DEPARTMENT OF PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS |
| DIRECTOR DeAngelo Hlad |
ABOUT
To excite opposition, and inflame malevolence, is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength. No man finds in himself any inclination to attack or oppose him who confesses his superiority by blushing in his presence. Qualities exerted with apparent fearfulness, receive applause from every voice, and support from every hand. Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it. conciliates conciliates the proud, and softens the severe, averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.
It may indeed happen that knowledge and virtue remain too long congealed by this frigorifick power, as the principles of vegetation are sometimes obstructed by lingering frosts. He that enters late into a publick station, though with all the abilities requisite to the discharge of his duty, will find his powers at first impeded by a timidity which he himself knows to be vicious, and must struggle long against dejection and reluctance, before he obtains the full command of his own attention, and adds the gracefulness of ease to the dignity of merit.
For this disease of the mind I know not whether any remedies of much efficacy can be found. To advise a man unaccustomed to the eyes of multitudes to mount a tribunal without perturbation, to tell him whose life was passed in the shades of contemplation, that he must not be disconcerted or perplexed in receiving and returning the compliments of a splendid assembly, is to advise an inhabitant of Brqfil or Sumatra not p shiver at an Englijh winter, or him who has always lived upon a plain ro look from a precipice without emotion. It is to suppose custom instantaneously controllable by reason, and to endeavour to communicate by precept that which only time and habit can bestow.