This page has been validated.

6

horizon; where no change of prospect nor variety of images, relieve the traveller from a sense of toil and danger; of whirlwinds, which in a moment may bury him in the sand; and of thirst which the wealthy have given half their possessions to allay? Do those on whom hereditary diamonds sparkle with unregarded lustre, gain from the possession what is lost by the wretch who seeks them in the mine; who lives excluded from the common bounties of nature; to whom even the vicissitude of day and night is not known; who sighs in perpetual darkness, and whose life is one mournful alternative of insensibility and labour? If those are not happy who possess in proportion as those are wretched who bestow, how vain a dream is the life of man! And if there is indeed such difference in the value of existence, how shall we acquit of partiality, the hand by which this difference has been made?

"While my thoughts thus multipled, and my heart burnt within me, I became sensible of a sudden influence from above.--The streets and the crouds of Mecca