But to encounter the difficulty, we luckily are prepared by what is said above about the power of passion to fit objects for its gratification. Among the other circumstances that terrify a condemned criminal, the short time he has to live is one. Terror, like our other passions, prone to its gratification, adjusts every one of these circumstances to its own tone. It magnifies in particular the shortness of the interval betwixt the present time and that of the execution; and forces upon the criminal a conviction that the hour of his death approaches with a swift pace. In the same manner, among the other distresses of an absent lover, the time of separation is a capital circumstance, which for that reason is greatly magnified by his anxiety and impatience. He imagines that the time of meeting comes on very slow, or rather that it will never come. Every minute is thought of an intolerable length. Here is a fair and I hope satisfactory account, why we reckon time to be tedious when we long for a future event, and not less fleet when we dread the event. This account is confirmed by other instances. Bodily pain fixt to one part, produceth a slow train of perceptions, which, according to the common measure of time, ought to make it appear short. Yet we know, that in such a state time has the opposite appearance. Bodily pain is always attended with a degree of impatience and an anxiety to be rid of it, which make us judge every minute to be an hour. The same holds where the pain shifts from place to place; but not so remarkably, because such a pain is not attended with the same degree of impatience. The impatience a man hath in travelling through a barren country or in bad roads, makes him imagine, during the journey, that time goes on with a very slow pace. We shall show afterward that he makes a very different computation when his journey is at an end. How ought it to stand with a man who apprehends bad news? It will probably be thought, that the case of this man resembles that of a criminal, who, in reckoning the short time he has to live, imagines every hour to be but a minute, and that time flies swift away. Yet the computation here is directly opposite. Reflecting upon this difficulty, there appears one capital circumstance in which the two cases differ. The fate of the criminal is determined: in the case under consideration, the man is still in suspense. Every one knows how distressful suspense is to the bulk of mankind. Such distress we wish to get rid of at any rate, even at the expence of bad news. This case therefore, upon a more narrow inspection, resembles that of bodily pain. The present distress in both cases, makes the time appear extremely tedious. The reader probably will not be displeased, to have this branch of the subject illustrated in a pleasant manner, by an author acquainted with every maze of the human heart, and who bestows ineffable grace and ornament upon every subject he handles.