to comply with necessary affairs, or strong inclinations. He
that too long observes nice punctualities, condemns himself to voluntary
imbecility, and will not long escape the miseries of disease.

The same laxity of regimen is equally necessary to intellectual health,
and to a perpetual susceptibility of occasional pleasure. Long
confinement to the same company which perhaps similitude of taste
brought first together, quickly contracts the faculties, and makes a
thousand things offensive that are in themselves indifferent; a man
accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all
the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general
gratifications of mankind.

In things which are not immediately subject to religious or moral
consideration, it is dangerous to be too rigidly in the right.
Sensibility may, by an incessant attention to elegance and propriety, be
quickened to a tenderness inconsistent with the condition of humanity,
irritable by the smallest asperity, and vulnerable by the gentlest
touch. He that pleases himself too much with minute exactness, and
submits to endure nothing in accommodations, attendance, or address,
below the point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the crowd of
life, be harassed with innumerable distresses, from which those who have
not in the same manner increased their sensations find no disturbance.
His exotick softness will shrink at the coarseness of vulgar felicity,
like a plant transplanted to northern nurseries, from the dews and
sunshine of the tropical regions.

There will always be a wide interval between practical and ideal
excellence; and, therefore, if we allow not ourselves to be satisfied
while we can perceive any errour or defect, we must refer our hopes of
ease to some other period of existence. It is well known, that, exposed
to a microscope, the smoothest polish of the most solid bodies discovers
cavities and prominences; and that the softest bloom of roseate
virginity repels the eye with excrescences and discolorations. The
perceptions as well as the senses may be improved to our own disquiet,
and we may, by diligent cultivation of the powers of dislike, raise in
time an artificial fastidiousness, which shall fill the imagination with
phantoms of turpitude, shew us the naked skeleton of every delight, and
present us only with the pains of pleasure, and the deformities of
beauty.

Peevishness, indeed, would perhaps very little disturb th