Library Notes

by A. P. Russell

But happiness is as illusive as time, and is proved as perspicuously to be but a thing of memory, by the same venerable saint. "Where, then, and when," he says in his famous Confessions, "did I experience my happy life, that I should remember and love and long for it? Nor is it I alone, or some few besides, but we all would fain be happy; which, unless by some certain knowledge we knew, we should not with so certain a will desire. But how is this, that if two men be asked whether they would go to the wars, one, perchance, would answer that he would, the other that he would not; but if they were asked whether they would be happy, both would instantly, without any doubting, say they would; and for no other reason would the one go to the wars, and the other not, but to be happy. Is it, perchance, that as one looks for his joy in this thing, another in that, all agree in their desire of being happy, as they would agree, if they were asked, that they wished to have joy, and this joy they call a happy life? Although, then, one obtains the joy by one means, another by another, all have one end, which they strive to attain, namely, joy. Which being a thing which all must say they have experienced, it is, therefore, found in the memory, and recognized whenever the name of a happy life is mentioned." Now do you know, perhaps, what happiness is.

Coming down from Augustine to Helps,—"The wonder is that we live on from day to day learning so little the art of life. We are constantly victims of every sort of worry and petty misery, which it would seem a little bit of reflection and sensible conduct would remove. We constantly hang together when association only produces unhappiness. We know it, but do not remedy it.... We have no right to expect to meet many sympathetic people in the course of our lives. ["To get human beings together who ought to be together," said Sydney Smith, "is a dream." "If," said De Tocqueville, "to console you for having been born, you must meet with men whose most secret motives are always actuated by fine and elevated feelings, you need not wait, you may go and drown yourself immediately. But if you would be satisfied with a few men, whose actions are in general governed by those motives, and a large majority, who from time to time are influenced by them, you need not make such faces at the human race. Man with his vices, his weaknesses, and his virtues, strange combination though he be of good and evil, of grandeur and of baseness, is still, on the whole, the object most worthy of study, interest, pity, attachment, and admiration in the world; and since we have no angels, we cannot attach ourselves, or devote ourselves to anything greater or nobler than our fellow-creatures.... It is when estimating better one's fellow-men, one reckons them not by number but by worth; and this makes the world appear small. Then, without regard to distance, one seeks everywhere for the rare qualities which one has learned to appreciate.">[ The pleasant man to you is the man you can rely upon; who is tolerant, forbearing, and faithful.... Again, the habit of over-criticism is another hinderance to pleasantness. We are not fond of living always with our judges; and daily life will not bear the unwholesome scrutiny of an over-critical person." The petty annoyances and wanton bitternesses of life make us, in our impatience, sometimes wish to fly from all companionship; and contributed, no doubt,—he himself could not tell how much,—to make the author of the Genius of Solitude exclaim, with so much feeling, "Happy is he who, free from the iron visages that hurt him as they pass in the street, free from the vapid smiles and sneers of frivolous people, draws his sufficingness from inexhaustible sources always at his command when he is alone! Blest is he who, when disappointed, can turn from the affectations of an empty world and find solace in the generous sincerity of a full heart. To roam apart by the tinkling rill, to crouch in the grass where the crocus grows, to lie amid the clover where the honey-bee hums, gaze off into the still deeps of summer blue, and feel that your harmless life is gliding over the field of time as noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud; or, snuggled in furs, to trudge through the drifts amidst the unspotted scenery of winter, when Storm unfurls his dark banner in the sky, and Snow has camped on the hills and clad every stone and twig with his ermine, is pleasure surpassing any to be won in shallowly consorting with mobs of men."

"The longer I live," said Maurice de Guérin, "and the clearer I discern between true and false in society, the more does the inclination to live, not as a savage or a misanthrope, but as a solitary man on the frontiers of society, on the outskirts of the world, gain strength and grow in me. The birds come and go, and make nests around our habitations; they are fellow-citizens of our farms and hamlets with us: but they take their flight in a heaven which is boundless; the hand of God alone gives and measures to them their daily food; they build their nests in the heart of the thick bushes, and hang them in the height of the trees. So would I, too, live, hovering round society, and having always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky."

A strange instance of abandonment of the world for a solitary life is given in the history of Henry Welby, the Hermit of Grub Street, who died in 1638, at the age of eighty-four. This example affords "an eccentric illustration of one of those phases of human nature out of which the anchoretic life has sprung. When forty years old, Welby was assailed, in a moment of anger, by a younger brother, with a loaded pistol. It flashed in the pan. 'Thinking of the danger he had escaped, he fell into many deep considerations, on the which he grounded an irrevocable resolution to live alone.' He had wealth and position, and was of a social temper; but the shock he had undergone had made him distrustful and meditative, not malignant nor wretched, and engendered in him a purpose of surpassing tenacity. He had three chambers, one within another, prepared for his solitude; the first for his diet, the second for his lodging, the third for his study. While his food was set on the table by one of his servants, he retired into his sleeping-room; and, while his bed was making, into his study; and so on, until all was clear. 'There he set up his rest, and, in forty-four years, never upon any occasion issued out of those chambers till he was borne thence upon men's shoulders. Neither, in all that time, did any human being—save, on some rare necessity, his ancient maid-servant—look upon his face.' Supplied with the best new books in various languages, he devoted himself unto prayers and reading. He inquired out objects of charity and sent them relief. He would spy from his chamber, by a private prospect into the street, any sick, lame, or weak passing by, and send comforts and money to them. 'His hair, by reason no barber came near him for the space of so many years, was so much overgrown at the time of his death, that he appeared rather like an eremite of the wilderness than an inhabitant of a city.'"

