our actions for ourselves or for other men primarily originate; and this master passion in a good man's soul, like the larger fishes of prey, will swallow up and destroy all the rest. 15. Tuesday. Consider for one minute the changes produced in this country within the space of two hundred years. Then the whole continent was one continued dismal wilderness, the haunt of wolves and bears and more savage men. Now the forests are removed, the land covered with fields of corn, orchards bending with fruit, and the magnificent habitations of rational and civilized people. Then, our rivers flowed through gloomy deserts and offensive swamps. Now, the same rivers glide smoothly on, through rich countries fraught with every delightful object, and through meadows painted with the most beautiful scenery of nature and of art. The narrow huts of the Indians have been removed, and in their room have arisen fair and lofty edifices, large and well compacted cities. July 21. Wednesday. Kept school. I am now entering on another year, and I am resolved not to neglect my time as I did last year. I am resolved to rise with the sun, and to study the Scriptures on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings, and to study some Latin author the other three mornings. Noons and nights I intend to read English authors. This is my fixed determination; and I will set down every neglect and every compliance with this resolution. May I blush whenever I suffer one hour to pass unimproved. I will rouse up my mind and fix my attention; I will stand collected within myself, and think upon what I read and what I see; I will strive, with all my soul, to be something more than persons who have had less advantages than myself. 22. Thursday. Fast day. Rose not till seven o'clock. This is the usual fate of my resolutions. Wrote the first three chapters of St. James. Wrote in Bolingbroke pretty industriously. Spent the evening at Mr. Paine's. The years of my youth are marked by divine Providence with various and with great events. The last year is rendered conspicuous, in the memorials of past ages, by a series of very remarkable events, of various kinds. The year opened with the projection of three expeditions,1 to prevent the further, and remove the present, depredations and 1 The events referred to are fully narrated in all the histories of the time. Hutchinson, iii. 31-42. Grahame, iii. 382, et seq. Hildreth, ii. 455, et seq. encroachments of our turbulent French neighbors. I shall not minute the gradual steps advanced by each army, but only the issue of each. Braddock, the commander of the forces destined against Du Quesne, and six or seven hundred of his men, were butchered in a manner unexampled in history; all routed and destroyed without doing the, least injury, that we know of, to the enemy. Johnson, with his army, was attacked by the Baron Dieskau, but happily maintained his ground and routed the enemy, taking Dieskau prisoner. Monckton and Winslow, at Nova Scotia, gained their point, took the fortresses, and sent off the inhabitants into these provinces. Boscawen bravely defended our coast with his fleet, and made great havoc among the French merchant-ships. All these actions were performed in a time of peace. Sed paulo majora canamus. God Almighty has exerted the strength of his tremendous arm, and shook one of the finest, richest, and most populous cities in Europe, into ruin and desolation, by an earthquake.' The greatest part of Europe and the greatest part of America, have been in violent convulsions, and admonished the inhabitants of both that neither riches, nor honors, nor the solid globe itself, is a proper basis on which to build our hopes of security. The British nation has been making very expensive and very formidable preparations to secure its territories against an invasion by the French, and to humble the insolent tempers and aspiring prospects of that ambitious and faithless nation. The gathering of the clouds seems to forebode very tempestuous weather, and none can tell but the storm will break heavy upon himself in particular. Is it not then the highest frenzy and distraction to neglect these expostulations of Providence, and continue a rebellion against the Potentate who alone has wisdom enough to perceive, and power enough to procure for us the only certain means of happiness, and goodness enough to prompt him to both? 23. Friday. Rose at seven; wrote the two last chapters of St. James. 24. Saturday. Rose at seven; wrote a little in Greek; afternoon wrote Bolingbroke. 1 The earthquake of the first of November, 1755, which destroyed Lisbon, and was followed in America by that mentioned in the first page of the Diary. 2 It was part of Governor Shirley's plan for 1756, to remove the French from the Lakes; to this end he proposed to raise three thousand men in Massachusetts Bay, as the proportion of the Province to an army of nine thousand, to be completed by the rest of New England and New York. Hutchinson, iii. 44-46 25. Sunday. Rose at half after six. Good sense, some say, is enough to regulate our conduct, and to dictate thoughts and actions which are proper upon certain occasions. This, they say, will soften and refine the motions of our limbs into an easy and agreeable air, although the dancing master was never applied to; and this will suggest good answers, good observations, and good expressions to us, better than refined breeding. Good sense will make us remember that others have as good a right to think for themselves, and to speak their own opinions, as we have; that another man's making a silly speech does not warrant my ill nature and pride in grasping the opportunity to ridicule him and show my wit; a puffy, vain, conceited conversation, never fails to bring a man into contempt, although his natural endowments be ever so great, and his application and industry ever so intense; no accomplishments, no virtues, are a sufficient atonement for vanity and a haughty overbearing temper in conversation; and such is the humor of the world, the greater a man's parts, and the nobler his virtues in other