* ft * * t * * * o & it -. . . it * * * it * * x w * o t ** * * * * *T ^ 9*e * . * .-' ...; * * . * t . * * * * *:: vft * * * * it * it .* v ^ * ^ e * t ' e * :* * * * ''.'' * . * * ' ^p 4r * * v : * .-x-.:"'* * * * * * ^ * * ifr^ * * * * * * * it * i^ - * * * # "W * , : * '^ *'-'".. - - * . * ;--;- * ;'* * * e * - .* . * '* ' * - , *'. * i : * *K :f( :.'.-'* '^K"--' * * : ""?\ *. * lW - ,; ft *' V. "* * '* * * * ' * '#' 9 V <'* . ' * * * * * . 4r - if ^ e . * * * * * * * * . - * * * * * *. *..* * JL. JW - *,' -&r A a -I-*" THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES AMUSEMENTS IN RETIREMENT; OR, THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND THE LIBERAL ARTS, J&annerg anfc ^apphugg of ^rtbatc 2ltfr. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. LONDON: PRINTED FOR HENRY COLBURN, PUBLIC LIBRARY, CONDUIT-STREET, HANOVER-SQUARE. 1816. T. Divisoii, Lombard-sirect, LC 3 J TO HIM*, WHOSE FRIENDSHIP EMBELLISHED SOME OF THE HAPPIEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE ; AND TO HER, WHOSE MILD AND UNSOPHISTICATED MANNERS RELIEVED DIFFICULTY OF ITS FORMIDABLE FEATURES, THESE PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. * Senhor Hypolito Da Rosa, now resident at Lisbon. THE following pages were written by the Author of " The Philosophy of Na- ture ; or the Influence of Scenery on the Mind and Heart." This observation is made, for the purpose of inducing the reader to compare the one work with the other: the former having been written during a period of high mental enjoy- ment ; while the present operated, as a refuge and a sanctuary, during a period of great and complicated difficulty. Most works take a tincture from the circumstances, under which they are com- posed ; and as it is not often, that the reader, or the critic, has an opportunity of comparing a writer so immediately b VI with himself, under circumstances involv- ing a contrast of so marked a character, the Editor hesitates not to express a hope, that, if any merit belong to either, the two works may constantly be found in the society of each other. THE EDITOR. London. TABLE OF CONTENTS. HAPPINESS IN GENERAL. Page The human mind naturally gravitates to happiness ... 2 Adversity, the touch-stone of friendship J) Causes and effects of adversity 4 Boethius, in the prison of I'avia 7 Argument of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy 8 Horace, one of the best of all mental physicians 10 Ths apprehension of evil far worse than evil itself 12 Misfortune, supported with dignity, exhibits virtue in its best dress 12 Grief effects its own cure, and becomes its own antidote 14 Importance of the enquiry into the causes of private happiness ]5 Variety of opinions in respect to happiness... 15 The opinions of the Ionic secton the subject of happiness 15 Of the Cyrenaic sect, of the Peripatetics, of Dio- genes, of Rousseau, of the Japanese, of the Bra- mins 16 Of the Stoics 17 Of Thales, of Anaxagoras, of Democritus, of Epi- curus 18 Other opinions on the subject J9 Inscription on ft temple of Hope SI Distinction between happiness and pleasure 23 Remarks on pleasure and its effects 34 Proclus' allegory 28 The natural consequences of humility 9 Bishop Berkeley considered himself as having a natural properly in c>ery thing he saw 40 The wish of t 'on ley 40 Pope's opinion a* to wealth 41 A remark of Seneca 41 Influence of wealth in regard to happiness 41 Milton calls wealth " the toil of fools" 42 Principal ingredients of happiness 44 Opinions of Epictetud, Sir Thomas More Tacitus, Seneca, Horace, and Milton, in respect to wealth 45 A saying of Ma Gracchus, Politian, Pope Gregory, Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More 152 Man, a musician by nature 153 Poets, natural lovers of music 1 53 Pope an exception 153 Garrick, Linneus, Montaigne 153 Musical analogic* , 154 Music teaches the best language of sensation 155 The Eolian harp 156 Musical associations 1 57 Scottish music characterized 157 CONTENTS. X1U Pagt Pictures of tbe mind, in consequence of listening to national airs 157-8 Influence of music. 159 Moral effects of music 160 Social effects of music 161 Musical anecdotes 1 62 Effects of music, in regard to political circumstances. . 162 Battle of Jemappe 1 63 Music and painting 163 Antiquity of the veneration for music and poetry .... 164 Music a great promoter of tranquillity of mind 164 Practice of the Pythagoreans 164 Religious associations awakened by music 165 National coincidences, in respect to music being accept- able to the Deity 165 Allegory of Yriartc 1 67 Pleasures of music 168 Composers characterized ; Haydn, Corelli, Purcel, Mo- zart, Gluck, Handel 169 LITERATURE. Introductory remarks 170 Pleasure to be derived from the art of writing 171 Effects of a love of literature 171 Dr. Beattie on the excellence of the mind 173 Men of genius 174 Man of judgment 174 Man of discernment 174 Man of penetration 174 Man of imagination 174 Man of judgment 175 Definition of taste 175 Fine taste 1 76 Genius 176 Talent 176 Talent and Genius contrasted 177 Genius and the lunatic 179 Men of genius 180 Men of genius neglected and irreverenced 181 Causes of their ill success in the world. 181 Poverty of literary men 1 82 Envy which assails them ] 83 XIV CONTENTS. Page Horace Walpole 185 Pedants 186 Critics 187 Character of an envious critir 1 87 Johnson's opinion of criticism 1 89 Liberal critic* 191 No " courtesy" in the literary world 192 The Dm ma 1 92 The satirists .- 1!3 Satirists characterized 194 Difficulty of finding a truly learned man 194 Extract from Casaubon 194 Time employed by preat writers in their works 195 The pleasure of reading Virgil, sufficient to atone for many minor inconveniences 196 Aristotle's criterion of a good hook 1 98 The love of several great men for literature 19'.' Julian, Atticus, Boerhave. Clark, Camden, Pope Pius Cicero, Milton, Bartholin '. 