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whole tenour of the feeble life of the former, not a drop, perhaps, of the essence of happiness would ascend in the alembic. They may be at perfect quiet if you please, and look fat and in good liking, but this is not happiness; for if so, capons and Cappadocian slaves would have a better title to it than themselves.

LESSON LXVII.

Human Happiness the Result of Virtue.

[Concluded.]

LET us now apply these observations to the question before us. No man can be happy without exercising the virtue of a cheerful industry or activity. No man can lay in his claim to happiness, I mean the happiness that shall last through the fair run of life, without chastity, without temperance, without sobriety, without economy, without self-command, and consequently without fortitude; and, let me add, without a liberal and forgiving spirit. The whole of this follows as the necessary result of our argument. The exercise of these virtues may perhaps cost a man something at the time, but the full scope and aggregate of his happiness depend upon the exercise. It is a tax upon the sum-total, that must be regularly paid to secure the rest. And it ought never to be forgotten that we are so much the creatures of habit that the more we are accustomed to the exercise, like an old garment, the easier it will sit upon us.

But these are private virtues, and only a few of them. Man has also, if he would be happy, to practise a still longer list of public virtues; and he cannot be happy without practising them. Or, in other words, (for I am

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now to consider him in a social capacity,) the happiness of the community to which he belongs, and of which his own forms a constituent part, could not continue without his practising them..

He may steal, indeed, from his neighbour, and hereby increase his means of gratifying some predominant passion ; but then his neighbour may also steal from him in return, and to a greater extent; and his happiness therefore (ever regarding it in the aggregate) is connected with his exercising the virtues of justice and honesty. He may break his promise, or lie to his neighbour, upon a point in which his own interest appears to be concerned; but then his neighbour may also return him the compliment, and in a way in which his interest may be still more deeply concerned; and his interest, therefore, or, which is the same thing, his happiness, obliges him to practise the virtue of veracity.

In Woodfall's edition of the Letters of Junius, there is a passage upon the subject before us, contained in one of his private letters, which has peculiarly struck me, considering the quarter it has proceeded from, and the manner of its communication. Whoever was the writer of these celebrated Letters, it will be readily admitted, that he had a most extensive acquaintance with men of all ranks and characters, particularly with the vicious and profligate and that he had a most extraordinary facility. of penetrating into the human heart. In the private letter I refer to, he unbosoms himself to his printer, for whom he appears to have had a great esteem, and, amidst the regulations he gives him for his future conduct, makes the following forcible remark: " With a sound heart be assured you are better gifted, even for worldly happiness, than if you had been cursed with the abilities of a Mansfield. After long experience of the world, I affirm, before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy."

LESSON LXVIII.

Taste, Genius, and Imagination.

TASTE and genius cannot but be favourable to virtue. They cannot exist conjointly without sensibility. While it is of the very essence of vice to have its feelings blunted, its conscience seared, their pleasures are notoriously derived from elevated and virtuous sources. There may, perhaps, be a few exceptions to the remark, but I am speaking of the general principle. The lovely, the graceful, the elegant, the novel, the wonderful, the sublime-these are the food on which they banquet ; the grandeur and magnificence of the heavens ;-the terrible majesty of the tempestuous ocean-the romantic wildness of forests, and precipices, and mountains that lose themselves in the clouds-the sweet tranquillity of a summer evening-the rural gaiety of vineyards, hopgrounds, and corn-fields—the cheerful hum of busy cities -the stillness of village solitude-the magic face of human beauty-the tear of distressed innocence-the noble struggle of worth with poverty, of patriotism with usurpation, of piety with persecution;-these, and innumerable images like these-tender, touching, dignified -are the subjects for which they fondly hunt, the themes on which they daily expatiate. To say nothing of the higher banqueting, "the food of angels," that religion sets before them.

It is true, that the mind thus constituted has its pains as well as its pleasures, nor are its pains few or of trifling magnitude. Wherever misery is to be found it seeks for it with restless assiduity, broods over it, and shares it ; and where it is not to be found it fancies it. How often, waking to the roar of the midnight tempest, while dull

and gluttonous indolence snores on in happy forgetfulness, does the imagination of those who are thus divinely gifted mount the dizzy chariot of the whirlwind, and picture evils that have no real existence; now, figuring to herself some neat and thrifty cottage where virtue delights to reside, she sees it swept away in a moment by the torrent, and despoiled of the little harvest just gathered in; now, following the lone traveller in some narrow and venturous path-way, over the edge of Alpine precipices, where a single slip is instant destruction, she tracks him alone by fitful flashes of lightning; and at length, struck by the flash, she beholds him tumbling headlong from rock to rock, to the bottom of the dread abyss, the victim of a double death. Or possibly, she takes her stand on the jutting foreland of some bold, terrific coast, and eyes the foundering vessel straight below; she mixes with the spent and despairing crew; she dives into the cabin, and singles out, perhaps, from the rest, some lovely maid, who, in all the bloom of recovered beauty, is voyaging back to her native land from the healing airs of a foreign climate, in thought just bounding over the scenes of her youth, or panting in the warm embraces of a father's

arms :

She marks th' erected ear, the bloodless cheek,
The rigid eye that never more shall weep;
She hears the horrors of the last loud shriek,
And secs the vessel plunge beneath the deep.

Such are the painful pictures on which the keen soul of sensibility feeds too frequently in imagination, when the sigh of real misery is hushed, and its generous hand is not needed.

LESSON LXIX.

Goldsmith's Garret.

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MY companion, who although residing in this country as a merchant, has indulged that curiosity which the habits of his early education were calculated to excite and direct, took me from the Old Bailey to Green Arbour Court, one of the early residences of Goldsmith. This court but poorly deserves the name which it bears, for it is obscure and dirty, and has neither arbour nor verdure about it. Although Mr. M had been here before, we searched for some time, and went into a number of houses, before we could find that in which Goldsmith formerly lived. It was a very ordinary, indeed I may say a very poor house, and the poet resided in the very garret. His chamber was lighted by a single window in the roof, and its antiquity was sufficiently evinced by the diamond form of the glass, which was very small, and set in lead. The chamber itself was small, and so low, on account of the sloping of the roof, as to leave only a few feet where one can stand upright.

We should not expect such a place to be honoured with the visitations of the Muses, yet it is said, that this garret witnessed some of the finest effusions of a mind which has left much to delight and instruct the world.

His chamber is now inhabited by a poor woman, who seemed to be very little conscious of the honour of being Dr. Goldsmith's successor; for, when we asked her concerning him, she said she knew nothing of the matter, although she had heard that such a man once lived there. When we inquired whether she had any thing of his in her possession, she even seemed wounded at what she appeared to feel as a reflection on her honesty.

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