When we consider the short duration of human life, when extended even to its longest period, and the many perplexities, cares, and anxities, which contribute to disturb the of even those whom we should be led to consider as happy mortals, what is there in our sublunary pursuits that ought to make any long and impression on our minds?  
We have seen many of the wisest people, on the loss of a darling child, or on a sudden and unexpected in their affairs, retire from the world, and endeavour to seek , by indulging their in some gloomy retreat. Surely, however, nothing can be more inconsistent with the dignity of human nature than such a conduct.
 
If to fly from the face of an enemy in the hour of battle, and seek a retreat in some forest, may be considered as in the soldier, is it no less so in the moral , who has not courage to face the storms of fortune, but flies from the field of adversity, the ground of which he ought to dispute inch by inch?
 
It has been an old and long-received , that Fortune favours the daring, and the coward. Whatever may be the and caprice of Fortune, who sometimes makes a peer of a beggar, and as often reduces the peer to a state of , yet experience tells us, that she is seldom able, for any considerable length of time, to withstand and unremitted importunities; and, when she has us to the bottom of her wheel, whatever motion that wheel afterwards makes, it must throw us . As those, who have enjoyed a good state of health during the prime of their lives, feel the infirmities of age, or a sudden sickness, more keenly than those who have laboured under a weakly and sickly constitution; so those, who have in the perpetual sunshine of fortune, are more of the horrors of unexpected , than those who have been rocked in the cradle of misfortune.
 
To bear prosperity and adversity with equal and is, perhaps, one of the greatest difficulties we have to conquer; and it is from hence we may venture to form our opinions of the generality of people. Those who are in prosperity will be mean in adversity; but he who meets adversity with courage and fortitude, ............