to many of the aspiring wits in the last century,
who began to dote upon their glossy plumes, and
fluttered with impatience for the hour of their
departure:

------------Pereunt vestigia mille
Ante fugam, absentemque ferit gravis ungula campum.

Hills, vales and floods appear already crost;
And, ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost. POPE.


Among the fallacies which only experience can
detect, there are some, of which scarcely experience
itself can destroy the influence; some which, by a
captivating show of indubitable certainty, are
perpetually gaining upon the human mind; and which,
though every trial ends in disappointment, obtain
new credit as the sense of miscarriage wears gradually
away, persuade us to try again what we have
tried already, and expose us by the same failure to
double vexation.

Of this tempting, this delusive kind, is the
expectation of great performances by confederated
strength. The speculatist, when he has carefully
observed how much may be performed by a single
hand, calculates by a very easy operation the force
of thousands, and goes on accumulating power till
resistance vanishes before it, then rejoices in the