Beware, my love, I conjure you, of
that self-delusion, which has been fatal to the peace of so many
persons; beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of
sensibility; if you yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for
ever. Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of
fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound
fortitude with apathy; apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too,
that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all
the abstract sentiment in the world. Sentiment is a disgrace,
instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions. The
miser, who thinks himself respectable, merely because he possesses
wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good, for the actual
accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the man of
sentiment, without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who
delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, which
excludes that to the calls of any practical virtue, that they turn
from the distressed, and, because their sufferings are painful to be
contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them.
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