own.  The man of a mild disposition and tender affections, in forming a notion of the most perfect virtue, mixes in it more of benevolence and humanity, than the man of courage and enterprize, who naturally looks upon a certain elevation of mind as the most accomplished character.  This must evidently proceed from an immediate sympathy, which men have with characters similar to their own.  They enter with more warmth into such sentiments, and feel more sensibly the pleasure, which arises from them.

It is remarkable, that nothing touches a man of humanity more than any instance of extraordinary delicacy in love or friendship, where a person is attentive to the smallest concerns of his friend, and is willing to sacrifice to them the most considerable interest of his own.  Such delicacies have little influence on society; because they make us regard the greatest trifles:  But they are the more engaging, the more minute the concern is, and are a proof of the highest merit in any one, who is capable of them.  The passions are so contagious, that they pass with the greatest facility from one person to another, and produce correspondent movements in all human breasts.  Where friendship appears in very signal instances, my heart catches the same passion, and is warmed by those warm sentiments, that display themselves before me.  Such agreeable movements must give me an affection to every one that excites them.  This is the case with every thing that is agreeable in any person.  The transition from pleasure to love is easy:  But the transition must here be still more easy; since the agreeable sentiment, which is excited by sympathy, is love itself; and there is nothing required but to change the object.

Hence the peculiar merit of benevolence in all its shapes and appearances.  Hence even its weaknesses are virtuous and amiable; and a person, whose grief upon the loss of a friend were excessive, would be esteemed upon that account.  His tenderness bestows a merit, as it does a pleasure, on his melancholy.

We are not, however, to imagine, that all the angry passions are vicious, though they are disagreeable.  There is a certain indulgence due to human nature in this respect.  Anger and hatred are passions inherent in Our very frame and constitutions.  The want of them, on some occasions, may even be a proof of weakness and imbecillity.  And where they appear only in a low degree, we not only excuse them because they are natural; but even bestow our applauses on them, because they are inferior to what appears in the greatest part of mankind.

Where these angry passions rise up to cruelty, they form the most detested of all vices.  All the pity and concern which we have for the miserable sufferers by this vice, turns against the person guilty of it, and produces a stronger hatred than we are sensible of on any other occasion.  Even when the vice of inhumanity rises not to this extreme degree, our sentiments concerning it are very much influenced by