all trifles, grovelling with T---- in the very centre of nonsense: now
I am recreated with the brisk sallies and quick turns of wit, which
Mr. Steele, in his liveliest and freest humours, darts about him; and
now levelling my application to the insignificant observations and
quirks of grammar of C---- and D----.

Good God! what an incongruous animal is man! how unsettled in his best
part, his soul; and how changing and variable in his frame of body!
the constancy of the one shook by every notion, the temperament of the
other affected by every blast of wind! What is he, altogether, but a
mighty inconsistency; sickness and pain is the lot of one half of him,
doubt and fear the portion of the other! What a bustle we make about
passing our time when all our space is but a point! what aims and
ambitions are crowded into this little instant of our life, which
(as Shakespeare finely worded it) is rounded with a sleep! Our whole
extent of being is no more, in the eye of Him who gave it, than a
scarce perceptible moment of duration. Those animals whose circle of
living is limited to three or four hours, as the naturalists tell us,
are yet as long-lived, and possess as wide a field of action as man,
if we consider him with a view to all space and all eternity. Who
knows what plots, what achievements a mite may perform in his kingdom
of a grain of dust, within his life of some minutes; and of how much
less consideration than even this, is the life of man in the sight of
God, who is for ever and ever?

Who that thinks in this train, but must see the world, and its
contemptible grandeurs, lessen before him at every thought? It is
enough to make one remain stupefied in a poise of inaction, void of
all desires, of all designs, of all friendships.