they find change produces no alleviation. The Mount of Miseries, in the
Spectator, where all the people change with their neighbours, lay down
an undutiful son, and carry away with them a hump-back, or whatever had
been the source of disquiet to another, whom he had blamed for bearing
so ill a misfortune thought trifling till he took it on himself, is an
admirably well constructed fable, and is applicable to public as well
as private complaints.

A gentleman who had long practised as a solicitor, and was retired from
business, stored with a perfect knowledge of mankind so far as his
experience could inform him, told me once, that whoever died before
sixty years old, if he had made his own fortune, was likely to leave it
according as friendship, gratitude, and public spirit dictated: either
to those who had served, or those who had pleased him; or, not
unfrequently, to benefit some charity, set up some school, or the like:
"but let a man once turn sixty," said he, "and his natural heirs _are
sure of him_:" for having seen many people, he has likewise been
disgusted by many; and though he does not love his relations better than
he did, the discovery that others are but little superior to them in
those excellencies he has sought about the world in vain for, he begins
to enquire for his nephew's little boy, whom as he never saw, never
could have offended him; and if he does not break the chain of a
favourite watch, or any other such boyish trick, the estate is his for
ever, upon no principle but this in the testator.

So it is by those who travel a good deal; by what I have seen, every
country has so much in it to be justly complained of, that most men
finish by preferring their own.

That neither complaints nor rejoicings here at Milan, however, proceed