That splendour and elegance are not desirable, I am not so abstracted
from life to inculcate; but if we inquire closely into the reason for
which they are esteemed, we shall find them valued principally as
evidences of wealth. Nothing, therefore, can show greater depravity of
understanding, than to delight in the show when the reality is wanting;
or voluntarily to become poor, that strangers may for a time imagine us
to be rich.
But there are yet minuter objects and more trifling anxieties. Men may
be found, who are kept from sleep by the want of a shell particularly
variegated! who are wasting their lives, in stratagems to obtain a book
in a language which they do not understand; who pine with envy at the
flowers of another man's parterre; who hover like vultures round the
owner of a fossil, in hopes to plunder his cabinet at his death; and who
would not much regret to see a street in flames, if a box of medals
might be scattered in the tumult.
He that imagines me to speak of these sages in terms exaggerated and
hyperbolical, has conversed but little with the race of virtuosos. A
slight acquaintance with their studies, and a few visits to their
assemblies, would inform him, that nothing is so worthless, but that
prejudice and caprice can give it value; nor any thing of so little use,
but that by indulging an idle competition or unreasonable pride, a man
may make it to himself one of the necessaries of life.
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