200-1 The lore of literature does not necessarily incapacitate for the more active pursuits of life 20 1 Instances 20 1 Learning and virtue, cause and effect 202 The honour of learning 20l> Effects of do. on the mind 204 Men of literature long-lived 205 False phi losophers 05 Uses of philosophy 206 The ends of philosophy 209 Its uses in misfortune 210 Lord Bolingbroke, Gravina, Libanus, Alphonso, Pliny 211 Milton, Brutus, Dante, Seneca, Horace 212-3 Consolation of literature in prison 214 Instances. Sir Walter Raleigh, Prior, Cervantes, Pe- lisson, Due de Orleans, Mary of Scotland, Boe- thius, Grotius, Puffendorff 214-5 De Witt 215 Julian 21G Ladbrog, Houcher '217 Care should be taken to separate learning from dogma- tism, and philosophy from atheism Jean Jaques Rousseau 220 CONTENTS. XV Page Longinus, curious argument of 221 Plutarch, argument of 222 Pleasure derived from visiting the tombs of illustrious men 223 Pliny's letter to Maximus 224 Instances of esteem with which literary men have been honoured 225 SCIENCE. Preliminary remarks 230 Different tastes of men as to particular sciences 231 Practice of Orontes 234 Effects of science on the mind in general 235 Pericles and Anagoras 236 Archimedes, rapture of. 237 Democritus, Mercator, Kepler, Boethius, Aldro- vandus 238 Rumphius, Galileo, Park, Boyle, Boerhave, Franklin 239 Linnaeus, extract from his programma 240 Botany, lovers of 241 Enjoyments of inventors of arts, and discoverers in science 242 Fornicelli, Boyle, Lavoissier, Bouquer, Trembley, Kunckel, Wren, Grimaldi 242-3 Science is wealth , . 245 The theatre of a man of science is the globe 245 Mineralogy and magnetism 246 Margraffof Berlin, Klaproth, > r auquelin, Barlowe, Gilbert 246 Chemistry 247 Precious stones and metals 248 Reflections of a man of science 249 Pleasures arising from botany 250 Dandilly, Barclay, Des Cartes, Cowley, Forskall, Linnasus, Vaillant, Helvetius, Alpinus 250-1 Sexual properties of plants , . 251 Illustrations from botany 252 Anecdote of Mr. Whiston, and Dr. Clarke 253 Painters of flower-pieces 253 Van Huysen, Marcel of Frankfort, Maria Sybilla Mariana, Pausias and Glycera 252-3 Xvi CONTENTS. Page Physic 255 Paracelsus, Hippocrates 256 Properties of plants 256 Uses of plants 237 All our conclusions hypothetical 259 Natural history 259 A knowledge of nature lutV-r than learning 261 Natural dissimilitudes 262 Insects 202 Fishes 263 Birds 264 Animals 265 Pleasures of natural history 266 The universe a magnificent temple 268 Natural philosophy 269 Natural philosophers, persecution of. 269 Anaxagoras, Cornelius Agrippa, Roger Bacon, Ga- lileo, Virgil, Bishop of Salisbury, Van Ilelmont... 26!) Effects of natural philosophy on the mind 272 Aerology ' yEpimis, Cavendish 273 Electricity 273 Barlowe, Gilbert, Otto Guericke, Hawksbee, Van- Klcist, Cunceus, Franklin 274 The mathematics 274 Philolaus, Anaxander, Hipparchus,Eudoxus, Tha- les, Archimedes, Cassini, Foutana, Iluygens, Ga- lileo, TychoBrahe 27 5 Lord Napier, Kepler, Gassendi, De la Hire, Hal- ley, Horrox, Bradley, Ilersliell, Olbers, Piazzi ... 276 Ix)cke and Newton 277 TheQuietists 278 Men of science in peculiar favour with the Deity '. Astronomy 275> Antiquity of 27! Effects of astronomy on the mind 281' Concise history of astronomy 280 Immortality of the soul 281 The visit of LJuryalus to flelvetius 281 Astronomical adoration 28'2 Names of constellations 283 New planetary vocabulary 2S3 Astronomy an antidote to atheism 284 CONTENT*. XVH Page Astronomy, the foundation of chronology, and the cor- ner-stone of geography ami navigation ; 084 Effects of astronomy in enlarging the mind 28.5 Plurality of worlds. 286 The most interesting ofal; sciences to mankind is the study of man 287 Man considt-red 28g Science and metaphysics contrasted 290 Metaphysics 290 Subjects of metaphysicians 291 Uselessness of metaphysics 29 1 Moral philosophy 292 Pleasures arising from the consideration of the subject of gradations 293 Scale of the creation 295 continued 296 Philosophical essay on gradations, a desideratum in li- terature 297 Doctrine of pre-existence 29S Omniscience of the Deity, and the free will of man, re- conciled 300 Origin ef evil 300 The justification of Providence 302 Atheism 303 On the character and capacity of an atheist 304 Nature exhibits the best grounds for theological belief 305 Nature, a secondary power 305 Analogy between Nature and God, with the distinction between them 305 On the being, power, nature, and attributes of the Great First Cause ... 306 NOTES 309 INTRODUCTORY. YE sons of sloth, vice, ignorance and pride, To whom fair Nature has, with scorn, denied Those raptures, which the humblest peasant knows ', 'Mid Lapland's vast, unfathomable snows: Ye, who amid the city's crowded throng, With hurried step, urge fearlessly along: Ye, who in courts the trade of flattery ply, And call the tear into a nation's eye, And bend the knee, and frame the insidious plan, To ruin nations in the mind of man : And you vain, idle, ignominious race ! Who'd call shame's blush on virtue's honest face ; For you I write not ! Hills, and rocks, and floods, And mountain torrents, and deep, echoing woods, And art, and science, and the sacred lore, Which serves to dignify our nature more Than faunae or wealth, than circumstance or power, Were form'd for men, more elegant than you ! Go, where ye list ! For me adieu ! adieu ! * The peasants of Lapland hail the first appearance of spring with every indication of delight. AMUSEMENTS RETIREMENT. OF HAPPINESS IN GENERAL. I. THE grand object of Ethics being to render men good, great, and illustrious, ETHICS may, not in* appropriately, be styled the SCIENCE OF HAP- PINESS; their truth being, as Mr. Locke has truly insisted, as capable of demonstration as the doctrine of quantity and numbers. Two ages are required for all of us : one to gain experience, and another to profit by it. For men too frequently lose the principal portion of their existence in vain pursuits and idle specula- tions, before they acquire the power of duly es- timating the value of security, innocence, and content. B 2 Of Happiness in general. To be happy is the first and the last object of all we say, and all we do. For so naturally does the human mind gravitate, as it were, to happi- ness, that even in the midst of those evils, which poison all our enjoyments, some reflections will spontaneously arise, which operate as a manna to our thoughts, and turn them into luxury ; while the negro dances and the boatman sings in slavery and in ruin. " It is not in the end we propose," says an ele- gant writer, in the language of Aristotle*, " but in the choice of means, that we deceive ourselves. How often do honours, riches, power, and beauty, prove more fatal to us than useful ! How often has experience taught us, that disease and poverty are not in themselves injurious! Thus, from the erroneous idea we form of good and evil, as much as from the inconstancy of our w ill, do we, for the most part, act without knowing precisely, what it is we ought to desire, or what we ought to fear." When Plato, therefore, asserts, that pleasure and pain are two copious streams, in which men bathe for misery or for happiness ; and that their portion of either depends chiefly upon accident, he con- tradicts the main object of his previous argument, * Bartheleuy. Arist. Mag. Mor. lib. i. c. 12. 