looking to small gains. It is the tartar that en crusts economy. ... Avarice Grudges the gamesome river-fish its food, And shuts his heart against his own life's blood. BROOKE. O that any thing so monstrous should exist in this profusion and prodigality of blessings! The herbs are crisp and elastic with health; they are warm under my hand, as if their veins were filled with such a fluid as ours. faction in God's creatures! What a hum of satis- the smallest do seem the happiest? SIDNEY. Compensation for their weaknesses and their fears; compensation for the shortness of their existence. Their spirits mount upon the sunbeam above the eagle: they have more enjoyment in their one summer than the elephant in his century. BROOKE. Are not also the little and lowly in our species the most happy? SIDNEY. I would not willingly try nor overcuriously examine it. We, Greville, are happy in these parks and forests: we were happy in my close winter-walk of box and laurustinus and mezereon. In our earlier days did we not emboss our bosoms with the crocusses, and shake them almost unto shedding with our transports! Ah my friend, there is a greater difference, both in the stages of life and in the seasons of the year, than in the conditions of men: yet the healthy pass through the seasons, from the clement to the inclement, not only unreluctantly, but rejoicingly, knowing that the worst will soon finish and the best begin anew; and we are all desirous of pushing forward into every stage of life, excepting that alone which ought reasonably to allure us most, as opening to us the Via Sacra, along which we move in triumph to our eternal country. We may in some measure frame our minds for the reception of happiness, for more or for less; but we should well consider to what port we are steering in search of it, and that even in the richest we shall find but a circumscribed, and very exhaustible quantity. There is a sickliness in the firmest of us, which induces us to change our side, though reposing ever so softly; yet, wittingly or unwittingly, we turn again soon into our old position. God hath granted unto both of us hearts easily contented; hearts fitted for every station, because fitted for every duty. What appears the dullest may contribute most to our genius: what is most gloomy may soften the seeds and relax the fibres of gaiety. Sometimes we are insensible to its kindlier influence, some times not. We enjoy the solemnity of the spreading oak above us: perhaps we owe to it in part the mood of our minds at this instant: perhaps an inanimate thing supplies me, while I am speaking, with all I possess of animation. Do you imagine that any contest of shepherds can afford them the same pleasure as I receive from the description of it; or that even in their loves, however innocent and faithful, they are so free from anxiety as I am while I celebrate them? The exertion of intellectual power, of fancy and imagination, keeps from us greatly more than their wretchedness, and affords us greatly more than their enjoyment. We are motes in the midst of generations: we have our sunbeams to circuit and climb. Look at the summits of all the trees around us, how they move, and the loftiest the most so: nothing is at rest within the compass of our view, except the grey moss on the park-pales. Let it eat away the dead oak, but let it not be compared with the living one. Poets are nearly all prone to melancholy; yet the most plaintive ditty has imparted a fuller joy, and of longer duration, to its composer, than the conquest of Persia to the Macedonian. A bottle of wine bringeth as much pleasure as the acquisition of a kingdom, and not unlike it in kind: the senses in both cases are confused and perverted. BROOKE. Merciful heaven! and for the fruition of an hour's drunkenness, from which they must awaken with heaviness, pain, and terror, men consume a whole crop of their kind at one harvest-home. Shame upon those light ones who carol at the feast of blood! and worse upon those graver ones who nail upon their escutcheon the name of great. God! sometimes sends a famine, sometimes a pestilence, and sometimes a hero, for the chastisement of mankind; none of them surely for their admiration. Only some cause like unto that which is now scattering the mental fog of the Netherlands, and is preparing them for the fruits of freedom, can justify us in drawing the sword abroad... SIDNEY. And only the accomplishment of our purpose can authorise us again to sheathe it: for, the aggrandisement of our neighbours is nought of detriment to us; on the contrary, if we are honest and industrious, his wealth is ours. We have nothing to dread while our laws are equitable and our impositions light: but children fly from mothers that strip and scourge them. We are come to an age when we ought to read and speak loudly what our discretion tells us is fit: we are not to be set in a corner for mockery and derision, with our hands hanging down motionless and our pockets turned inside-out. Let us congratulate our country on her freedom from debt, and on the economy and disinterestedness of her administrators; men altogether of eminent worth, afraid of nothing but of deviating from the broad and beaten path of illustrious ancestors, and propagating her glory in far-distant countries, not by the loquacity of mountebanks or the audacity of buffoons, nor by covering a tarnished sword-knot with a trim shoulder-knot, but by the mission of right learned, grave, and eloquent ambassadors. Triumphantly and disdainfully may you point to others. 1. While the young blossom starts to light, While hills and vales and woods are gay, Who dreads the future storm? 2. When princes smile and senates bend, Or fear'd the frown of God? |