and shoals with which it is beset.  Pleasure is always before us; but misfortune is at our side:  while running after that, this arrests us.  The most effectual means of being secure against pain, is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness.  Those which depend on ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man will count on; for nothing is ours, which another may deprive us of.  Hence the inestimable value of intellectual pleasures.  Ever in our power, always leading us to something new, never cloying, we ride serene and sublime above the concerns of this mortal world, contemplating truth and nature, matter and motion, the laws which bind up their existence, and that Eternal Being, who made and bound them up by those laws.  Let this be our employ.  Leave the bustle and tumult of society to those who have not talents to occupy themselves without them.  Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others.  Our own share of miseries is sufficient:  why enter then as volunteers into those of another?  Is there so little gall poured into our cup, that we must heed help to drink that of our neighbor?  A friend dies, or leaves us:  we feel as if a limb was cut off.  He is sick:  we must watch over him, and participate of his pains.  His fortune is shipwrecked:  ours must be laid under contribution.  He loses a child, a parent, or a partner:  we must mourn the loss as if it were our own.

Heart.  And what more sublime delight, than to mingle tears with one whom the hand of Heaven hath smitten! to watch over the bed of sickness, and to beguile its tedious and its painful moments! to share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none!  This world abounds indeed with misery:  to lighten its burthen, we must divide it with one another.  But let us now try the virtue of your mathematical balance, and as you have put into one scale the burthens of friendship, let me put its comforts into the other.  When languishing then under disease, how grateful is the solace of our friends! how are we penetrated with their assiduities and attentions! how much are we supported by their encouragements and kind offices!  When Heaven has taken from us some object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline our heads, and into which we may pour the torrent of our tears!  Grief, with such a comfort, is almost a luxury!  In a life where we are perpetually exposed to want and accident, yours is a wonderful proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, and to wrap ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency!  For assuredly nobody will care for him, who cares for nobody.  But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life:  and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.  I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed.  On these, indeed, the sun shone brightly!  How gay did the face of nature appear!  Hills, valleys, chateaux,