WANT OF A PURSUIT.
Such is the complicated constitution of human nature, that a man without a predominant inclination is not likely to be either useful or happy.
He who is every thing is nothing, is as true of our sensitive as of our intellectual nature. He is rather a bundle of little likings, than a compact and energetic individual. A strong desire soon subdues the weaker, and rules us with the united force of all that it subjugates.
Such being the force of human feelings, it must embitter our daily lives if our employments are unsuited to our talents and our wishes; yet how few, alas, are so fortunate as to be gaining either wealth or fame while gratifying an inclination!
In the best of all arts, the art of living, the greatest skill is not to wait; but, as you run along, snatch at every fruit and every flower growing within your reach; for, after all that can be said, youth, the age of hope and admiration, and manhood, the age of business and of influence, are to be preferred to the period of extinguished passions and languid curiosity. At that season, our hopes and wishes must have been too long dropping, leaf by leaf, away. The last scenes of the fifth act are seldom the most interesting, either in a tragedy or a comedy. Yet many compensations arise as our sensibility decays:
Time steals away the rose, ’tis true;
But then the thorn is blunted too.[[88]]
Life, without some necessity for exertion (says Mr. Walker[[89]]), must ever lack real interest. That state is capable of the greatest enjoyment where necessity urges, but not painfully; where effort is required, but as much as possible without anxiety; where the spring and summer of life are preparatory to the harvest of autumn and the repose of winter. Then is every season sweet, and, in a well-spent life, the last the best—the season of calm enjoyment, the richest in recollections, the brightest in hope. Good training and a fair start constitute a more desirable patrimony than wealth; and those parents who study their children’s welfare rather than the gratification of their own avarice or vanity, would do well to think of this. Is it better to run a successful race, or to begin and end at the goal?
[88]. Richard Sharp.
[89]. In The Original, a series of Periodical Papers, published in 1835, by Thomas Walker, M.A., one of the Police Magistrates of the Metropolis.