NOTES.
[NOTES.]
The history of circumstances under which I commenced reading the book of M. Droz, sur l’ art d’ étre heureux, the substance of the first chapter of which is given as above, will not be irrelevant, I would hope, to you, if to others. It was a beautiful April morning, and I had wandered away from the town, with the book in my hand, among the hills. I inhaled a bland atmosphere that just ruffled half formed leaves, and shook from trees, shrubs and flowers the pearly drops and the delicious aroma of the season. A dun, purple, smoky vapor veiled the brilliancy of the sun and gave the face of nature its most exquisite coloring. A repose, like sleep, seemed to rest upon the earth, only interrupted by the ruminating of the flocks and herds on the hill sides. The bees sped away to their nectar cells from tree and flower, leaving upon the dark and fleeting line of their passage through the air a lulling hum like the tones of an Eolian harp. A large town, with its ceaseless and heavy roll of mingled sounds, lay outstretched beneath my feet. Painted boats were slowly wending their way along a canal from the town, and winding their course round the foot of the hills. Before me was a vast panorama of activity, business, commerce and all the accompaniments of a busy town. A few paces behind me, and I was plunged in a forest where town and commerce and life were hidden as if by the shifting of a scene, and the jay screamed, and the woods showed as to the red man who had seen them centuries before. A beautiful spring branch murmured by me in its deep and flood-worn channel down the glen. A little advance spread the town before me. A little retreat gave me back to the wildness of nature in the forest. Here I had often enjoyed much of the little that life allows us to enjoy, in quiet communion with nature and my own thoughts. I had never experienced it in higher measures than at this moment. Could I, by a volition, have arrested the flight of time and the succession of sensations, here would I have fixed the punctum stans of existence, and been content to have this scene always around me, and the enjoyment of this union of meditation and repose, perpetual.
But a change came over my thoughts, as I read the quaint axiom, laid down with such mathematical precision, man is formed to be happy. What I saw and what I felt, my own consciousness assented to the proposition. But, startled by a transient feeling of pain, a new train of ideas succeeded. I have only to pass, said I, the short interval between this repose, verdure, quietness and internal satisfaction, to reach the scene of dust and smoke before me. Besides spires and mansions, I shall see hovels, poor, blind, lame, squalid, blaspheming youth, imbecile age, prostitutes, beggars, haunts of felons and outlaws; and even in the abodes of what shows external comfort and opulence, the sick and dying hanging in agonies of suspense upon the countenance of their physician and friends, as they catch gleams of hope or shades of despair from their aspect. Many of these sick, even if they recover, will only be restored to trembling age, to perpetual and incurable infirmity, and to evils worse than death. Yet, unhappy in living, and afraid to die, they cling to this wretched existence as though it were the highest boon. These varied shades of misery that the picture before me will present to the slightest inspection, in ten thousand forms and combinations, are visible in every part of our world. I, too, shall soon add to the deepness of the shading. My friends will depart in succession; and in my turn, on the bed of death, I shall look in the faces of those most dear to me, as I am compelled to depart out of life. What an affecting contrast with what I see and what I am!
Why there is this partial evil in the world is not a question which I shall here attempt to vex; for I could add nothing to what has already been said upon the subject. It is enough that the evil does actually exist. Is it remediless? Can life be so spent as to leave a balance of enjoyment set over against the evil? These are my questions. There will always be inequality, ignorance, vice, disease, a measureless amount of misery and death. What portion of the evils of life can be cured? What portion must be manfully, piously endured? What transient gleams of joy can be made to illumine the depth of shade?