APPLICATION.
The most useful lesson that we can possibly learn, towards the attainment of happiness in this world, is to enjoy those blessings that we have in our power, without vainly pining after those which we have not. Instead of being ambitious of having more endowments than nature has allotted to us, we should spare no pains to cultivate those we have; and which a sourness or peevishness of temper, instead of improving, will certainly lessen and impair. Whoever neglects the happiness within his reach, in order to brood over the consideration of how much happier he might have been, had his situation been like that of others, ingeniously contrives to torment himself, and opens a perpetual source of discontent, which prevents his ever being at ease. He does not reflect, or he would soon discover, that all the desirable properties in the world never centered in one man, and that those who have had the greatest share of them, if of an unhappy disposition, still wished for something more, and wanted to possess some inherent gifts which shone forth in other men: but such persons ought to be put in mind, that it does not become mortals to repine at the will of Heaven, which distributes happiness with an equal hand upon the highest and the lowest of mankind, if they were wise enough, and grateful enough, to perceive it.
