RESTLESSNESS AND ENTERPRISE.
An anxious, restless temper, that runs to meet care on its way, that regrets lost opportunities too much, and that is over-painstaking in contrivances for happiness, is foolish, and should not be indulged.[[123]] If you cannot be happy in one way, be happy in another; and this facility of disposition wants but little aid from philosophy, for health and good-humour are almost the whole affair. Many run about after felicity, like an absent man hunting for his hat while it is on his head or in his hand. Though sometimes small evils, like invisible insects, inflict great pain, yet the chief secret of comfort lies in not suffering trifles to vex one, and in prudently cultivating an undergrowth of small pleasures, since very few great ones, alas, are let on long leases.
Nothing will justify, or even excuse, dejection. Untoward accidents will sometimes happen; but, after many years’ experience (writes Mr. Sharp), I can truly say, that nearly all those who began life with me have succeeded, or failed, as they deserved:
Faber quisque fortunæ propriæ.
Though you may look to your understanding for amusement, it is to the affections that we must trust for happiness, These imply a spirit of self-sacrifice; and often our virtues, like our children, are endeared to us by what we suffer for them. Conscience, even when it fails to govern our conduct, can disturb our peace of mind. Yes, it is neither paradoxical nor merely poetical to say:
That seeking others’ good, we find our own.
This solid yet romantic maxim is found in no less a writer than Plato; who, it has been well observed, sometimes in his moral lessons, as well as in his theological, is almost, though not altogether, a Christian.
The passion for enterprise and adventure is the shoal upon which high hopes are constantly being wrecked. We remember, some thirty years since, a merchant of London, who inherited a princely fortune, which he embarked in speculations of almost astounding magnitude. He was a large-minded and generous man; and among other instances of his liberality, was his aid to scientific explorations, in acknowledgment of which he received an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society. He published upon political economy and monetary questions; and with that fatality which often attends those who aspire to public business, our merchant, in some measure, out-ventured his own. Before the problematical economy of vast steam-ships had been settled, he invested large sums in this class of speculation. He was rather athirst for fresh fields than for the gold itself; and with this view he and his family ceded to a chartered company a group of islands discovered some forty years previously through their enterprise, and which the Government had granted them in consideration for their services in more recent discoveries of the southern continent. It was then resolved to colonise the islands as the head-station of the southern whale-fishery; our merchant receiving the appointment of lieutenant-governor. Troops of friends and well-wishers attended the leave-taking; the voyage out was fair and auspicious, and the governor and his little staff planted their bare emblem of authority upon the islands.
The scheme was reasonable; for whale-fishing was rife in the neighbouring seas, and sperm-whales even came into the anchorage. The country is luxuriantly wooded, the flowering plants abound; and the climate is mild, temperate, and salubrious. But the fishery failed, and the horizon soon grew dark with gathering clouds of discontent among the colonists; and there arose cabals, the usual consequence of defeated hopes: as success brightly colours all things in life, so failures darken them. After many months of suffering from indignities heaped upon him by exasperated adventurers, and the confusion which follows such mischances, the governor’s brief authority was respected only by two individuals among the six-score colonists. Such heartless desertion in a land upon whose storm-beaten shores human foot had rarely set, would have made many a stout heart quail: not so our almost friendless representative of authority; and at length the many closed their cruel indignities by determining that he should leave the islands by the first ship which should touch there. This stern resolve was carried into effect; and our merchant-prince, solitary in all respects save hope, returned to the home which he had left amid a choir of aspirations. He memorialised the Government for redress, and besought parliament-men to assert his wrongs; but the only result was the usual official coldness and disinclination to interfere in troublesome matters; although the enterprise was, at the commencement, fully recognised by the colonial authorities at home.
This is a painful story of a few years’ misadventure and wrecked fortune, and ingratitude to a man whose honour and integrity, in the face of misfortune, should at least have shielded him from insult. Yet how forcibly does it illustrate the perils which so often beset the restless spirit!
[123]. Such a person knows as much of what true felicity consists as did Horace Walpole’s gardener, who thought it “something of a bulbous root.”