as in them lies, they will let them caterwaul, starve, beg, and hang, before they will any ways (though it be in their power) assist or ease:  [1785]so unnatural are they for the most part, so unregardful; so hard-hearted, so churlish, proud, insolent, so dogged, of so bad a disposition.  And being so brutish, so devilishly bent one towards another, how is it possible but that we should be discontent of all sides, full of cares, woes, and miseries?

If this be not a sufficient proof of their discontent and misery, examine every condition and calling apart.  Kings, princes, monarchs, and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look into their estate, you shall [1786]find them to be most encumbered with cares, in perpetual fear, agony, suspicion, jealousy:  that, as [1787]he said of a crown, if they knew but the discontents that accompany it, they would not stoop to take it up. Quem mihi regent dabis (saith Chrysostom) non curis plenum?  What king canst thou show me, not full of cares? [1788]"Look not on his crown, but consider his afflictions; attend not his number of servants, but multitude of crosses.” Nihil aliud potestas culminis, quam tempestas mentis, as Gregory seconds him; sovereignty is a tempest of the soul:  Sylla like they have brave titles, but terrible fits:  splendorem titulo, cruciatum animo:  which made [1789]Demosthenes vow, si vel ad tribunal, vel ad interitum duceretur:  if to be a judge, or to be condemned, were put to his choice, he would be condemned.  Rich men are in the same predicament; what their pains are, stulti nesciunt, ipsi sentiunt:  they feel, fools perceive not, as I shall prove elsewhere, and their wealth is brittle, like children’s rattles:  they come and go, there is no certainty in them:  those whom they elevate, they do as suddenly depress, and leave in a vale of misery.  The middle sort of men are as so many asses to bear burdens; or if they be free, and live at ease, they spend themselves, and consume their bodies and fortunes with luxury and riot, contention, emulation, &c.  The poor I reserve for another [1790]place and their discontents.

For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there’s no content or security in any; on what course will you pitch, how resolve? to be a divine, ’tis contemptible in the world’s esteem; to be a lawyer, ’tis to be a wrangler; to be a physician, [1791]_pudet lotii_, ’tis loathed; a philosopher, a madman; an alchemist, a beggar; a poet, esurit, an hungry jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an husbandman, an emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a [1792]liar; a tailor, a thief; a serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman, the pot’s never from his nose; a courtier a parasite, as he could find no tree in the wood to hang himself; I can show no state of life to give content.  The like you may say of all ages; children live in a perpetual slavery, still under that tyrannical government of masters; young men, and of riper years, subject to labour, and a thousand cares of the world, to treachery, falsehood, and cozenage,