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I shall not here mention the several entertainments of art, with the
pleasures of friendship, books, conversation, and other accidental
diversions of life, because I would only take notice of such incitements
to a cheerful temper, as offer themselves to persons of all ranks and
Conditions, and which may sufficiently show us, that Providence did not
design this world should be filled with murmurs and repinings, or that
the heart of man should be involved in gloom and melancholy.

11. I the more inculcate this cheerfulness of temper, as it is a virtue
in which our countrymen are observed to be more deficient than any other
nation. Melancholy is a kind of daemon that haunts our island, and often
conveys herself to us in an easterly wind. A celebrated _French_
novelist, in opposition to those who begin their romances with a flowery
season of the year, enters on his story thus: _In the gloomy month of_
November, _when the people of_ England _hang and drown themselves, a
disconsolate lover walked out into the fields_, &c.

12. Every one ought to fence against the temper of his climate or
constitution, and frequently to indulge in himself those considerations
which may give him a serenity of mind, and enable him to bear up
cheerfully against those little evils and misfortunes which are common
to human nature, and which, by a right improvement of them, will produce
a satiety of joy, and an uninterrupted happiness.

13. At the same time that I would engage my readers to consider the
world in its most agreeable lights, I must own there are many evils
which naturally spring up amidst the entertainments that are provided
for us, but these, if rightly considered, should be far from overcasting
the mind with sorrow, or destroying that cheerfulness of temper which I
have been recommending.

14. This interspersion of evil with good, and pain with pleasure, in the
works of nature, is very truly ascribed by Mr. _Locke_ in his Essay upon
Human Understanding, to a moral reason, in the following words:

_Beyond all this, we may find another reason_ why _God hath scattered up
and down_ several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things that
environ and effect us, _and blended them together in almost all that our
thoughts and senses have to do with; that we, finding imperfection,
dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness in all the enjoyments
which the creature can afford us, might be fed to seek it in the
enjoymen