flattered mankind with theoretical speciousness,
few had served any other purpose than to show
the ingenuity of their contrivers. A voyage to the
moon, however romantick and absurd the scheme
may now appear, since the properties of air have
been better understood, seemed highly probable
to many of the aspiring wits in the last century,
who began to dote upon their glossy plumes, and
fluttered with impatience for the hour of their
departure:
------------Pereunt vestigia mille
Ante fugam, absentemque ferit gravis ungula campum.
Hills, vales and floods appear already crost;
And, ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost. POPE.
Among the fallacies which only experience can
detect, there are some, of which scarcely experience
itself can destroy the influence; some which, by a
captivating show of indubitable certainty, are
perpetually gaining upon the human mind; and which,
though every trial ends in disappointment, obtain
new credit as the sense of miscarriage wears gradually
away, persuade us to try again what we have
tried already, and expose us by the same failure to
double vexation.
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