the wide and busy scene of active life. From this period, then, when you think you have taken the thread of your fortunes into your own hands, allow me to follow you a few steps.

The first fact, which shows us how little our present situation is the result of our own arrangements, is the innumerable defeats every man's plans encounter. I appeal to any one who has lived long in the world, whether, at any period of his life, he has found himself in the precise circumstances he expected. This certainty of disappointment results from more than one source. In the first place, so various and complicated are human interests, so inordinate are many of our desires, and so unreasonable are others, that two individuals can hardly form extensive plans of conduct, which shall not interfere, if not by direct collision, at least in some subordinate parts, so as to affect the issue of the whole. What a range of disappointment does this single fact open! The success of one half the human race is the partial disappointment of the other. From this single source of disappointment, however real or imaginary, the contrariety of human interests, you see how much of your destiny on earth is placed, at once, out of your control.

It would be impossible to enumerate all the causes of the failure of our plans. One, however, which, more, perhaps, than any other, shows the folly of far extended projects, is the uncertainty of health, a blessing which is attended with no perceptible sensation of pleasure, but which is indispensable to the full enjoyment of every other pleasure. And is this a good which is within the reach of human foresight? I ask you, young man, who have been forming extensive plans of future eminence, you, who are so busy,

while the worm of disease is secretly feeding at the seat of life, and sucking the bloom of health from your cheek; I ask you, laborious man of business, whose plans have attained all the excellence which maturity of mind, long experience, and increasing confidence can give them, have you never felt pains which warn you of your mortality? Have you never laid your head upon the pillow with a foreboding, that to-morrow might sweep you and your projects into oblivion ?

What then! Is man the arbiter of his own fate, when the least mite, that floats in God's air, may derange the whole system of the human constitution? Is man the being to forget that his lot is not within his own disposal, when the first breeze may waft pestilence to his heart, and the first exhalation, which rises up under his nostrils, may poison the source of his being; and, if he partially recover, leave him a life of debility, of inactivity, perhaps of pain and misery? Go to the tombstones, and read there the records of human disappointments. The heads, which are now mouldering in those narrow cells, once teemed with plans as probable as yours.

A second remark, which should satisfy us that our present situation is not the result of our own foresight, is this: that most of the pleasures, we have met with in life, were entirely unexpected; and, of our successes also, how few have been the direct consequences of our plans! The very phrase, “good fortune," intimates this. It implies a happiness which was not premeditated, which was not the object of our calculations, not the fair result of any of the plans we have been laboriously forming. How many have vaulted into seats of power, lifted, by the agitation of the times, into places to which they once dared not raise a

thought! What has raised the men who fill up such a space in history, but who make such blanks in creation, but the combinations of circumstances, which they never foresaw, and tides in human affairs, upon which they never calculated?

But it is not necessary to mount so high for examples. Enumerate, I beseech you, the pleasant circumstances of a single day, and tell me, How many of them came within your anticipations? What are the pleasures which constitute the ordinary, therefore, I may say, the principal, happiness of human life, and attach us so strongly to existence? Are they not the little, domestic, unsought comforts, which one man enjoys almost as well as another? And was it for these common pleasures of life, that you have been all along spreading your nets? No, my friends, acknowledge it was not. It was for the glittering, the envied, the distinguished blessings. You thought you should be miserable, if you did not obtain these; and so you would have been, had not the all-wise Disposer of human affairs ordered better the sources of human happiness. If he had left us to look out for all the little circumstances that make life agreeable, the whole of human felicity would be lost in the toil and weariness of providing for it. No, my friends, the prodigious variety of little circumstances, which make up the daily comfort of life, is not what we seek, but what meets us every hour. Happiness is like the invisible, elastic fluid which we breathe. If we were compelled to seek the pure air which supports respiration, our breath would be soon exhausted in the pursuit.

A third remark only will I make, to add to the weight of proof, that our actual situations in life have been much less in our power than the show of human activity would

lead us, at first, to suppose. If you have passed the meridian of your days, I am sure you are sensible that no unvarying plan has hitherto conducted you. Ask that old man, who has approached so feebly the term of his life, and is now looking back upon the days as they roll away behind him; ask him, how often he has changed his courses, how often he has measured back his steps. Ask him, if much of the short period which is allotted to this busy life has not been spent in recovering what has been lost, in framing new speculations, in guarding against new defeats, in altering even what once appeared to be his ultimate views. It is, indeed, often supposed, that much of the misfortune of human affairs is the consequence of the instability of our purposes, and the perpetual changes of our plans. But, perhaps, the very contrary is often the case. For who has not found, that, by an obstinate adherence to his own plans, or too great confidence in the infallibility of former conclusions, opportunities are continually lost, and many a life worn out in discontentment, and hopes never realized, which might otherwise have been conducted in triumph under the banners of success? What, then, is the conclusion from this fact? That, in order to secure the greatest prosperity, it is necessary to change often our pursuits, and even our ultimate views? Or is it not this: that, in consequence of the narrowness of our comprehension, our best plans are so liable to defeat that it is absurd, in any case, to say that the situation, in which we find ourselves, is the direct result of our own contrivance, and, of course, that our lot in lifeis at our own disposal?

The second division of our subject now calls for our attention. In this I proposed to show you, that, even if our circumstances in life were more at our own disposal, and

our views more frequently accomplished, we should find that we had consulted our own happiness much less frequently and successfully than it is now provided for by what we call the uncertainties and accidents of life.

No doubt, most men, at the close of their days, imagine, that, if they were to begin life again, they should conduct it with more prudence, and, probably, with greater success. But even this common sentiment we know to be extremely fallacious. How much more doubtful, then, or erroneous, are the notions of those who are entering into life, and who imagine, that, if they were once permitted to make their own fortunes, they should infallibly make their own felicity!

In this age of accumulation the majority, perhaps, of mankind, if allowed to have their first wish, would place themselves immediately in the possession of wealth. A few might be found of moderate desires, but most men would rush, at once, into opulence, under the vain expectation, that they were insuring a perpetuity of good, in every treasure they deposited for future supply. As soon, however, as the first flush of acquisition is over, if you ask them whether they have found that wealth is happiness, they will tell you that they have made a deplorable mistake. They will tell you that they have found, to their astonishment, that the care of preserving property was as painful as the anxiety of procuring it, and that to possess was not to enjoy. They will tell you that they have found innumerable pleasures which wealth did not assist them to enjoy, many which it strangely interrupted, and a few from which it had completely excluded them. Recollect, too, my friends, that these persons, whom we have now allowed to choose their situation in life, have chosen it for life.