128 ADAM SMITH. 



his ' Rambler/ his ' Idler/ his ' Rasselas/ where will you 

 find such a picture of the progress of an upstart, which, 

 however, is written in a much more balanced and sen- 

 tentious style than Dr. Smith generally adopts. " In a 

 little time he generally leaves all his own friends behind 

 him, some of the meanest of them excepted, who may 

 perhaps condescend to become his dependants; nor does 

 he always acquire any new ones. The pride of his new 

 connections is as much affected at finding him their equal, 

 as that of his old ones had been by his becoming their 

 superior : and it requires the most obstinate and per- 

 severing modesty to atone for this mortification to either. 

 He generally grows weary too soon, and is provoked by 

 the sullen and suspicious pride of the one, and by the 

 saucy contempt of the other, to treat the first with 

 neglect and the second with petulance, till at last he 

 grows habitually insolent, and forfeits the esteem of all/' 

 Then he concludes beautifully and truly : " He is happiest 

 who advances more gradually to greatness; whom the 

 public destines to every step of his preferment long be- 

 fore he arrives at it; in whom, upon that account, when 

 it comes, it can excite no extravagant joy, and with 

 regard to whom it cannot reasonably create either any 

 jealousy in those he overtakes, or any envy in those he 

 leaves behind." (Vol. I. p. 97.) 



Here, too, is a noble passage of indignant eloquence, 

 which I hope will not be deemed to carry with it any 

 offence to the remote descendants of those assailed ; but 

 if it should, it can only be from a consciousness of the 

 stain enduring, and that stain can be easily wiped out, so 

 that the memory of the past shall redound only to the 

 glory of the present generation. He is speaking of the 