Welby must have possessed the jewel which this incident, related by Izaak Walton in his Angler, discovers to be so indispensable. "I knew a man," he says, "that had health and riches and several houses, all beautiful and ready furnished, and would often trouble himself and family to be removing from one house to another; and, being asked by a friend why he removed so often from one house to another, replied, 'It was to find content in some one of them.' 'Content,' said his friend, 'ever dwells in a meek and quiet soul.'"

"It's no in titles nor in rank;
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest;
It's no in making muckle mair:
It's no in books; it's no in lear,
To make us truly blest:
If happiness hae not her seat
And centre in the breast,
We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest:
Nae treasures, nor pleasures,
Could make us happy lang;
The heart aye's the part aye,
That makes us right or wrang."

Out of mud, say the Orientalists, springs the lotus flower; out of clay comes gold and many precious things; out of oysters the pearls; brightest silks, to robe fairest forms, are spun by a worm; bezoar from the bull, musk from the deer, are produced; from a stick is born flame; from the jungle comes sweetest honey. As from sources of little worth come the precious things of earth, even so is it with hearts that hold their fortune within. They need not lofty birth or noble kin. Their victory is recorded. A rain-drop, they say, fell into the sea. "I am lost!" it cried; "what am I in such a sea?" Into the shell of a gaping oyster it fell, and there was formed into the orient pearl which now shines fairest in Britain's diadem. Humility creates the worth it underrates. "By two things," says the author of the Imitation, "a man is lifted up from things earthly, namely, by simplicity and purity. A pure heart penetrateth heaven and hell. Such as every one is inwardly, so he judgeth outwardly. If there be joy in the world, surely a man of a pure heart possesseth it.... Let not thy peace depend on the tongues of men; for whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not on that account other than thyself. He that careth not to please men, nor feareth to displease them, shall enjoy much peace.... He enjoyeth great tranquillity of heart, that careth neither for the praise nor dispraise of men. If thou consider what thou art in thyself, thou wilt not care what men say of thee. Man looketh on the countenance, but God on the heart. Man considereth the deeds, but God weigheth the intentions." "Will you not be very glad to know," wrote Eugénie de Guérin to her brother, in Paris, "that I have just been spending a pleasant quarter of an hour on the terrace-steps, seated by the side of an old woman, who was singing me a lamentable ballad on an event that occurred long ago at Cahuzac? This came about apropos of a gold cross that has been stolen from the neck of the blessed Virgin. The old woman remembered her grandmother telling her that she had heard in olden times of this same church being the scene of a still more sacrilegious robbery, since it was then the blessed sacrament that was carried off one day when it was left exposed in the empty church. A young girl came to the altar while everybody was busy in the harvest, and, mounting upon it, put the pyx into her apron, and went and placed it under a rose-tree in a wood. The shepherds who discovered it told where it was, and nine priests came in procession to adore the blessed sacrament under the rose-tree, and to carry it back to the church. But for all that, the poor shepherdess was arrested, tried, and condemned to be burned. Just when about to die, she requested to confess, and owned the fact to a priest; but it was not, she said, because of any thievish propensities she took it, but that she wanted to have the blessed sacrament in the forest. 'I thought that the good God would be as satisfied under a rose-tree as on an altar.' At these words an angel descended from heaven to announce her pardon, and to comfort the pious criminal, who was burnt on a stake, of which the rose-tree formed the first fagot." There is a tradition that one night, Gabriel, from his seat in paradise, heard the voice of God sweetly responding to a human heart. The angel said, "Surely this must be an eminent servant of the Most High, whose spirit is dead to lust and lives on high." The angel hastened over land and sea to find this man, but could not find him in the earth or heavens. At last he exclaimed, "O Lord, show me the way to the object of thy love!" God answered, "Turn thy steps to yon village, and in that pagoda thou shalt behold him." The angel sped to the pagoda, and therein found a solitary man kneeling before an idol. Returning, he cried, "O master of the world! hast thou looked with love on a man who invokes an idol in a pagoda?" God said, "I consider not the error of ignorance: this heart, amid its darkness, hath the highest place."

Anaxagoras, whose disciples were Socrates and Pericles and Euripides, in reply to a question, said he believed those to be most happy who seem least to be so; and that we must not look among the rich and great for persons who taste true happiness, but among those who till a small piece of ground, or apply themselves to the sciences, without ambition. "The fairest lives, in my opinion," said Montaigne, "are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model, without miracle, without extravagance." "If some great men," said Mandeville, "had not a superlative pride, and everybody understood the enjoyment of life, who would be a lord chancellor, a prime minister, or a grand pensionary?" There is in existence a precious old album containing the handwriting of many renowned men, such as Luther, Erasmus, Mosheim, and others. The last-mentioned has written, in Latin, the following remarkable words: "Renown is a source of toil and sorrow; obscurity is a source of happiness." "Does he not drink more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen vessel," asks Jeremy Taylor, "than he that looks and searches into his golden chalices, for fear of poison, and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in armor, and trusts nobody, and does not trust God for safety?"

"The world," said Goethe, "could not exist, if it were not so simple. This ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again."

"Everything has its own limits," says Hazlitt, "a little centre of its own, round which it moves; so that our true wisdom lies in our keeping in our own walk in life, however humble or obscure, and being satisfied if we can succeed in it. The best of us can do no more, and we shall only become ridiculous or unhappy by attempting it. We are ashamed because we are at a loss in things to which we have no pretensions, and try to remedy our mistakes by committing greater. An overweening vanity or self-opinion is, in truth, often at the bottom of this weakness; and we shall be most likely to conquer the one by eradicating the other, or restricting it within due and moderate bounds."