is the only opiate capable of infusing that insensibility, which can enable them to endure the miseries of the one, and the fatigues of the other.  It is a cordial, administered by the gracious hand of providence, of which they ought never to be deprived by an ill-judged and improper education.  It is the basis of all subordination, the support of society, and the privilege of individuals; and I have ever thought it a most remarkable instance of the divine wisdom, that, whereas in all animals, whose individuals rise little above the rest of their species, knowledge is instinctive; in man, whose individuals are so widely different, it is acquired by education; by which means the prince and the labourer, the philosopher and the peasant, are, in some measure, fitted for their respective situations.”

Much of these positions is, perhaps, true; and the whole paragraph might well pass without censure, were not objections necessary to the establishment of knowledge.  Poverty is very gently paraphrased by want of riches.  In that sense, almost every man may, in his own opinion, be poor.  But there is another poverty, which is want of competence of all that can soften the miseries of life, of all that can diversify attention, or delight imagination.  There is yet another poverty, which is want of necessaries, a species of poverty which no care of the publick, no charity of particulars, can preserve many from feeling openly, and many secretly.

That hope and fear are inseparably, or very frequently, connected with poverty and riches, my surveys of life have not informed me.  The milder degrees of poverty are, sometimes, supported by hope; but the more severe often sink down in motionless despondence.  Life must be seen, before it can be known.  This author and Pope, perhaps, never saw the miseries which they imagine thus easy to be borne.  The poor, indeed, are insensible of many little vexations, which sometimes imbitter the possessions, and pollute the enjoyments, of the rich.  They are not pained by casual incivility, or mortified by the mutilation of a compliment; but this happiness is like that of a malefactor, who ceases to feel the cords that bind him, when the pincers are tearing his flesh.

That want of taste for one enjoyment is supplied by the pleasures of some other, may be fairly allowed; but the compensations of sickness I have never found near to equivalence, and the transports of recovery only prove the intenseness of the pain.

With folly, no man is willing to confess himself very intimately acquainted, and, therefore, its pains and pleasures are kept secret.  But what the author says of its happiness, seems applicable only to fatuity, or gross dulness; for that inferiority of understanding, which makes one man, without any other reason, the slave, or tool, or property of another, which makes him sometimes useless, and sometimes ridiculous, is often felt with very quick sensibility.  On the happiness of madmen, as the case is not very frequent,