Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/451

 should be lost of improving their fortunes, and lest they should give any occasion to reports which may injure their reputation, and obstruct their advancement. They constrain their words, their actions, and their looks, to obtain popularity, because they consider popularity as necessary to grandeur, and grandeur as the foundation of happiness.

But a very short experience teaches, what might indeed have been without the trial discovered by reflection, that perfect peace, that peace which is so much desired, is not to be found in wealth and greatness. He that succeeds in his first attempts is animated to new designs; new designs produce new anxieties and new opposition; and, though the second attempt should be equally happy, it will be found, as soon as the transports of novelty have ceased, as soon as custom has made elevation familiar, that peace is yet to be sought, and that new measures must be taken for the attainment of that tranquillity, for which it is the nature of man to languish, and the want of which is ill supplied by hurry and confusion, by pomp and variety.

The same disposition which inclines any man to raise himself to a superiority over others, will naturally excite the same desires of greater elevation, while he sees any superiour to himself. There is, therefore, no hope that, by pursuing greatness, any man can be happy, or, at least, this happiness must be confined to one, because only one can be without a superiour; and that one must surely feel his enjoyments very frequently disturbed, when he remembers by how many the station which he possesses is envied and coveted; when he reflects, how easily his possessions may be taken from him, perhaps by the same arts by which he attained them; how quickly the affections of the people may, by artful representations of his conduct, be alienated from him; or how easily he may be destroyed by violence, and what numbers ambition or revenge may invite to destroy him.

There is at least one consideration, which must imbitter