Are there many of us, after all, who would care for a career of unbroken prosperity? Men of talent and worth have been crushed and hurried to their graves by the iron hand of poverty; but for one such, there have probably been ten who have passed through life with energies and talents never fully called forth; because easy circumstances have never demanded any great exertion from them. This leaves out a class larger probably in our country than in any other, of children of fortune, who have plunged headlong into ruin, finding an early and dishonored death, who, had they been compelled to work, would at least have acquitted themselves decently in life. Some of the most dreadful death-scenes on record are those of men who have had few earthly trials to bear, men of wealth, who have wrought their own ruin, and half of whose lives have been passed in efforts to work the ruin of the young and innocent of the other sex. If Chatterton and Otway are sad instances of genius subdued and crushed by adversity, Beckford and many others show where the too lavish gifts of fortune have perverted talent and rendered its possessor far worse than a merely useless member of society.
The world-wide Burns Celebration probably caused many humble men to think of the number of great minds who have been compelled to undergo this ordeal of poverty. How perfectly, in some instances, does the man's soul and intellect seem to have been separated from the man himself. It does seem a marvel that seventy years ago this man should have been in want and harassed by fears for the family he was to leave behind him, when now so many hundred thousand men seem ready to worship him. How many envy fame! and how proud men are, for generations afterward, who can trace back their descent to one who, while on earth, may have suffered all the annoyances and discomforts of penury! The poet seemed to know that he would be more highly esteemed after he had left the world than while he was in it; but did this thought really afford him much consolation, or would he have been willing, if possible, to sacrifice a more prosperous present for a great posthumous fame? How many great men have languished long years in dungeons, as some languish in them even now. How many have borne years of bodily infirmity. How many have died just as they seemed about to realize the fruit of years of preparation and exertion. These reflections tend to make us contented with a comparatively humble lot, as all great trials tend to lessen our undue attachment to life.
Finally, it occurs to me that very few men have lost fortunes, without spending too much time in unavailing regrets that they should have lost them just in the manner they did. If they had only avoided this or that particular investment, all would have been well. This is nonsense. Undoubtedly, a great deal of money is lost very foolishly, but though no fatalist, I do not believe that all the care and prudence in the world will materially alter the great Scriptural law, that the riches of this world will often take wings to themselves and flee away. There is far too much recklessness, far too much of what is called in business circles 'expansion;' but the time will never come, in our country, when generation after generation, in one family, will keep on in the path of success. Great fortunes will still melt away, and the shrewdest maxims of those who built them up will fail sometimes. Nothing can be considered certain in regard to worldly goods, beyond the fact that industry, good principles, and average capacity will always, in the long run, secure a competence; but wealth will still be the prize that only a few need expect to draw.
I have endeavored to call up a few of the reflections that may console a man under adversity, remembering that drooping fortunes may revive, that many of the noblest men have suffered the same privations, and remembering how much lighter this form of affliction generally is than some others that Providence often sees fit to lay upon us. Trite as it is, I can not help echoing the remark, how vastly the sum of human happiness would be increased, if men could only learn to prize more highly the blessings they have. Those of us who are in moderate circumstances find it so much easier to envy our rich neighbors than to think with gratitude of our happy lot, contrasted with the many thousand of our needier brethren. We enjoy so many blessings, that we become unmindful of them. We rarely think at all about our health, until a few days' sickness reminds us of the boon we have been enjoying so unconsciously. In the darkest days of the great crisis, accounts reached us every week from India, telling us that refined and delicately-reared English men and women were being brutally slaughtered or exposed to the loathsome horrors of a lingering siege. What a paradise the humblest cottage at home would have seemed to these poor creatures, though some of them had been accustomed to 'stately homes.'
How beautifully this sentiment of gratitude for the common blessings of life has been expressed by Emile Souvestre, one of the purest and noblest writers of our time, and one whose early history presents an instance of great obstacles and trials nobly met and overcome!
'If a little dry sand be all that is left us, may we not still make it blossom with the small joys we now trample under foot. Ah! if it be the will of God, let my labor be still more hard, my home less comfortable, my table more frugal; let me even assume a workman's blouse, and I can bear it all willingly and cheerfully, provided I can see the loved faces around me happy, provided I can feast upon their smiles and strengthen myself with their joy. O holy contentment with poverty! it is thy presence I invoke. Grant me the cheerful gayety of my wife, the free, unrestrained laughter of my children, and take in exchange, if necessary, all that is yet left me.'