Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/97

 toils and variable pleasures of mortality, may enter where error, and pain, and inconsistency are forever excluded.

 

THERE are certain propensities and emotions implanted in our nature, which are discernible in the early stages of infancy, and often survive the decay and debility of age. Their language is so universal as to be scarcely modified by the different customs of distant nations or remote ages; so unequivocal as to be understood equally by the learned and ignorant; and so strong as frequently to imprint indelible lines upon the countenance. These are the passions. By their due regulation they promote enjoyment, or by improper latitude embitter the cup of human life. And as in the vegetable kingdom, nature is said to have distributed no poison without its correspondent remedy, so in the moral world there exist powers to counteract, to restrain, or to conquer these latent principles 