ng,
uneasiness, and the like bitter ingredients of the left-hand vessel.
Whereas, to their great surprise, they discovered content, cheerfulness,
health, innocence, and other the most substantial blessings of life, in
cottages, shades, and solitudes.

There was another circumstance no less unexpected than the former, and
which gave them very great perplexity in the discharge of the trust
which Jupiter had committed to them. They observed, that several
blessings had degenerated into calamities, and that several calamities
had improved into blessings, according as they fell into the possession
of wise or foolish men. They often found power, with so much insolence
and impatience cleaving to it, that it became a misfortune to the person
on whom it was conferred. Youth had often distempers growing about it,
worse than the infirmities of old age: wealth was often united to such a
sordid avarice, as made it the most uncomfortable and painful kind of
poverty. On the contrary, they often found pain made glorious by
fortitude, poverty lost in content, deformity beautified with virtue. In
a word, the blessings were often like good fruits planted in a bad
soil, that by degrees fall off from their natural relish, into tastes
altogether insipid or unwholesome; and the calamities, like harsh
fruits, cultivated in a good soil, and enriched by proper grafts and
inoculations, till they swell with generous and delightful juices.

There was still a third circumstance that occasioned as great a surprise
to the three sisters as either of the foregoing, when they discovered
several blessings and calamities which had never been in either of the
tuns that stood by the throne of Jupiter, and were nevertheless as great
occasions of happiness or misery as any there. These were that spurious
crop of blessings and calamities which were never sown by the hand of
the Deity, but grow of themselves out of the fancies and dispositions of
human creatures. Such are dress, titles, place, equipage, false shame,
and groundless fear, with the like vain imaginations that shoot up in
trifling, weak, and irresolute minds.

The Destinies finding themselves in so great a perplexity, concluded,
that it would be impossible for them to execute the commands that had
been given them according to their first intention; for which reason
they agreed to throw all the blessings and calamities together into one
large vessel, and in that manner offer them up at the feet of J