There are several people in the world that pass, with some, for well
accomplished gentlemen, and very pretty fellows, though they are as
great strangers to the true uses of virtue and knowledge as the Cock
upon the dunghill is to the real value of the Jewel. He palliates his
ignorance by pretending that his taste lies another way. But, whatever
gallant airs people may give themselves upon these occasions, without
dispute, the solid advantages of virtue, and the durable pleasures of
learning, are as much to be preferred before other objects of the
senses, as the finest brilliant diamond is above a barley-corn. The
greatest blockheads would appear to understand what at the same time
they affect to despise: and nobody yet was ever so vicious, as to have
the impudence to declare, in public, that virtue was not a fine thing.
But still, among the idle, sauntering young fellows of the age, who have
leisure as well to cultivate and improve the faculties of the mind, as
to dress and embellish the body, how many are there who spend their days
in raking after new scenes of debauchery, in comparison of those few who
know how to relish more reasonable entertainments! Honest, undesigning
good sense is so unfashionable, that he must be a bold man who, at this
time of day, attempts to bring it into esteem.
How disappointed is the youth who, in the midst of his amorous pursuits,
endeavouring to plunder an outside of bloom and beauty, finds a treasure
of impenetrable virtue concealed within! And why may it not be said, how
delighted are the fair sex when, from among a crowd of empty, frolic,
conceited admirers, they find out, and distinguish with their good
opinion, a man of sense, with a plain, unaffected person, which, at
first sight, they did not like!