He afflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him.
He repines at the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts: and though he began to exist but yesterday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever.
He desires to govern others, but, regardless of their dependence upon his benevolence, is commonly gratified in displaying the power entrusted to him by a tyrannical abuse of it.
He makes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty—but as shields to crafty wealth.
He acknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing but their social duties in the political state in which they live.
He passes his days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing evil to supernatural causes, in feverish expectation of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world.
The Labour of Study.—It is impossible for any man to be a determined student without endangering his health. Man was made to be active. The hunter who roams through the forest, or climbs the rocks of the Alps, is the man who is hardy, and in the most robust health. The sailor who has been rocked by a thousand storms, and who labours day and night, is a hardy man, unless dissipation has broken his constitution. Any man of active habits is likely to enjoy good health, if he does not too frequently over-exert himself. But the student’s habits are all unnatural, and by them nature is continually cramped and restrained. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labour. The hero of the world is the man that makes a bustle—the man that makes the road smoke under his chaise-and-four—the man that raises a dust about him—the man that ravages or devastates empires. But what is the real labour of this man, compared with that of a silent sufferer? He lives on his projects: he encounters, perhaps, rough roads, incommodious inns, bad food, storms and perils; but what are these? His project, his point, the thing that has laid hold on his heart—glory—a name—consequence—pleasure—wealth—these render the man callous to the pains and efforts of the body. I have been in both states, and therefore understand them; and I know that men form this false estimate. Besides, there is something in bustle, and stir, and activity, that supports itself. At one period I preached and read five times on a Sunday, and rode sixteen miles. But what did it cost me? Nothing! Yet most men would have looked on, while I was rattling from village to village, with all the dogs barking at my heels, and would have called me a hero; whereas, if they were to look at me now, they would call me an idle, lounging fellow. “He gets into his study (they would say)—he walks from end to end—he scribbles on a scrap of paper—he throws it away and scribbles on another—he sits down—scribbles again—walks about!” They cannot see that here is an exhaustion of the spirit which, at night, will leave me worn to the extremity of endurance. They cannot see the numberless efforts of mind which are crossed and stifled, and recoil on the spirits like the fruitless efforts of a traveller to get firm footing among the ashes on the steep sides of Mount Etna.—Rev. John Todd—Student’s Guide.
Necessity of a Steadfast Character.—The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first, will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend—who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan—and veers, like a weathercock, to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows—can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and more probably retrograde, in all. It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit—that can advance to eminence in any line. Let us take, by way of illustration, the case of a student. He commences the study of the dead languages; but presently a friend comes, and tells him that he is wasting his time, and that, instead of obsolete words, he had much better employ himself in acquiring new ideas. He changes his plan, and sets to work at the mathematics. Then comes another friend, who asks him, with a grave and sapient face, whether he intends to become a professor in a college; because, if he does not, he is misemploying his time; and that, for the business of life, common mathematics is quite enough of mathematical science. He throws up his Euclid, and addresses himself to some other study, which in its turn is again relinquished, on some equally wise suggestion: and thus life is spent in changing his plans. You cannot but perceive the folly of this course; and the worse effect of it is, the fixing on your mind a habit of indecision, sufficient of itself to blast the fairest prospects. No—take your course wisely, but firmly: and having taken it, hold upon it with heroic resolution; and the Alps and Pyrenees will sink before you—the whole empire of learning will lie at your feet; while those who set out with you, but stopped to change their plans, are yet employed in the very profitable business of changing their plans. Let your motto be Perseverance. Practise upon it, and you will be convinced of its value by the distinguished eminence to which it will conduct you.—Wirt’s Essays.
