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drink to comfort the calls of declining nature, or intereſt enough to reſcue them from the impending horrors of a gaol;--the accumulation of ſuch misfortunes, is more than ſufficient to excite compaſſion, but not always ſufficient, as we find by melancholy example, to obtain relief.
So ſudden an alteration, is enough to ſhake a philoſophy that has not before been tried; and ſuch a change is ſufficient to excite thoſe complaints which are cauſed by diſappointment, but which may be born with patience, and finaly overcome by calmneſs and reſignation. If we meet with affliction, are we alone unfortunate? If we loſe our all, are we the only beggars. How many are reduced to penury who cannot work! what numbers periſh without help, or are entombed alive without pity! and yet how many emerge from diſtreſs and want, by a manly fortitude, and ſteady perſeverence of conduct! The hand of power may oppreſs; but innocence has its peculiar triumph, as miſery cannot reach the grave; for that is the retreat of Virtue, her conſummation, and her end.
I can hardly prevail upon myſelf to believe, that the united violence of ail the winds that ruſh from the heavens, blown through one tub, and directed to one ſpot, could have occaſioned ſuch deſtruction, and in ſo ſhort a ſpace of time, as that of which I was an unfortunate witneſs, and of which I am now become the feeble recorder. If we even conclude it poſſible that the ruins of our buildings could have been occaſioned by the concentration of its fury, how are we to account for ſome phænomena of which were the ſuffering and aſtoniſhed ſpectators? How account for the ſudden irruption of rivers, the lapſes of earth, the diſunion of rocks, the fiſſures of mountains, and for other objects of the ſublime and terrible, which have changed and
