lity of recalling the past, or the folly of condemning an
act, which only its event, an event which no human intelligence could
foresee, proved to be wrong. The prize which, though put in my hands,
had been suffered to slip from me, filled me with anguish; and knowing
that complaint would only expose me to ridicule, I gave myself up
silently to grief, and lost by degrees my appetite and my rest.

My indisposition soon became visible: I was visited by my friends, and
among them by Eumathes, a clergyman, whose piety and learning gave him
such an ascendant over me that I could not refuse to open my heart.
There are, said he, few minds sufficiently firm to be trusted in the
hands of chance. Whoever finds himself inclined to anticipate
futurity, and exalt possibility to certainty, should avoid every kind
of casual adventure, since his grief must be always proportionate to
his hope. You have long wasted that time which, by a proper
application, would have certainly, though moderately, increased your
fortune, in a laborious and anxious pursuit of a species of gain which
no labour or anxiety, no art or expedient, can secure or promote. You
are now fretting away your life in repentance of an act against which
repentance can give no caution but to avoid the occasion of committing
it. Rouse from this lazy dream of fortuitous riches, which if
obtained, you could scarcely have enjoyed, because they could confer
no consciousness of desert; return to rational and manly industry, and
consider the mere gift of luck as below the care of a wise man.

_Samuel Johnson._

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE AND THIRTY YEARS AGO

In Mr. Lamb's "Works," published a year or two since, I find a
magnificent eulogy on my old school,[6] such as it was, or now appears
to him to have been, between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very
oddly, that my own standing at Christ's was nearly corresponding with
his; and, with all gratitude to him for his enthusiasm for the
cloisters, I think he has contrived to bring together whatever can be
said in praise of them, dropping all the other side of the argument
most ingeniously.

[Footnote 6: Recollections of Christ's Hospital.]

I remember L. at school; and can well recollect that he had some
peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not.
His friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the
privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through
some i