sympathize with misery, and yet suffer infinite misery to exist, rather than put an end to misery and happiness together, is to contradict his sympathy with happiness, and to make him prefer a positive evil to a negative one, the existence of torment to the cessation of feeling. As nature, therefore, if considered at all, must be considered as regulated in her operations, through infinite, we must look to fugitive suffering, as nature must guard against permanent; she carves out our work for us in the gross: we must attend to it in the detail. To leave everything to her, would be to settle into another mode of existence, or stagnate into death. If it be said that she will take care of us at all events, we answer, first, that she does not do so in the ordinary details of life, neither earns our food for us, nor washes our bodies, nor writes our books; secondly, that of things usefullooking and uncertain, she incites us to know the profit and probability; and thirdly (as we have hinted in a previous observation), that not knowing how far we may carry on the impulse of improvement, towards which she has given us a bias, it becomes us on every ground, both of ignorance and wisdom, to try. DEGRADING IDEAS OF DEITY. The superstitious, in their contradictory representations of God, call him virtuous and benevolent out of the same passion of fear as induces them to make him such a tyrant. They think they shall be damned also, if they do not believe him the tyrant he is described :—they think they shall be damned also, if they do not gratuitously ascribe to him the virtues incompatible with damnation. Being so unworthy of praise, they think he will be particularly angry at not being praised. They shudder to think themselves better; and hasten to make amends for it, by declaring themselves as worthless as he is worthy. GREAT DISTINCTION TO BE MADE IN BIGOTS. There are two sorts of religious bigots, the unhealthy and the unfeeling. The fear of the former is mixed with humanity, and they never succeed in thinking themselves favorites of God, but their sense of security is embittered, by aversions which they dare not own to themselves, and terror for the fate of those who are not so lucky. The unfeeling bigot is a mere unimaginative animal, whose thoughts are confined to the snugness of his kennel, and who would have a good in the next world as well as in this. He secures a place in heaven as he does in the Manchester coach. Never mind who suffers outside, woman or child. We once found ourselves by accident on board a Margate hoy, which professed to "sail by Divine Providence." Walking about the deck at night to get rid of the chillness which would occasionally visit our devotions to the starry heavens and the sparkling sea, our foot came in contact with something white, which was lying gathered up in a heap. Upon stooping down, we found it to be a woman. The methodists had secured all the beds below, and were not to be disturbed. SUPERSTITION THE FLATTERER OF REASON. We are far from thinking that reason can settle everything. We no more think so, than that our eyesight can see into all existence. But it does not follow, that we are to take for granted the extremest contradictions of reason. Why should we? We do not even think well enough of reason to do so. For here is one of the secrets of superstition. It is so angry at reason for not being able to settle everything, that it runs in dispair into the arms of irrationality. GOOD IN THINGS EVIL. "God Almighty! There is a soul of goodness in things evil, So with equal wisdom and good-nature, does Shakspeare make one of his characters exclaim. Suffering gives strength to sympathy. Hate of the particular may have a foundation in love for the general. The lowest and most wilful vice may plunge deeper, out of a regret of virtue. Even in envy may be discerned something of an instinct of justice, something of a wish to see fair play, and things on a level.“ But there is still a residuum of evil, of which we should all wish to get rid.” -Well then, let us try. ARTIFICE OF EXAGGERATED COMPLAINT. Disappointment likes to make out bad to be worse, in order to relieve the gnawing of its actual wound. It would confuse the limits of its pain; and by extending it too far, try to make itself uncertain how far it reached. CUSTOM, ITS SELF-RECONCILEMENTS AND CONTRADICTIONS. Custom is seen more in what we bear than what we enjoy. And yet a pain long borne so fits itself to our shoulders, that we do not miss even that without disquietude. The novelty of the sensation startles us. Montaigne, like our modern beaux, was uneasy when he did not feel himself braced up in his clothing. Prisoners have been known to wish to go back to their prisons invalids have missed the accompaniment of a gun-shot wound; and the world is angry with reformers and innovators, not because it is in the right, but because it is accustomed to be in the wrong. This is a good thing, and shows the indestructible tendency of nature to forego its troubles. But then reformers and innovators must arise upon that very ground. To quarrel with them upon a principle of avowed spleen, is candid, and has a self-knowledge in it. But to resent them as impertinent or effeminate, is at bottom to quarrel with the principle of one's own patience, and to set the fear of moving above the courage of it. ADVICE. It has been well observed, that advice is not disliked because it is advice; but because so few people know how to give it. Yet there are people vain enough to hate it in proportion to its very agreeableness. HAPPINESS, HOW WE FOREGO IT. By the same reason for which we call this earth a vale of tears we might call heaven, when we got there, a hill of sighs; for upon the principle of an endless progression of beatitude, we might find a still better heaven promised us, and this would be enough to make us dissatisfied with the one in possession. Suppose that we have previously existed in the planet Mars; that there are no fields or trees there, and that we nevertheless could imagine them, and were in the habit of anticipating their delight in the next world. Suppose that there was no such thing as a stream of air,—as a wind fanning one's face for a summer's day. What a romantic thing to fancy! What a beatitude to anticipate! Suppose, above all, that there was no such thing as love. Words would be lost in anticipating that. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," &c. Yet when we got to this heaven of green fields and fresh airs, we might take little notice of either for want of something more; and even love we might contrive to spoil pretty odiously. CHAPTER LII. The Hamadryad.* AN Assyrian, of the name of Rhæcus, observing a fine old oaktree ready to fall with age, ordered it to be propped up. He was continuing his way through the solitary skirts of the place, when a female of more than human beauty appeared before him, with gladness in her eyes. "Rhæcus," said she, "I am the Nymph of the tree which you have saved from perishing. My life is, of course, implicated in its own. But for you, my existence must have terminated; but for you, the sap would have ceased to flow through its boughs, and the god-like essence I received from it to animate these veins. No more should I have felt the wind in my hair, the sun upon my cheeks, or the balmy rain upon my body. Now I shall feel them many years to come. Many years also will your fellow-creatures sit under my shade, and hear the benignity of my whispers, and repay me with their honey and their thanks. Ask what I can give you, Rhæcus, and you shall have it.” The young man, who had done a graceful action but had not thought of its containing so many kindly things, received the praises of the Nymph with a due mixture of surprise and homage. He did not want courage, however; and emboldened by her tone and manner, and still more by a beauty which had all the buxom bloom of humanity in it, with a preternatural gracefulness besides, he requested that she would receive him as a lover. There was a look in her face at this request answering to modesty, but something still finer; having no guilt, she seemed to have none of the common infirmities either of shame or impudence. In fine, she consented to reward Rhæcus as he * See the Scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius; or the Mythology of Natalis Comes. |