19. lib. iii. c. 9. Of Happiness in general. 3 that happiness depends more on health, on virtue, and content, than on any other principles. Not only on health, on virtue, and on content, but on a partial knowledge of difficulty and mis- fortune : for it is as much impossible to be per- manently happy without a previous acquaintance with adversity, as it is to arrive at excellence in military science, without acquiring a practical knowledge of discipline and tactics. In the same manner, as physical evil is not un- frequently the prevailing cause of bodily benefit, so are the evils, which have afflicted us, the best correctives of our presumption and pride. For in misfortune only can we form a just estimate of ourselves; or calculate with truth the force of those friendships, which every one imagines him- self sufficiently worthy of deserving. He, who would be convinced of the truth of those friend- ships, therefore, must be content to try them through the medium of his misfortunes : for as the bee extracts honey even from flowers of a poi- sonous quality, so from adversity may man reap the best benefit of life experience. Truly has adversity been called " the touch- stone of friendship." But we are ever confound- B 2 4 Of Happiness in general. ing qualities and confusing terms, and then we quarrel with mankind for mistakes, which have their origin in ourselves. While we are flourish- ing, the world appears to smile, and we are charmed with human nature ! Adversity overtakes us, and the celebrated lines of Ovid appear to be exem- plified in ourselves : Donee eris felix, imi'tos numerahis aniicos ; Tcmpora si fuerint nubila solus eris. Ah ! my friend, amicus is as much a misnomer, as the word wife when we speak of a mistress. If we have the folly thus to be deceived in pro- sperity, we deserve to stem the torrent of misfor- tune, and to weep alone. In prosperity, smiles throw a splendid veil over hearts of envy : what are they but refined hostilities r In adversity we lose a multitude of acquaintances, but not one of our friends. " O adversite !" exclaims Helvetius, " que tea coups sont de sublimes lemons de vertu !" As- suredly adversity is the nurse of prudence and the mother of a thousand v irtues. For were there no poverty, there would be no charity : without danger, where w ould be the merit of courage ? And had life no trials patience, fortitude, and Of Happiness in general. 5 resignation, had never conspired to dignify our nature. Difficulty is but an exercise ! As the carbuncle retains its colour in the hottest fire; as the vine produces the best of fruits from the worst of wood ; and as the cypress resists pu- trefaction through the medium of its bitterness, so every unmerited affliction contributes to our future happiness, with as natural an effect as that, which directs that every stroke, which the file endures, should contribute to its brightness. Hence the Stoics considered the misfortunes of life, beneath the serious consideration of any wise and virtuous man. For, as Demetrius once justly observed, no one is less enviable than he, \vho has never known affliction; since, not having expe- rienced misfortune, he resembles a child, who from long parental indulgence renders himself hateful to others by his caprices, and burthensome to him- self by his ungovernable passions. Let this re- flection cheer the heart, lull the stronger passions to repose, and, acting as a medicine for the mi- serable, operate as a consolation for evil ! As the Scythians, when they felt themselves at all enervated, struck the strings of their bows in order to give a more vigorous tone to their nerves, so, goaded by injuries, or oppressed with poverty 6 Of Happiness in general. and neglect, it is only to recal to our memories the probable destination of our future existence, and we instantly recover the regular tone of our feelings. For though what will cure the ague will never cure the palsy ; and though the medicine, which administers to the satety of a mun afflicted with the gout, has no effect on him, who is labouring under all the excruciating agonies of the stone ; yet will a due regard to the divinity of his nature enable man, in privacy and neglect, to bear mis- fortune with all the firmness of rt solution : and like the petrel, which skims the boldest wave, and stems the utmost fury of the storm, become a mirror of constancy and the personification of greatness : since in the midst of difficulty philo- sophy forces happiness*, even against the power of fortune. He, therefore, is the most unfortunate, who is unable to bear his misfortunes ; and he possesses the greatest mind, whom good fortune has uo power to corrupt, nor bad fortune to subdue, * Ille me consolatur, affirm at etiam esse hanc philosophic, et quidfin pulccrrimum parteui, agere negotiant publicum, coguoscere, judieare, proniere et exercere justitiam, quaeque ipsi doceant in usu habcrc. T'p, x. "Kb. i. riif. Ctc. Of/, ii. 1 . 2. Of Happiness in general. 