WERTER, &c. I LETTER XXXVIII. 20th October, 1771. Arrived here yesterday. The minifter is indifpofed, and will not go out for fome days. If he was lefs peevish and morofe all would do well. I fee it but too plainly, heaven has deftined me to fevere trials: but I won't be disheartened; one may bear any thing with a little levity. VOL. II. I can B I can scarcely help fmiling at the word which has just escaped me; a little of that levity, which I am totally without, would make me the happiest of men. And muft I defpair of my faculties, and of the gifts of nature, whilft others of far inferior ftrength and talents are parading before me with the utmost fatisfaction in themselves? Great God! amidst the bleffings thou haft deigned to fhower down upon me, why was I not endowed with felf-complacency and confidence? But patience, and all will I hope be better; for I will own to you, my dear friend, that you were in the right: fince I have been obliged obliged to mix continually with other men; fince I have had an opportunity of obferving their defigns, their conduct, their converfation, I am become more easy, and more satisfied with myself. As we naturally compare ourselves with every thing we meet, our happiness or mifery depends on the objects which are brought into comparison with us, and in this respect nothing is more dangerous than folitude. There our imagination, which is ever difpofed to rife, takes a new flight on the wings of fancy, and forms a chain of beings, of which we are the last and most inferior. All things ap pear greater than they really are, and all feem fuperior to us; and this operation of the mind is natural. We are continually feeling our own imperfections; we think we have observed in others qualities which we have not, and conclude they also poffefs all we have ourselves; and thus we have made a perfect, a happy man-but fuch a man exists only in our imaginations. But when, in fpite of weakness and disappointment, we direct our endeavours to one end, and steadily perfevere in the purfuit of it, we often find that we have made more way though continually tacking, |