Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: they sunk later and more suddenly! foi they passed forward till they had sometimes seen all those in whose company they had issued from the straits of infancy perish in the way, and at last were overset by a cross breeze, without the toil of resistance or the anguish of expectation. But such as had often fallen against the rocks of Pleasure commonly subsided by sensible degrees, contended long with the encroaching waters, and harassed themselves by labours that scarce Hope herself could flatter with success. As I was looking upon the various fate of the multitude about me, I was suddenly alarmed with an admonition from some unknown Power:
Gaze not idly upon others when thou thyself art sinking. Whence is this thoughtless tranquillity, when thou and they are equally endangered? I looked, and, seeing the Gulf of Intemperance before me, started and awaked. THE INQUISITIVE MAN.
They search the secrets of the house, and so Are worshipp’d there, and fear’d for what they know. Jay.?Dryden’s Trans. Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects and produces new incitements to farther progress. All the attainments possible in our present state are evidently inadequate to our capacities of enjoyment; conquest serves no purpose but that of kindling ambition, discovery has no effect but of raising ex- p tation- the gratification of one desire encourages another; and, after all our labours, studies, and inquiries, we are continually at the same distance from the completion of our schemes, have still some wish importunate to be satisfied, and some faculty restless and turbulent for want of its enjoyment. The desire of knowledge, though often animated by extrinsic and adventitious m…
