Virtue is sufficiently difficult with any circumstances, but the
difficulty is increased when reproof and advice are frighted away. In
common life, reason and conscience have only the appetites and passions
to encounter; but in higher stations, they must oppose artifice and
adulation. He, therefore, that yields to such temptations, cannot give
those who look upon his miscarriage much reason for exultation, since
few can justly presume that from the same snare they should have been
able to escape.
No. 173. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1751.
_Quo virtus, quo ferat error_. HOR. De Ar. Poet. 308.
Now say, where virtue stops, and vice begins?
As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the
limbs; so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual
application to the same set of ideas. It is easy to guess the trade of
an artizan by his knees, his fingers, or his shoulders: and there are
few among men of the more liberal professions, whose minds do not carry
the brand of their calling, or whose conversation does not quickly
discover to what class of the community they belong.
These peculiarities have been of great use, in the general hostility
which every part of mankind exercises against the rest, to furnish
insults and sarcasms.
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