of guilt are yet wholly unqualified for friendship,
and unable to maintain any constant or regular
course of kindness. Happiness may be destroyed
not only by union with the man who is apparently
the slave of interest, but with whom a wild opinion
of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause,
disposes to pursue every injury with unwearied and
perpetual resentment; with him whose vanity inclines
him to consider every man as a rival in every
pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts
his friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard,
and who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused
by his inattention to himself; and with him whose
inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of
choice through varieties of friendship, and who
adopts and dismisses favourites by the sudden
impulse of caprice.

Thus numerous are the dangers to which the
converse of mankind exposes us, and which can be
avoided only by prudent distrust. He therefore that,
remembering this salutary maxim, learns early to
withhold his fondness from fair appearances, will
have reason to pay some honours to Bias of Priene,
who enabled him to become wise without the cost
of experience.



No. 176. SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 23, 1751