7 But if you take from the honour, which belongs to the latter, you rob him of his crown, as Maxi- mus Tyrius says on a similar occasion, and de- prive him of his glory. A man, thus wronged, has almost a right to sit (like N iobe) on the tomb of his children, covered with a veil. Deserving not the scorn of others in his diffi- culties; possessing that greatness of mind, which can reason while it suffers; and conscious of the energy, which a career of difficulty and danger imparts to the character, the man, whom nature has the power to charm, admits faith in the ulti- mate justice of heaven as his panacea : and while he reasons he hopes, and while he hopes, the paiu which he suffered is, not unfrequently, converted into pleasure. Thus, while sitting on the rocks of Juan Fernandez, watching the last rays of the sun empurpling all the west, even Selkirk, rude and unlettered as he was, mij>ht often experience society in his solitude and pleasure in his desart. Such, too, might have been the consolation de- rived in his prison of Pavia, by the celebrated Boethius. Immured by Theodoric, Boethius re- presents himself as being almost overpowered by his misfortunes. While he was indulging in all the violence of grief, Philosophy, whom he personi- 8 Of Happiness in general. fies as a woman, possessing all the venerableness of age, combined with health and the beauty and strength of youth, appeared to him. Perceiving Boethius attended by the Muses, Philosophy de- sires them instantly to quit him ; being compa- nion- highlv improper for any one labouring under misfortunes : since, instead of invigorating the nerves, they served for no other purpose, than to enfeeble the mind. tf They soothe sorrow," said she, " but while they indulge it, they restore no one to comfort." After expressing her concern for the situation, in which she finds him, Philoso- phy rccals to his mind the numerous instances, in which the best and the \\isest of men had been afflicted with innumerable misfortunes, and been constrained to struggle through innumerable dif- ficulties. Boethius then recounts the many in- stances, in which he had served his country; and entering into the consideration of his own merits, finishes by insinuating, that all those services and virtues ought to have entitled him to a better re- ward. Having listened to these complaints with a serene countenance, Philosophy exhorts Boethius not to be grieved at the various losses, he had sus- tained; and insists upon the general nature of what the world calls " fortune." Then she assumes the Of Happiness in general. 9 character of Fortune ; and addresses Boethius on the unreasonableness of his expectations ; on the vanity of his desires ; and on his loll) in presum- ing to be indignant, because he received not things which did not properly belong to him. Having expostulated to this end, by way of lenitive rather than cure, she proceeds to recapitulate the many blessings, which Boethius still enjoyed. Then, by the most incontestable arguments, she proves to him, by reason and example, that happiness does not consist in the favours of fortune; such as wealth, honour, power, and glory ; in extended fame, nor in the pleasures of sense. Then she reverts to the opposite side, and proves to him in what man- ner adversity may be profitable ; and after shew- ing how deludtd those men are, who mistake false happiness for the true, she tells him the origin of true happiness, and in what it consists. In the two last books she satisfies the question of Boethius, who had inquired why evil is per- mitted to the good, and good to the evil. She tells him, that he does not know what is good, and what is evil ; and that no one ought to judge upon so limited a knowledge. The doctrine of rewards and punishments ought to serve the excellent as consolations; and that whatever occurs, good 10 Of Happiness in general. or bad, is ultimately for the advantage of every one. She defines and marks the difference be- tween GOD and FATE : and alter giving a plau- sible solution to the objection, that the prescience of providence destroys human liberty, concludes with directing him to avoid vice, and to cultivate virtue ; to consider God the only hope ; and to live, as if he were conscious, that he was always living in the sight of heaven. II. SINCE prosperity best discovers vice, and ad- versity virtue, we are desired to bear the one and the other with equal magnanimity. Thus Horace in his beautiful ode to Licinius. Rebus angustis animosus atque Fortis appare; sapienter idem Contrahes vento nimium secundo Turgida vela. Lib. II. Od. X.21. In sickness and in sorrow, Horace is one of the best of all mortal physicians ! There is scarcely a misfortune, which he does not embrace : the loss of children, the loss of wives, the loss of friends, the loss of parents, and the frequent changes of fortune! He seems always to have been in the Of Happiness in genera 1. 1 1 humour to say, " as for me, I have received from fortune a small paternal estate, a genius of the Grecian mould, and an utter contempt for the ig- norant part of mankind; why, therefore, should I be solicitous about the future ? or why should I not temper the casual misfortunes of life, with a cheerful and innocent disposition of mind?" To bear sorrow and prosperity with a calm and settled disposition, however, is limited to the powers and the fortunes of a few. 1 he picture may captivate the fancy of the poet, and charm the wishes of philosophy; but to men of inferior powers, prosperity will have its elasticity, and sor- row its energy of distress. And though the assertion of Socrates, that, dead or living, the good man is never forsaken by the gods, is beyond all question true; nerves must be converted into sinews, and veins into arteries, before good and ill fortune can be alike indifferent to us. H ence even the excellent and the great have hours of sorrow, and moments of impatience : and hence Brutus may be pardoned for exclaiming " Oh virtue ! thou art an empty name; I have worshipped thee as a goddess ; but thou art the slave of fortune!" Men of the strongest and most elevated minds will occasion- ally relapse into momentary imbecility ! 12 Of Happiness in general. And yet most of our sorrows are of our own creating. Thus when Petrarch assures us, that our afflictions, for the most part, have their origin in ourselves : and when Diaearchus asserted, in a work highly prized by Atticus, that men suffered more from their conduct towards each other, than from all their evils beside: when Pliny assures us, that the anticipation of evil is far worse, than the evil itself, for that misfortune has its limits, but the apprehension of it none ; every one perceives the truth and propriety of their observations : for Addison's mountain of miseries has nothing to compare with the evil, with which we permit our idleness, our imagination and our pride, to goad and afflict us. Misfortunes, however, which are inflicted upon us as trials, tend to the refinement of our nature by moderating our vanity and wishes ; and by purifying our passions. When they are supported with dignity and with manly pride, therefore, they exhibit virtue in its best dress. Yielding discreetly to what we are unable to prevent, and equally unable to conquer, we may justify even the hope, that as the accomplishment of our wishes is, not unfrequently, the prevailing cause of future misfortune, (as Juvenal and our Of Happiness in general. 