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morals, and of the very heart and soul of man, originates often in a passive yieldingness of temper and disposition, or in the want of the resolution to say No. Thousands and many thousands, through this weakness, have been the victims of craft and deceit. Thousands and many thousands, once of fair promise, but now sunk in depravity and wretchedness, owe their ruin to the act of consenting, against their better judgments, to the enticement of evil companions and familiars. Had they said No, when duty, when honor, when conscience, when every thing sacred demanded it of them,-happy might they now have been-the solace of their kindred, and the ornaments of society.

Sweetness of temper, charitableness of heart, gentleness of demeanor, together with a strong disposition to act obligingly, and even to be yielding in things indifferent, or of trifling moment—are amiable and estimable traits of the human character: but there must be withal, and as the ground-work of the whole, such a firmness of resolution as will guarantee it against yielding, either imprudently or immorally, to solicitations and enticements. Else one has very little chance, in passing down the current of life, of escaping the eddies and quicksands that lie in his way.

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success; without it, genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies, and brings to its possessor disgrace rather than honor.

NUMBER XLI.

OF THE CALAMITIES OF HEREDITARY IDLENESS.

WE cannot, if we will, make ourselves torpid, like an oyster. We must needs be doing something with our existence, or endure else a wearisome load, as undescribable as it is intolerable. Indeed, occupation of one kind or other is so necessary to human quiet, that life itself is burdensome without it. For short as life is, there are but few who never complain at heart of the superfluity of their time. Whereas the wights, great and small, who have nothing at all to do, are, for the most part, perpetually uttering this most dolorous kind of complaint, or, at least, manifest no ordinary degree of restlessness-being burdened with their time much more than the most busy are burdened with their business.

The misery of idleness is to be seen nearly as much in high life, as in the rags and filth of extreme poverty. In Europe there are classes of people who are idle, as it were, out of neces

sity not that they are unable to find employ, but they are unable to find such employ as they think comports with their dignity. Manual labor of any kind would degrade them; nor does the condition of their rank allow them to enter into trade, or even to embrace any of the learned professions. In fact, save those few who are selected to take part in the administration of government, or who are placed in high military stations, they are condemned, by the exalted condition of their birth, to perpetual idleness. And what is the result? It is that this very exaltation of birth, which places them so far above all ordinary business, makes them doubly wretched.

"There is scarcely any truth more certain or more evident," says a writer who was possessed of a personal knowledge of the splendid group whose picture he has delineated, "than that the noblesse of Europe are, in general, less happy than the common people. There is one irrefragable proof of it, which is, that they do not maintain their own population. Families, like stars or candles, which you will, are going out continually; and without fresh recruits from the plebeians, the nobility would in time be extinct. If you make allowances for the state, which they are condemned by themselves to support, they are poorer than the poor-deeply in debt-and tributary to usurious capitalists, as greedy as the Jews."

Persons in the intermediate grades between the very top and the very bottom of the scale of life, have precious advantages over those who are placed in either extreme. That they have advantages over the lowest, all will readily admit; and that they have some important advantages over the highest, is a position equally true. In point of real, solid comfort and happiness, the

condition of the farmer or mechanic, who supplies his daily wants by the labor of his own hands, is infinitely preferable to that of the noblesse, above described; who, for want of regular occupa tion, are under the hard necessity of taking a deal of pains, and of resorting to numberless expedients and devices, to wear out the tedious moments of their earthly existence. Even whilst, with utmost eagerness, they are seemingly pursuing pleasure, their chief efforts are to escape from misery, by killing the time which hangs so heavily upon their minds and hearts. For as to pleasure, they are so surfeited of it, that they seek it only as preferable to the distressing tediousness of total inaction.

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Although, fortunately, in these United States, there are no hereditary ranks, that fix, as it were, by never-ending entailment, the baneful disease of sloth upon particular families; yet excessive wealth produces, not unfrequently, the like effects. "After a gatherer comes a scatterer" is a proverbial saying, which, in whatever country it originated, is nowhere, perhaps, more strikingly matter-of-fact than in our own. Indeed, nothing can be more natural than the process. gatherer," if he have gathered a very large heap, is, of course, a man of great worldly prudence; but so far from being able to bequeathe that quality to his children, the single circumstance of their being set up in the world with fortunes, has an almost irresistible tendency to render them imprudent and improvident. You cannot put the old head upon the young shoulders. You can hardly convince the rich-born youth, that considerable care and attention will be necessary on his part, merely to keep the fortune that falls to him. There is more than an even chance that he will be either carelessly indolent, or prodigally dissipated; that he will either waste his time in idleness, or spend it in vain, if not vicious pursuits.

The vanity of wealth will alike affect his children and his children's children. They will dote much upon the circumstance of their springing from an opulent stock, and, by natural consequence, will feel themselves quite above the ordinary occupations of life. Meanwhile, the family estate will have been divided and subdivided, till the share of each comes to be very small. A sort of stateliness, is, however, kept up in their narrow circumstances, and even in their poverty. They preserve, with a sort of religious reverence, old pictures, little fragments of plate, or some precious memorial or other of what once was. For the pride of family, founded altogether upon wealth, seldom suffers much abatement by the ruin of that foundation. Thus it is, that the needy descendants of a very rich family are in a worse condition, by far, than most others of the sons and daughters of want; since the indolence of their habits, and the magnificence of their notions, alike disable them for procuring a comfortable livelihood, and for enjoying the little they possess.

There is one kind of revolution that is perpetually going on in this country;-the revolution in fortunes. The rich families of the last age, all but a few, are utterly extinct as to fortune; and, on the other hand, the families that now figure in the magnificence of wealth, are, in general, the founders of their own fortunes; not a few of them having emerged from obscurity, and some from the deepest shades of poverty. The revolutionary wheel is still turning, and with a few turns more, it will turn down a great part of the present rich families, and will turn up, in their stead, an equal, or perhaps greater number, from the poor and the middling classes. This course has well nigh as firm a fixture, as have the changes of day and night.

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