74. Apology for neglecting officious advice
81. Incitement to enterprise and emulation. Some account of the admirable Crichton
84. Folly of false pretences to importance. A journey in a stagecoach
85. Study, composition, and converse equally necessary to intellectual accomplishment
95. Apology for apparent plagiarism. Sources of literary variety
99. Projectors injudiciously censured and applauded
102. Infelicities of retirement to men of business
107. Different opinions equally plausible
111. The pleasures and advantages of industry
119. The folly of creating artificial wants
128. Men differently employed unjustly censured by each other
28. Wedding-day. Grocer's wife. Chairman.
31. Disguises of idleness. Sober's character.
35. Auction-hunter described and ridiculed.
41. Serious reflections on the death of a friend.
46. Molly Quick's complaint of her mistress.
47. Deborah Ginger's account of city-wits.
48. The bustle of idleness described and ridiculed.
62. Hanger's account of the vanity of riches.
78. Steady, Snug, Startle, Solid and Misty.
83. Scruple, Wormwood, Sturdy and Gentle.
85. Books multiplied by useless compilations.
_Has toties optata exegit gloria pænas._ Juv. Sat. x. 187. Such fate pursues the votaries of praise.
To a benevolent disposition, every state of life will afford some opportunities of contributing to the welfare of mankind. Opulence and splendour are enabled to dispel the cloud of adversity, to dry up the tears of the widow and the orphan, and to increase the felicity of all around them: their example will animate virtue, and retard the progress of vice. And even indigence and obscurity, though without power to confer happiness, may at least prevent misery, and apprize those who are blinded by their passions, that they are on the brink of irremediable calamity. Pleased, therefore, with the thought of recovering others from that folly which has embittered my own days, I have presumed to address the ADVENTURER from the dreary mansions of wretchedness and despair, of which the gates are so wonderfully constructed, as to fly open for the reception of strangers, though they are impervious as a rock of adamant to such as are within them:
--_Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes utque dies patet atri janua Ditis: Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est_.--VIRG. Æn. vi. 126.