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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

OF

THOMAS CAMPBELL.

"I SIT down to take a retrospect of my life. Why should the task make me sad? Have I not many blessings and many friends? Yes! thanks to God, very many. But life, when we look back upon it, has also many painful recollections; and pain, when viewed either as past or to come, makes a deeper impression on the imagination than either the past pleasures or comforts of life that can be recalled. In the remembrance of our lives we are like unfair tradesmen, who omit a part of their debts in their balance of accounts. We resign ourselves to forget-myriads of the easy, tranquil, or even pleasing though anxious hours of our being; but for an hour of pain we make a large charge in our estimate of compared misery and happiness. I do not think that it is a fair argument to urge against individual-comparative happiness, that because most of us, if the question were put-Would you wish to spend your life over again?- would probably say-No,

* Retrospect of life, written by himself.

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