13 own experience have so often taught to us,) evil may yet produce an unexpected good. If heaven chastise us, therefore, let us be dumb : if men re- proach us without cause, let us be deaf: and to the failings of the friends we love, let us be blind. Preserving ourselves from that last of all men- tal mortifications, the receiving a benefit from a malicious or a slanderous man, (an evil pressing, like a fluid, in all directions,) let us guard against reposing an unlimited confidence in mankind, lest we reap the benefit of our ignorance in the lessons of experience. Estimating all the lying vanities of life at their true and adequate value, Hope bounding the prospect of misfortune, enlarges the probability of future good, engenders patience and unshaken fortitude for the present, refers chastisement to justice, and converts afflictions into mercies. For the Power, which lays the burden on our shoul- ders, can give the strength to support them, with as much facility, as he can give fertility to Ethio- pia or olives to Scythia, freeze the equator with snow, or burn with the intensity of the tropics the ice- islands of the poles. A black veil, placed under a diamond, im- proves its beauty and lustre : the most noxious of 14- Of Happiness in general. substances maybe rendered efficacious by chemical preparation ; and the most odious of smells may be converted into fragrant odours. Some plants, too, contain within themselves the principle of a poison and a remedy : the sting of a scorpion is deadened by the touch of the aconite, and re- stored to vigour by the application of hellebore : and grief itself shall at length effect its own cure, and become its own antidote. Bear up then ye good dislrexl! Ye noble few ! who here unbending stand Beneath life's pressure, yet bear up awhile, And what your bounded view, which only saw A little part, deemed evil, is no more: The storms of wintry time will quickly pass, And one unbounded Spring encircle all ! Thomson. If it is necessary in our youth to learn particular axioms, in order to obtain respect among men; it is equally necessary to unlearn in retirement many maxims, which have assiduously been taught us in our intercourse with the world. And if, as Cicero says they are, cities are an honour to their founders, laws to the framers of them, and the arts to their inventors ; with much greater truth may it be affirmed, that he, who first opened the road to true and legitimate happiness, has Of Happiness in general. 1 5 a claim, the most undoubted, to be ranked among those, who have been esteemed benefactors to mankind at large. Hence it was well observed by Middleton, in the Preface to his " Free Enquiry*," "that, as the life and faculties of man are but short and limited, they cannot be more rationally or laudably employed, than in the search of know ledge; and especially of that sort which relates to our duty, and which conduces to our happi ness." Many, therefore, are the treatises, which have been written on that dignified and imposing subject. III. LUCIAN enumerates a great variety of opinions respecting happiness ; and Varro counted a num- ber, not less than two hundred and eighty-eight : there being not a greater variety in the colours and characters of marble, than in the mental qualities and dispositions of men. The Ionic sect inculcated the belief, that happi- ness consisted in a sound body, a competent * Page yii. 16 Of Happiness in general. fortune, and a cultivated mind. Aristippus, of the Cyrenaic sect, that it was experienced in an agreeable agitation ; in the exercise of some active pursuit; and in the progress from one desire to another. Aristotle was accustomed to say, that happi- ness did not consist in the pleasure of the body, in rank, or in riches; in power, or in glory: but, in the contemplation of truth, and in the exercise of the mind in virtue. His followers, the Peripatetics, placed it in virtue enjoyed with friends, with health, and prosperity. Diogenes, who has been more misrepresented than any other philosopher i.f antiquity, if we except Epicurus, considered that condition of life the happiest, which approaches nearest to a state of nature ; in which all are equal ; and virtue the only ground of distinction. His theory has been amply illustrated by Rousseau. The Japanese refer happiness to a virtuous life; and the Gymnosophists, to a contempt of fortune, and of sensual pleasures. The modern Bramins place it in solitude, abstinence, tran- quillity, and a knowledge of the gods. These contemplative philosophers, who were decided enemies to all manner of idleness, accustomed Of Happiness in general. 17 themselves to give at the close of every day a correct account not only of all the good they had done, but of all the good they had thought. An admirable practice! since the very idea of having something to communicate, which would do honour to their mental or benevolent affections, directed their attention to objects and subjects of superior contemplation. The Stoics considered happiness as being self- derived, and indeprivable; and that all good men were divinities to themselves : that to live ac- cording to nature* was to live according to virtue ; of which riches, and beauty, and honour, were only instruments. It has been gravely asserted, that the Stoics maintained, that happi- ness was guaranteed by a total absence of all the passions. In this, as in many other in- stances, their opinions have been strangely and malignantly represented. They did not conceive happiness to centre in the absence, but in the complete mastery of the will over the passions: and this mastery not extending to those gentle im- pulses, which become a friend ; nor the more vivid ones, which animate a son, a husband, or a father. * Vid. Tally's Remarks, De offic. Lib. iii. c. 3. C 18 Of Happiness in Thales thought happiness consisted in health, a moderate fortune, an elegant mind, and a life of knowledge : while .Anaxagoras placed it solely and essentially in a contemplation of