APPLICATION.
This Fable shews us the impropriety and inconvenience of running into extremes, and teaches us, that under all the various and sudden vicissitudes of human life, we ought to bear success with moderation, and misfortune with fortitude and equinamity; to repress immoderate exultation, and unmanly despair. Much of our happiness depends upon keeping an even balance in our words and actions, and in not suffering circumstances to mount us too high in time of prosperity, nor to sink us too low with the weight of adverse fortune. A wise man will not place too high a value on blessings which he knows to be no more than temporary; nor will he repine at evils, whose duration may perhaps be but short, and cannot be eternal. He will submit himself with humility and resignation to the decrees of providence, and the will of heaven. In prosperity, the fear of evil will check the insolence of triumph; and in adversity, the hope of good will sustain his spirit, and teach him to endure his misfortunes with constancy and fortitude.