Ill Temper.—Mankind are ignorant enough, both in the mass, about general interests, and individually, about the things which belong to their peace; but of all mortals none perhaps are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning; but the amount of woe caused by their selfish unconsciousness is such as may well make their weakness an equivalent for other men’s gravest crimes. There are great diversities of hiding-places for their consciences—many mansions in the dim prison of discontent; but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower deep than the hell which they have made. They perhaps are the only order of evil ones who suffer hell without seeing and knowing that it is hell. But they are under a heavier curse even than this; they inflict torments, second only to their own, with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. While they complacently conclude themselves the victims of others, or pronounce that they are too singular, or too refined, for common appreciation, they are putting in motion an enginery of torture whose aspect will one day blast their minds’ sight. The dumb groans of their victims will sooner or later return upon their ears from the heights of the heaven to which the sorrows of men daily ascend. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable; if there be indeed an eternal record—an impress on some one or other human spirit—of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone, of every bitter jest, of every insulting word—of all abuses of that tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulses, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts, that surround the unamiable—what “a cloud of witnesses” is here! and what plea shall avail against them? The terror of innocents who should know no fear—the vindictive emotions of dependents who dare not complain—the faintness of heart of life-long companions—the anguish of those who love—the unholy exultation of those who hate—what an array of judges is here! and where can an appeal be lodged against their sentence? Is pride of singularity a rational plea? Is super-refinement, or circumstance from God, or uncongeniality in man, a sufficient ground of appeal, when the refinement of one is a grace granted for the luxury of all, when circumstance is given to be conquered, and uncongeniality is appointed for discipline? The sensualist has brutified the seraphic nature with which he was endowed—the depredator has intercepted the rewards of toil, marred the image of justice, and dimmed the lustre of faith in men’s minds—the imperial tyrant has invoked a whirlwind to lay waste, for an hour of God’s eternal year, some region of society. But the unamiable—the domestic torturer—has heaped wrong on wrong and woe on woe, through the whole portion of time that was given him, until it would be rash to say that there are any others more guilty than he. If there be hope or solace for the domestic torturer, it is that there may have been tempers about him the opposite of his own. It is matter of humiliating gratitude that there were some which he could not ruin, and that he was the medium of discipline by which they were exercised in forbearance, in divine forgiveness and love. If there be solace in such an occasional result, let it be made the most of by those who need it; for it is the only possible alleviation to their remorse. Let them accept it as the free gift of a mercy which they have insulted, and a long-suffering which they have defied.—From Deerbrook, a Tale, by Harriet Martineau.
Slander and Vindication.—Vindication in some cases partakes of the same qualities that Homer ascribes to prayer. Slander, “strong, and sound of wing, flies through the world, afflicting men;” but Vindication, lame, wrinkled, and imbecile, for ever seeking its object, and never obtaining it, follows after, only to make the person in whose behalf it is employed more completely the scorn of mankind. The charge against him is heard by thousands, the vindication by few. Wherever Vindication comes, is not the first thing it tells of the unhappy subject of it, that his character has been tarnished, his integrity suspected—that base motives and vile actions have been imputed to him—that he has been scoffed at by some, reviled by others, and looked at askance by all? Yes; the worst thing I would wish to my worst enemy is, that his character should be the subject of vindication. And what is the well-known disposition of mankind in this particular? All love the scandal. It constitutes a tale that seizes upon the curiosity of our species; it has something deep and obscure, and mysterious in it; it has been whispered from man to man, and communicated by winks, and nods, and shrugs, the shaking of the head, and the speaking motion of the finger. But Vindication is poor, and dry, and cold, and repulsive. It rests in detections and distinctions, explanations to be given to the meaning of a hundred phrases, and the setting right whatever belongs to the circumstances of time and place. What bystander will bend himself to the drudgery of thoroughly appreciating it? Add to which, that all men are endowed with the levelling principle, as with an instinct. Scandal includes in it, as an element, that change of fortune which is required by the critic from the writer of an epic poem or a tragedy. The person respecting whom a scandal is propagated is of sufficient importance, at least in the eyes of the propagator and the listener, to be made a subject for censure. He is found, or he is erected into, an adequate centre of attack; he is first set up as a statue to be gazed at, that he may afterwards be thrown down and broken to pieces, crumbled into dust, and made the prey of all the winds of heaven.—Godwin’s Mandeville.