Another Consideration, that may check our Presumption in putting such a Construction upon a Misfortune, is this, That it is impossible for us to know what are Calamities, and what are Blessings.  How many Accidents have pass’d for Misfortunes, which have turned to the Welfare and Prosperity of the Persons in whose Lot they have fallen?  How many Disappointments have, in their Consequences, saved a man from Ruin?  If we could look into the Effects of every thing, we might be allowed to pronounce boldly upon Blessings and Judgments; but for a Man to give his Opinion of what he sees but in part, and in its Beginnings, is an unjustifiable Piece of Rashness and Folly.  The Story of Biton and Clitobus, which was in great Reputation among the Heathens, (for we see it quoted by all the ancient Authors, both Greek and Latin, who have written upon the Immortality of the Soul,) may teach us a Caution in this Matter.  These two Brothers, being the Sons of a Lady who was Priestess to Juno, drew their Mother’s Chariot to the Temple at the time of a great Solemnity, the Persons being absent who by their Office were to have drawn her Chariot on that Occasion.  The Mother was so transported with this Instance of filial Duty, that she petition’d her Goddess to bestow upon them the greatest Gift that could be given to Men; upon which they were both cast into a deep Sleep, and the next Morning found dead in the Temple.  This was such an Event, as would have been construed into a Judgment, had it happen’d to the two Brothers after an Act of Disobedience, and would doubtless have been represented as such by any Ancient Historian who had given us an Account of it.

O.

[Footnote 1:  [Successes,]]

[Footnote 2:  Diagoras the Melian, having attacked the popular religion and the Eleusinian mysteries, had a price set on his head, and left Athens B.C. 411.  The Athenians called him Atheist, and destroyed his writings.  The story in the text is from the third book of Cicero ’de Natura Deorum.’]

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No. 484.  Monday, September 15, 1712.  Steele.

  ’Neque cuiquam tam statim clarum ingenium est, ut possit emergere;
  nisi illi materia, occasio, fautor etiam, commendatorque contingat.’

  Plin.  Epist.

  Mr. SPECTATOR,

Of all the young Fellows who are in their Progress thro’ any Profession, none seem to have so good a Title to the Protection of the Men of Eminence in it as the modest Man; not so much because his Modesty is a certain Indication of his Merit, as because ’tis a certain Obstacle to the producing of it.  Now, as of all Professions this Virtue is thought to be more particularly unnecessary in that of the Law than in any other, I shall only apply my self to the Relief of such who follow this Profession with this Disadvantage.  What aggravates the matter is, that those Persons who, the better to