Confessions of an Etonian

by I. E. M.

Knowing, at that time, so little of the language of those who surrounded me, as actually to envy the fluency of a parrot which I heard chattering with, I suspect, the true Parisian accent, I can scarcely account for the feeling of thorough nonchalance with which I commenced my pilgrimage, and which ever accompanied me to its conclusion. It was seldom even that I was sensible of loneliness, though I must bear witness to the almost inspired truth of the poet, when he says:—

"But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless,
This is to be alone—this, this is solitude!"

And no one but the solitary pedestrian, entering a crowded city in a foreign land, can know this intense loneliness; but—

"To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
[129] With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean,
This is not solitude;"

and I could scarcely feel that I had even left my home, when, towards the termination of my first day's walk, I came suddenly upon our old friend Blue Beard's Castle! Le Chateau de Barbe Bleu, as it was here designated. Not only was I for the instant transported back to my own country, but to the very nursery; for here, "once upon a time," lived the original and redoubted Blue Beard, the dreaded hero of our nursery romance; and, doubtless, I enjoyed the same lovely and peaceful prospect, though with somewhat different feelings, as "Sister Anne" some centuries foregone.

Never, by any event, were my early days brought so vividly fresh before my mind's eye, as at this moment. In those times, to my recollection, the sun seemed to have been ever shining, the birds ever singing, the trees ever in leaf, and everyone equally kind, and it turns out to be but a silvery regretted dream, never to be re-dreamed. But I comforted myself with the reflection of a better man—"after all, the same blue sky bends o'er all of us, though the point above me might as well beam a little brighter blue." But I have found even an Italian sky to pall at last, to let us have as pleasing a variety of cloud and sunshine, as the better taste of Providence will afford us during our little day, and let us be content.

But the impartiality of Providence towards us in this respect, is very conspicuous, or a little examination into the subject will clear away what few doubts we may entertain concerning it; otherwise, we might feel a difficulty in reconciling the various degrees of happiness which we are apt to suppose prevailed throughout the world, or to exist at present between different persons, with our notions of justice, when we revert from the present refined and peaceful period, to those of barbarism and bloodshed, or think of the pampered alderman and the overworked and starving pauper.

Has, then, the general happiness of mankind actually varied with different epochs? Were the lauded golden ages so much brighter than these of the baser metal? No more so, perhaps, than, in spite of Homer's assertion, were the heroes who contended on the plains of Troy superior in stature or force to those on the plains of Waterloo. As the human constitution accommodates itself to all climes, so our sense of felicity fits itself to external circumstances; and thus the quantity of happiness, or rather, sense of enjoyment, existing at various ages of the world, may not have differed more than that which we suppose to exist between contemporaneous individuals; and this cannot be very great when we doubt whether the peasant would barter his poverty for the wealth of the prince, on the condition, also, of adding to his own years the fifteen or twenty additional winters that have silvered the hair of his superior. Thus, at all events, a few fleeting years annihilates the extremes of their lot.

The truth is, the cup of happiness is very limited, and that of most men as replete as their sense of enjoyment can admit of; more than this is superfluous, wasted, and unappreciated, or even, as it were, condensed by the feeling of satiety which ensues; while, on the other hand, the rarer sources of happiness to another man will expand and fill the cup, blessed as he is with an "elasticity of spirits." Happiness, too, being for the most part placed in perspective, becomes equally distant or inaccessible to all, and seems to have been purposely placed beyond our reach for the same reason that the old man feigned to have concealed the treasure beneath the soil in order that his sons might become rich by the culture of it, which they necessarily, though unwittingly, effected in their search for the gold; and thus our only happiness consists in our efforts to attain the same, though the instant we become sensible of this, we find that we have then indeed exhausted the cup, and like the rest that have done so before us, take a long breath, and sigh, "all is vanity!" and begin to think more intently and exclusively about the attainment of our wishes in another world; for—

"Quand on a tout perdu, quand on n'a plus d'espoir,
La vie est un opprobre, et la mort un devoir."
Voltaire.