When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, what unutterable gladness bathes the spirit in that one feeling of—health! Then the mere consciousness of existence is like that emotion which Milton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Paradise—
"Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair"
It does more—for despair itself cannot prevail against it. What a dawn of bliss rises upon us with the dawn of light, when our life is healthful as the sun! Then
"It feels that it is greater than it knows."
God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and at the uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in upon the spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if the enjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, and her absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over the ethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disordered matter!—from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the last scowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed the fatal fetters upon them—they see even that a link may be open, and that one effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery, and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a sudden sunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence is changed, and they see the very vanishing of their most dismal and desperate dream.
"Somewhat too much of this"—so let us strike the chords to a merrier measure—to a "livelier lilt"—as suits the variable spirit of our Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes their very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation, which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will these dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with the proceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worst comes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escape the galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like a criminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from hand to hand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of the most impatient of men—and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, the most patient of men and women—we often stand shut up in that sentry-looking canvass box, dexterously and sinistrously fingering the string, perhaps for five shrinking, and shuddering, and grueing minutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down upon ourselves the rushing waterfall! Soon as the agony is over, we bounce out the colour of beetroot, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with an amazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as fresh as when we first experienced it,
"In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."
By-and-by we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that has leapt out of the pan—and then, seeming for a while to be an emblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we sober down into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside into our own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back upon ourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, reminds us of that line in Cowper descriptive of the November Moon—
"Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"
Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed—we feel strong as the horse in Homer—a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self—not self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world from selfishness—elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of which every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the dogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot than Grimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficulties seem now—what they really are—facilities of which we are by far too much elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to appear appalling are felt now to be lulling securities—obstacles, like mountains, lying in our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus, we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and we kick them aside like an old footstool. Let the country ask us for a scheme to pay off the national debt—there she has it; do you request us to have the kindness to leap over the moon—here we go; excellent Mr Blackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article is in his hand, promotive of the sale of countless numbers of "my Magazine," and of the happiness of countless numbers of mankind. We feel—and the feeling proves the fact—as bold as Joshua the son of Nun—as brave as David the son of Jesse—as wise as Solomon the son of David—and as proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopolazzar. We survey our image in the mirror—and think of Adam. We put ourselves into the posture of the Belvidere Apollo.