_Flatus_ is very ill-natured, or otherwise, just as his affairs happen to be when you visit him. If you find him when some project is almost wore out, you will find a peevish, ill-bred man; but if you had seen him just as he entered upon his _riding regimen_, or begun to excel in sounding the horn, you had been saluted with great civility. _Flatus_ is now at a full stand, and is doing what he never did in his life before. He is _reasoning_ and _reflecting_ with himself. He loses several days, in considering which of his _cast-off_ ways of life he should try again. But here a new project comes in to his relief. He is now living upon _herbs_, and running about the country, to get himself in as _good wind_ as any _running footman_ in the kingdom. 6. I have been thus circumstantial in so many foolish particulars, because I hope that every particular folly that you here see, will naturally turn itself into an argument for the wisdom and happiness of a religious life. If I could lay before you a particular account of all the circumstances of terror and distress, that daily attend a life at _sea_, the more particular I was in the account, the more I should make you feel and rejoice in the happiness of living upon the _land_. In like manner, the more I enumerate the _follies_, _anxieties_, _delusions_, and restless desires which go thro’ every part of a life devoted to worldly enjoyments, the more you must be affected with that peace, and rest, and solid content, which religion gives to the souls of men. 7. But you will perhaps say, that the ridiculous, restless life of _Flatus_, is not the common state of those who neglect the strict rules of religion; and that therefore it is not so great an argument of the happiness of a religious life. I answer, that I am afraid it is one of the most _general characters_ in life; and that few people can read it, without seeing something in it that belongs to themselves. For where shall we find that wise and happy man, who has not been eagerly pursuing different appearances of happiness, sometimes thinking it was here, and sometimes there? And if people were to divide their lives into particular stages, and ask themselves what they were pursuing, or what it was which they had chiefly in view, when they were _twenty_ years old, what at _twenty-five_, what at _thirty_, what at _forty_, what at _fifty_, and so on, till they were brought to their last bed, numbers of people would find, that they had pursued as many different appearances of happiness, as are to be seen in the life of _Flatus_. And thus it must be, more or less, with all who propose any other happiness, than that which arises from a strict and regular piety.