strong-minded self-control.

It will therefore be necessary, before I endeavour to impress upon your
mind the duty and advantages of economy, that I should previously help
you to a clear understanding of the real meaning of the word itself.

The difficulty of forming a true and distinct conception of the virtue
thus denominated is much increased by its being equally misrepresented
by two entirely opposite parties. The avaricious, those to whom the
expenditure of a shilling costs a real pang of regret, claim for their
mean vice the honour of a virtue that can have no existence, unless the
same pain and the same self-control were exercised in withholding, as
with them would be exercised in giving. On the other hand, the
extravagant, sometimes wilfully, sometimes unconsciously, fall into the
same error of applying to the noble self-denial of economy the degrading
misnomers of avarice, penuriousness, &c.

It is indeed possible that the avaricious may become economical,--after
first becoming generous, which is an absolutely necessary preliminary.
That which is impossible with man is possible with God, and who may dare
to limit his free grace? This, however, is one of the wonders I have
never yet witnessed. It seems indeed that the love of money is so
literally the "root of all evil,"[65] that there is no room in the heart
where it dwells for any other growth, for any thing lovely or excellent.
The taint is universal, and while much that is amiable and interesting
may originally exist in characters containing the seeds of every other
vice, (however in time overshadowed and poisoned by such neighbourhood,)
it would seem that "the love of money" always reigns in sovereign
desolation, admitting no warm or generous feeling into the heart which
it governs. Such, however, you will at once deny to be the case of