nature. Some of the Grecian theorists taught, that it was to be found in the constancy of mental exercise and bodily comfort. Democritus declared, that they who enjoy what they have, without re- gretting what they have not, are the truly for- tunate : and that the great distinction, between a wise man and a fool, is shewn by the one de- siring every thing, and the other only what he is able to obtain. Epicurus (for we must not confound Epicurus with the Epicureans, any more than we are to con- found Loyola with the Jesuits), considered human happiness as consisting in a halcyon repose of the mind, and in a complete possession of all the mental and bodily faculties. His doctrines, which, as much as his memory, have been in- sulted by superficial moralists, are sufficiently distinguished by those celebrated axioms, which teach us, that " no one can live pleasurably, with- out living prudently, honourably, and justly: nor any one live prudently, honourably, and justly, without living pleasurably." Sir William Temple Of Happiness in general. 19 has given an accurate idea of some of the pleasures, enjoyed by this illustrious character. "He passed his life wholly in his garden. There he studied; there he exercised ; there he taught his philosophy: and, indeed, no other sort of abode seems to contribute so much to that tranquillity of mind, and indolence of body, which he made his chief ends. The sweetness of air, the pleasant- ness of smells, the verdure of plants, the clean- liness and lightness of food, the exercise of working, or walking; but, above all, the ex- emptions from care and solicitude, seem equally to favour and improve both contemplation and health; the enjoyment of sense and imagination; and thereby, the quiet and ease both of body and mind." Anasius places happiness in works of private benefit; Merus in those of public utility; Ma- nilius in overcoming difficulties ; Maximus in con- tending with fortune, and in deserving to conquer : Helvetius, in a just self-esteem; Priscus, in subduing the passions, and irregular appetites. Meliscus considered happiness as much an art, as music and painting ; and therefore insisted, that it could be extracted even from difficulty, c 2 20 Of Happiness in general. as naturally as harmony might be elicited from discord. Carus placed it in the pursuit of particular objects; Mezentio, in the accomplishment of them ; Merio, in superfluity; Helvidius, in ex- emption from pain; while Rutland esteemed the possession of hereditary wealth and rank above all other benefits. Some derive their principal enjoyments from mixed societies; others, from the silence of a cloister, or the solitude of a hermitage. Laertius identified it with purity of thought, tranquillity of mind, and an agreeable emotion at the prospect of death. Some have maintained, that virtue is alone sufficient for happiness : an argument, which amuses the fancy, but insults the judgment and offends the heart. Romanus regarded it as arising from the possession of wealth, inherited from a long line of ancestors, enjoyed with youth, with beauty, and with friendship : Livius, as springing from that life, which is spent in the memory of quiet, elegant, and innocent pleasures. Moscius declared, that the best portion of his existence was that, which had been devoted to Of Happiness in general. 21 the remembrance of the dangers and the miseries he had endured: that of Jovius, in forgetting the evil, and not analysing the good. Sir Anthony Digby (preceptor to Edward VI.) regarded con- templation as his soul, privacy his life, and con- versation his element. Galesius placed it in the serene comfort of an holy life; and Pacuvius, in that state of perfect tranquillity, which Cicero has described so beautifully. Some have placed the happiness of age in the agreeable remembrance of a well-spent life; that of youth, in the flattering anticipation of an honourable future. Hope is in fact, the paradise of all ! Hence the following inscription might not inappropriately be placed on the portico of a temple, commanding a rich and variegated prospect : INSCRIPTION. I. If, oh stranger, thou art wronged by fortune, or injured by men; bowed dozen with age, or ren- dered loathsome by disease ; in this temple shalt thou find a refuge, and a sanctuary. And yet, stranger, what can I do for thee't 22 Of Happiness in general. If thou art hungry, I can give thee no meat ; if athirst, I can give thee no drink ; if poor, no wealth have I to shower upon thee ; and, if thou art sick or in age, I Jiave 110 balsam or elixir to administer, II. Ah, stranger! what then can I do for thee? III. Freely enter into this my temple ; place a con- fidence in all that I shall whisper to thee : Then, though thou shalt eat nothing, drink nothing, see no honours heaped upon thee, or feel no riches showered upon thee ; yet shouldst thou be blind, sick, and lame; indigent, miserable, and an out- cast, from the recesses of this sanctuary shalt thou not depart, without the energy of a new existence; For / am HOPE; and this is my TEMPLE. Pythagoras esteemed those philosophers only, who studied nature; and those the happiest men. Of Happiness in general 23 ** Life," said he, " may be compared to the Games of Olympia. In that assembly, some men came in search of glory, and others in search of wealth. But, a third description of men, far more digni- fied than either, came neither for fame, nor for riches ; but for the superior gratification of wit- nessing the spectacle, unmoved by care or anxiety of any sort. Thus, in the same manner, men come into the world, as to a place of public resort: some toil in pursuit of glory, and others in pursuit of wealth. A few there are, how- ever, who devote themselves to the study of nature. These last are philosophers ; and their office and pleasure is to know and to contem- plate. These are the men, only, whom we may style happy." The distinction between happiness and plea- sure is sufficiently wide. To confound the one with the other is as absurd, as to connect the de- stiny of man with the revolution of planets. Bear- ing almost as little relation to happiness, as music does to ridicule, the former is as inconsistent with the latter, as the phenomena of comets are inconsistent with the solidity of Ptolemy, and the plenitude of Des Cartes. Pleasure begins or 24 Of Happiness