32- STUDIES OF NATURE. 



citizens ; that the mothers had fuckled their own 

 children j that the young people had learned their 

 occupations under the paternal roof and infpec- 

 tion ; that they had been treated with much ten- 

 dernefs and indulgence ; that their parents were 

 fondly attached to each other ; and that they all 

 lived together, notwithstanding the hardfhips of 

 their low condition, in a ftate of liberty and cor- 

 diality, which rendered them good, happy, and 

 Satisfied. 



I have thence deduced this other confequence : 

 That we frequently make a falfe eftimate of the 

 happinefs of human life. On feeing here a Gar- 

 dener, with the port of a Roman Emperor ; and 

 there a great Lord, with the mafk of a flave, I 

 imagined, at firft, that Nature had committed a 

 miftake. But experience demonftrates, that the 

 great Lord in queftion is, from the hour of his 

 birth to that of his death, placed in a feries of 

 pofitions, which permit him not to gratify his own 

 inclination three times a year. For he is under 

 the necefïity, from his infancy upward, to do the 

 will, firft of his preceptors and matters; in more 

 advanced life, that of his prince, ofminifters of 

 ftate, of his rivals, nay, frequently, that of his ene- 

 mies. Thus, he finds fetters innumerable in his 

 very dignities. Our Gardener, on the other hand, 

 paries his whole life without being expqfed to the 



flighteft 



