Few are placed in a situation so gloomy and distressful, as not
to see every day beings yet more forlorn and miserable, from whom they
may learn to rejoice in their own lot.
No inconvenience is less superable by art or diligence than the
inclemency of climates, and therefore none affords more proper exercise
for this philosophical abstraction. A native of England, pinched with
the frosts of December, may lessen his affection for his own country by
suffering his imagination to wander in the vales of Asia, and sport
among the woods that are always green, and streams that always murmur;
but if he turns his thought towards the polar regions, and considers the
nations to whom a great portion of the year is darkness, and who are
condemned to pass weeks and months amidst mountains of snow, he will
soon recover his tranquillity, and, while he stirs his fire, or throws
his cloak about him, reflect how much he owes to Providence, that he is
not placed in Greenland or Siberia.
The barrenness of the earth and the severity of the skies in these
dreary countries, are such as might be expected to confine the mind
wholly to the contemplation of necessity and distress, so that the care
of escaping death from cold and hunger, should leave no room for those
passions which, in lands of plenty, influence conduct, or diversify
characters; the summer should be spent only in providing for the winter,
and the winter in longing for the summer.
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