in general. ends infallibly in sorrow. Its pains are many, and its enjoyments few. Like the fruit, fabled to grow on the borders of the lake Asphaltites, gaudy is it to the eye, but bitter to the palate. The few enjoyments, that it promises, are de- rived from eating and drinking, and flattery ; from balls, operas and routs; from games, public exhi- bitions, and illegitimate private amusements. The harvest of all this is loss of relish, laborious idle- ness, disease, want, bodily pain, and mental dis- quietude : a manhood of imbecility, and an age of premature decay. Never yet has an oak been seen flourishing in a hot-bed ! Youth is the season, in which, like the morn- ing of a beautiful day, we resign ourselves, with all the natural ardour of inexperienced hope, to the most lively and delicate impressions. At that auspicious period the imagination becomes the parent of hopes, emotions, and expec- tancies ; and enjoyments are heightened by the most bewitching delusions. For, as if it would repair the time it has lost in previous vegetation, the imagination, beginning to feel the full value of its nature, pictures a thousand forms of beauty, and makes a thousand estimates of worth, which, Of Happiness in general. 25 quickened by a natural impulse, stimulate the sensibility to an examination of men and of na- ture, with an ardent and inquisitive eye. But as a female, veiled with a profusion of or- nament, is vulnerable in a war with beauty ; and as grace without virtue is as little worthy of ad- miration, as solidity without its use ; the imagina- tion, unless corrected by a manly judgment, soon becomes a wilderness; and the wayward fancies of a maniac at length succeed the concep- tions of an elevated mind. Delighted with existence, a thousand anticipa- tions of happiness are indulged in the season of youthful manhood. The fancy wings with the boldest thoughts ; and, clothed in plain or figura- tive language, proves the riches of the mind within. Beauty then is found to exist, not in the object ob- served, but in the mind observing : and that ar- dent enthusiasm, \\hich embraces not the analysis of passion, points to pleasures, leading to the vir- tues, which, unalloyed even by the most distant murmur of contending interests, paints the na- tural world without its discords, and the moral without its pomps, vices and vanities ; its cares, its ignorance, and its crimes. 26 Of Happiness in general. Too soon, however, the world corrects this golden dream of happiness, tbis hallowed sym- phony of thought. The veil is drawn ! and, as before the influence of intemperate heat, the emerald loses its green, the sapphire its blue, and the amethyst its purple ; so does the mind lose, before the influence of a calculating spirit, most of its ideas of beauty, order, and perfection. But minds there are, which never formed those pictures. Listening to the voluptuous whisper of the senses, they ensure a listless life, without a duty fulfilled, a trust reposed, or a single moment of legitimate happiness enjoyed. As useless as a monument without a motto, with organs irritated, and with minds debased, the slightest breath of temptation has the power to conquer even the strongest resolution of a man like tins. Losing his fortune and his prospects, his " character is mortgaged to repair the loss." The worst of his enemies is himself; he crawls upou the earth to the day of his death ; every accident is insupport- able, and every pain a mystery. Even if nature had originally formed him a giant, he were a giaot no longer. For that pleasure incapacitates -the Of Happiness in general. 21 body equally with the mind, is as clear in physics, as the principle in mathematics, that all bodies, moving in a circle, have a new and a different di- rection every moment. Promising much and performing little, pleasure, even when it justifies to the ear, does but falsify to the hope. The present moment bounds its theatre of perspective, and with a fugitive exist- ence itself, it becomes the herald of an age of suffering. For pleasure is no more happiness than granite is porphyry, or than wax is alabaster. Bearing the same relation to happiness that tinsel bears to gold, and finery to magnificence, it in- flicts pains, loathings, and penalties, as adequate rewards for immoderate fruition and illusive expectation. Corroding every mental energy, as the juice of fishes corrodes all animal substances, melting the sinews, and corrupting the heart, it breeds a weariness of life, a manhood of penury, and an age of disease. Becoming the surest and most insidious enemy to repose, it leaves us without resource in the moment of misery, and without defence against the power of fortune. " Begot by fancy," as Lord Lausdown has observed of illegitimate love, " it is bred by ignorance, fed in expectation, and 28 Of Happiness in general. dies in the moment of enjoyment." Its associates are its consequences; misery and ruin. Pleasure, as Proclus informs us, promised Her- cules sumptuous feasts enlivened with music, grateful perfumes, fragrant bowers, cool foun- tains, and shady groves ; to strew his couch with flowers, and bind his head with roses ; to prevent every desire, and to invent a thousand new plea- sures : to wish were to possess, to possess were to enjoy. Virtue, on the other hand, frankly told him, that the way to happiness was by a rough and rugged road ; and that if he meant to aspire to honour, to happiness, and to glory, it must be by qualifying himself to be the counsellor of his country in the cabinet, and the assertor of her rights in the field. That, if he wished to enjoy the pleasures of sense, he must be temperate ; if he would sleep sound, that he must inure himself to toil ; and, that if he wished to enjoy old age, he must improve every hour as it flies, and leave no day unemployed, or undistinguished. That if he had a desire to be celebrated, he must be great; and that if he wished to be happy, he must be good. Laving under the perpetual control of iinme- Of Happiness in general. 