‘Si fortuna juvat caveto tolli;
Si fortuna tonat caveto mergi.’
Life in every country and in all time has been full of affecting instances of the young, beautiful, endowed and opulent struck down in the brightest presage of their dawn. That is the true philosophy which draws, from continual exposure to these blows, a motive, to make the most, in the way of innocent enjoyment, of the period that is in our power.
This beautiful painting furnishes an impressive emblem of the capability of the human constitution, corporeal and mental, to assimilate itself to any change; and of becoming insensible, by habit, to any degree of uniform endurance. Those fanatics in the early ages of the church, preposterously called saints, and others like them, professing all forms of religion, that may still be found in the oriental countries, who sit for years on a pillar under the open sky, or curve themselves into a half circle and remain in that position until their forms grow to it, shortly cease to feel much uneasiness in a posture which becomes habitual. To restore them to their original forms, after nature has affixed her seal of consent to the distortion, would, probably, cause as much pain as was requisite to acquire the habit. We have all read the affecting tale of the prisoner released from the Bastille after a confinement of more than a quarter of a century. He found the ordinary pursuits and intercourse of life insupportable, and begged to be restored to his dungeon. This is a most important aspect of the nature of man which parents and instructers have as yet scarcely taken into view in their efforts to mould the youthful character. Children can as easily be formed to be Spartans as Sybarites; and, in the former case, they not only acquire the noble attributes of courage and force of character, but contract habits of patient and manly endurance, furnishing a better shield against the ills of life than any in the command of opulence or foresight.
‘Fate leads the willing, drags the unwilling on,’ and the single question is, by which of these processes would we choose to meet our lot? No doctrine of the true philosophy lies so obviously on the surface as the wisdom of resignation; the disposition, in the exercise of which, more than in any order, a wise man differs from the million of murmuring and repining beings about him, who are madly struggling with the inexorable powers of nature, and doubting their evils by this useless and painful resistance. When we can no longer either evade or resist fortune, we can, at least, half disarm her by a calm and manly resignation.
The instinctive sentiment of the love of country and home is beautifully described in these paragraphs. In health and good fortune, the amusements and distractions of life, may keep this sentiment out of sight. But ‘dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos’ is the feeling with which most strangers die in a foreign land. In every heart, rightly constituted, the moment the absence of adventitious pleasures forces the mind back upon itself, the instinctive feeling resumes its original force. It seems to me always an unfavorable trait in the character of an immigrant from abroad, that he is disposed to speak unfavorably of his native country, or does not seem to prefer it to all others. God has wrought into the mind of every good man a filial feeling towards his native country.