Our sensations being very much fixed to the moment, we are apt to
forget that more moments are to follow the first, and consequently
that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the whole of a life.
Your attribution appears to have been applied to your life, and the
passing moments of it have been enlivened with content and enjoyment
instead of being tormented with foolish impatience or regrets.
Such a conduct is easy for those who make virtue and themselves
in countenance by examples of other truly great men, of whom
patience is so often the characteristic. Your Quaker correspondent,
sir (for here again I will suppose the subject of my letter resembling
Dr. Franklin), praised your frugality, diligence and temperance,
which he considered as a pattern for all youth; but it is singular
that he should have forgotten your modesty and your disinterestedness,
without which you never could have waited for your advancement,
or found your situation in the mean time comfortable; which is
a strong lesson to show the poverty of glory and the importance
of regulating our minds. If this correspondent had known the nature
of your reputation as well as I do, he would have said, Your former
writings and measures would secure attention to your Biography,
and Art of Virtue; and your Biography and Art of Virtue, in return,
would secure attention to them. This is an advantage attendant upon
a various character, and which brings all that belongs to it into
greater play; and it is the more useful, as perhaps more persons
are at a loss for the means of improving their minds and characters,
than they are for the time or the inclination to do it.
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