respects, the more derision and ridicule does this one vice and folly throw him into. Good sense is generally attended with a very lively sense and delight in applause; the love of fame in such men is generally much stronger than in other people, and this passion, it must be confessed, is apt to betray men into impertinent exertions of their talents, sometimes into censorious remarks upon others, often into little meannesses to sound the opinions of others, and, oftenest of all, into a childish affectation of wit and gayety. I must own myself to have been, to a very heinous degree, guilty in this respect; when in company with persons much superior to myself in years and place, I have talked to show my learning; I have been too bold with great men, which boldness will, no doubt, be called selfconceit; I have made ill natured remarks upon the intellectuals, manners, practice, &c., of other people; I have foolishly aimed at wit and spirit, at making a shining figure in gay company; but, instead of shining brighter, I only clouded the few rays that before rendered me visible. Such has been my unhappy fate. I now resolve, for the future, never to say an illnatured thing concerning ministers or the ministerial profession; never to say an envious thing concerning governors, judges, ministers, clerks, sheriffs, lawyers, or any other honorable or lucrative offices or officers; never to affect wit upon laced waistcoats, or large estates, or their possessors; never to show my own importance or superiority by remarking the foibles, vices, or inferiority of others. But I now resolve, as far as lies in me, to take notice chiefly of the amiable qualities of other people; to put the most favorable construction upon the weaknesses, bigotry, and errors of others, &c.; and to labor more for an inoffensive and amiable, than for a shining and invidious character. 26. Monday. Rose at seven; read carefully thirty lines in Virgil. 27. Tuesday. Read carefully thirty lines in Virgil. Wrote a little in Bolingbroke at noon, and a little at night. Spent the evening at Mr. Putnam's. 28. Wednesday. Read about forty lines in Virgil, and wrote a little at noon. Nothing more. 29. Thursday. Rose at half after six; read a little Greek 30. Friday. Dreamed away the time. 31. Saturday. The nature and essence of the material world is not less concealed from our knowledge than the nature and essence of God. We see ourselves surrounded on all sides with a vast expanse of heavens, and we feel ourselves astonished at the grandeur, the blazing pomp of those stars with which it is adorned. The birds fly over our heads and our fellow animals labor and sport around us; the trees wave and murmur in the winds; the clouds float and shine on high; the surging billows rise in the sea, and ships break through the tempest; here rises a spacious city, and yonder is spread out an extensive plain. These objects are so common and familiar that we think ourselves fully acquainted with them; but these are only effects and properties; the substance from whence they flow is hid from us in impenetrable obscurity. God is said to be self-existent, and that therefore he must have existed from eternity, and throughout immensity. God exists by an absolute necessity in his own nature; that is, it implies a contradiction to suppose him not to exist. To ask what this necessity is, is as if you should ask what the necessity of the equality between twice two and four is; twice two are necessarily in their own nature equal to four, not only here, but in every point of space; not only now, but in every point of duration. In the same manner God necessarily exists, not only here, but throughout unlimited space; not only now, but through out all duration, past and future. We observe in the animate and in the inanimate creation a surprising diversity and a surprising uniformity. Of inanimate substances there is a great variety, from the pebble in the streets quite up to the vegetables in the forest; of animals there is no less a variety of species, from the animalcula, that escape our naked sight, quite through the intermediate kinds up to elephants, horses, men. Yet, notwithstanding this variety, there is, from the highest species of animals upon this globe, which is generally thought to be man, a regular and uniform subordination of one tribe to another, down to the apparently insignificant animalcules in pepper water; and the same subordination continues quite through the vegetable kingdom. And it is worth observing that each species regularly and uniformly preserve all their essential and peculiar properties without partaking of the peculiar properties of others. We do not see chickens hatched with fins to swim; nor fishes spawned with wings to fly; we do not see a colt foaled with claws like a bird, nor man with the clothing or armor which his reason renders him capable of procuring for himself. Every species has its distinguishing properties, and every individual that is born has all those properties without any of the distinguishing properties of another species. What now can preserve this prodigious variety of species and this inflexible uniformity among the individuals but the continual and vigilant providence of God? August 1. Sunday. Heard Mr. Maccarty all day. Spent the evening at the Colonel's. The event shows that my resolutions are of a very thin and vapory consistency. Almost a fortnight has passed since I came to Worcester the last time; some part of the time I have spent as frugally and industriously as I possibly could; but the greatest part I have dreamed away as usual. I am now entering upon a new month and a new week; and I should think that one month would carry me forward considerably, if I could keep up a continual presence of mind and a close application at all proper times; this I will labor after. 2. Monday. Agreeably to the design laid last night, I arose this morning before the sun. 7. Saturday. All this past week my designs have been interrupted by the troubles and confusion of the house. I shall be able to resume the thread of my studies, I hope, now. Wrote |