Content constitutes continual happiness; for with that sweet companion, the peasant is greater than a prince destitute of the benign blessing. The glittering, gaudy tinsel of a court, is unable to convey that real happiness to man, which the honest rustic feels at the sweet lispings of his innocent babes, and the heartfelt welcome of a faithful wife as they greet his return every evening from a hard day’s toil. Surrounded by this happy group, he sits down, breaks the bread of virtuous industry, blesses Him who gave him strength to earn the scanty meal, and lays down on the pallet of penury in peace, to arise with the morn to labour and to happiness. This life he enjoys, because he aspires to nothing above that sphere in which it has pleased Omnipotence to place him.
How few, even in any state, do we find happy? Alas! the number is by far too few. To the improper pursuit after happiness, can we only attribute the misery of mankind; daily, nay even hourly, do we see dread examples of this serious truth. But where is the eye that has not beheld, the mind that has not felt, or the heart that has not pitied, some object who has, in grasping at the shadow of happiness, lost the substance; whether it has met the observation as a culprit at the bar of a criminal court, a lunatic, a beggar, a deluded female, or a debtor in the dreary mansion of a prison? Where is the tongue but must confess, that they have lost their probity, their reason, their independence, their virtue, or their liberty, in an improper pursuit after happiness? However wrong their ideas might be, that, and that only, was the aim.
It will be asked, and with great propriety, what remedy we should apply for the prevention or cure of such an unremitting disease? We can only recommend content; not merely as the interest, but the duty of mankind. For, if man repines, at whom is it? It is at Him who in mercy infinite made man. There are few, it is presumed, if they consider this serious and important truth, who will not cease to murmur and be discontented; or they must, at least, cease to offend the Almighty, by repeating those words which his beloved Son himself hath taught us, saying, “thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Of the GENIUS of the ARABS.
Arabia has ever been as celebrated for horses of a gentle, generous spirit, as the Arabs for their skill in training them. That this praise is not undeserved, nothing can more clearly illustrate, I conceive, than the following incident, recounted by an English gentleman, whose credit and repute are well known among his countrymen in Bengal.
Temporarily resident at Bussorah, after a trading voyage to the Gulph of Persia, Mr. T—— went, one afternoon, to pay a visit at the English factory. Whilst the Chief, with several other gentlemen besides himself, were drinking coffee in a balcony, an Arab, gallantly mounted, and his horse superbly caparisoned, galloped into the courtyard: there, for some time, he exercised his steed, displayed perfect address in the manege, curvetting, prancing, volting, wheeling, and caprioling his courser, with inimitable grace, and as much expertness in the easy management of his arms, darting a spear in the air, and recovering it again at full tilt, with other feats, equally dexterous and entertaining.
Unluckily, however, for the poor fellow, in crossing a bank and ditch, leading from the area to an adjacent field, the horse, being fatigued, fell down, and threw his rider headlong in the dust. A stream of blood gushed, at the same time, from the creature’s nostrils, and he lay extended and motionless on the ground. The Arab seemed stunned by the fall; but at length recovering, shook his ears, brushed the dust from his cloaths, replaced his turban, and approached his horse.
But no man nor pencil can express the anguish and affliction conspicuous in the man’s countenance, on beholding the animal lie in that condition. At first he raved and screamed, in a delirium of agony; then bursting into tears, kissed and embraced his horse, bewailing and bemoaning his loss in all the excess of despondency. So animated, indeed, appeared his grief, and so deep his distress, as to inspire a sympathetic affection in the bosoms of all the spectators.
The gentlemen instantly called him up, and learning that the horse had been bred from a colt in his house, and was the only support (as the man served as a monthly Sepahi in the Bashaw’s army) of his father, mother, himself, his wife, and three small children, and that the loss now deprived the whole of subsistence, they humanely raised a handsome contribution for him, immediately among themselves and their dependents, and, giving the man the money, bid him be comforted, and go and buy another horse.