ht in seeing it
abused, vilified and disgraced.

I must confess there is nothing that more pleases me, in all that I
read in books, or see among mankind, than such passages as represent
human nature in its proper dignity.

5. As man is a creature made up of different extremes, he has something
in him very great and very mean: a skilful artist may draw an excellent
picture of him in either of these views. The finest authors of antiquity
have taken him on the more advantageous side. They cultivate the natural
grandeur of the soul, raise in her a generous ambition, feed her with
hopes of immortality and perfection, and do all they can to widen the
partition between the virtuous and the vicious, by making the difference
betwixt them as great as between gods and brutes.

6. In short, it is impossible to read a page in _Plato_, _Tully,_ and a
thousand other ancient moralists, without being a greater and a better
man for it. On the contrary, I could never read any of our modish
_French_ authors, or those of our own country who are the imitators and
admirers of that trifling nation, without being for some time out of
humour with myself, and at every thing about me.

7. Their business is, to depreciate human nature, and consider it under
its worst appearances. They give mean interpretations and base motives
to the worthiest actions; they resolve virtue and vice into
constitution. In short, they endeavour to make no distinction between
man and man, or between the species of men and that of brutes. As an
instance of this kind of authors, among many others, let any one examine
the celebrated _Rochefoucault_, who is the great philosopher for
administering of consolation to the idle, the envious, and worthless
parts of mankind.

8. I remember a young gentleman of moderate understanding, but great
vivacity, who, by dipping into many authors of this nature, had got a
little smattering of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a free
thinker, but not a philosopher or a man of sense. With these
accomplishments, he went to visit his father in the country, who was a
plain, rough, honest man, and wise though not learned. The son, who took
all opportunities to shew his learning, began to establish a new
religion in the family, and to enlarge the narrowness of their country
notions; in which he succeeded so well, that he had seduced the butler
by his table talk, and staggered his eldest sister.

9. The old gentleman began to be a