29 diate impulse, the life of a man of pleasure is ren- dered irksome, by his knowing so little how to use it. Evils are attributed to the malice of fortune, which have their origin in himself; and a ridi- culous existence is not unfrequently crowned with one master-folly of extravagance. The more beautiful in plumage, the less melo- dious is the bird in song ; and pleasures, the most gaudy in their attractions, are the least lasting, and as a natural result, the least gratifying in their consequences. Like the syrens of antiquity, they charm into the gulf of destruction, solely for the satisfaction of adding to the number of their victims. Without labour of body or of mind, who shall merit success, and who shall gratify ambition? For truly and beautifully has it been said, that the gods have set a price on every great and noble virtue. IV. ONE of the attendants of happiness is a mild and unaffected humility. He, who sows in hu- mility, reaps in honour : humility being the com- panion of wisdom, as vanity and presumption are the companions of folly. 30 Of Happiness in general. This dignified humility was cherished by the admirable Harmodius. Of all men, that I have had the honour per- sonally to know, Harmodius was possessed of the best heart, and of the most exalted genius. Living in an age, when wealth obtains more honour than wisdom, and when the basest servility is the surest way to fortune, he was a man, whom all the riches of Peru would never have rendered arrogant, nor all the honours of Asia have ever rendered vain : a pure and strict integrity glowed in all his thoughts, his sentiments, and actions. Knowing the world thoroughly, he had imbibed with that knowledge a gradual indifference for its general applause : and, knowing its antipathy to excellence, and that one of the greatest of crimes with the envious is to be eminent, he would have been satisfied with his own esteem, even had men of the world refused theirs. Constant in affliction, he was invincible under circumstances, which in others would have in- duced despair; and, as the emerald retains its colour, even when opposed to the most vivid heat of a meridian sun, so in the height of the severest afflictions, that fate can lay on nature, he derived, Of Happiness in general. 31 in the silent leisure of grief, the richest consola- tions from the works of Plato, Tully, and Anto* ninus : men, whose works having stood the test of different ages, nations, orders, and intellects, he pronounced to be the most fascinating to the imagination, and the most healing to the heart. Possessing a disdain for the idle glory of what the world calls " greatness," he pursued the path which leads to true glory ; and reaped the benefit of his virtue in the praise of the good, and in the comforts, naturally arising from the excellence of his own nature. With an understanding ripe of judgment, and an imagination impregnated with the richest images, ill fortune had chastened his manners, and beauti- fied his morals. In fact, his whole conduct sheds a lustre over his friends, now that his ashes lie mouldering in the sepulchre. To know him was, in itself, a distinction. He was the Fuscus Sali- nator* of Pliny, and the Frontinusf of Tacitus. * Fuscus Salinator studius, literalus, etiam disertus: puer simplicitate, comitate juvenis, senex gravitate. Ptin. Lib. vi. Ep.26. f Frontinus, says Tacitus in his Life of Agricola, was as great a man, as the times, in which he lived, permitted him to be. 32 Of Happiness in general. Gifted with a piercing mental eye^he early per- ceived that Nature is, in herself, a sovereign artist in painting, music, architecture, and poetry ; and, viewing with admiration the perfect adaptation of every object to its specific end, he derived the greatest of enjoyments from beholding beautiful and useful objects of every species; in conversing with men of talents, genius, and great acquire- ments; in reading of the illustrious actions of men ; in witnessing strong proofs of affection in women; and in listening to instances of fortitude, self-denial, temperance, and simplicity; indiffer- ence to the opinions of the misjudging portion of the world, self-possession, and energy of mind. In the age of Pericles the statue of Harmodius would have adorned the temples of Athens; in the age of Cincinnatus he would have enjoyed twenty acres of land ; in that of Augustus he would have been invited to share the leisure of Agripp'a; in that of he v\as almost per- mitted to starve! Not unknown ! for ignorance is, at all times, an apology for neglect: but known, admired, caressed, beloved, and honoured by some of the best, the bravest, and most enlightened of his countrymen ; many of whom were sensible of his poverty ! .. , Of Happiness in general. 33 Had Greece, ye gods, in all her laurell'd host, Or 'mongst her sons immortal Rome to boast, But half the heroes, statesmen, bards divine, That bright in Albion's happier annals shine; What wondrous works had grateful taste essay'd! What monuirtental miracles display'd ! What trophied arches ! temples taught to rise! What sculptur'd columns proudly pierc'd the skies! What art achicv'd ! what rocks to statues sprung ! What climes had echoed, and what Paeans rung ! Shee. Cant. vi. 207. Possessing an energy of mind beyond the mag- nanimity of Caesar, he had a disgust of insolence beyond " the fear of ruin." In the midst of his poverty, therefore, he was cheerful, con- tented, and happy : and often has he been heard to declare, that if any one had started the question, whether Lord C , or himself, were the happier man, he should have considered that question an insult. " Do I envy him ?" he would say, " No ! I do not ! There have been times, indeed, when I have envied a husbandman, eating his dinner, which his wife and his children have brought to him, and which he has partaken with them under the shade of a copse ; but I never envied Lord C , nor such men as Lord C , and I trust I never shall." " To call sensuality luxury," he would continue, D 34 Of Happiness in general. " is as absurd, as to call wealth happiness, or glory content. Temperance is the only true luxury! Nature having decreed, that every species of excess shall produce its own nausea, and its own poison. If, therefore, you would aim at the enjoyment of luxury, be temperate. A rose-leaf, doubled under him, disturbed the rest of the Sybarite, but nothing disturbs the sleep of the temperate. Temperance, therefore, is as su- perior to sensuality, as is the peach to the hip or the haw, the rose to the sun-flower, or content to riches." " Prosperity," he would frequently ob- serve, " is, for the most part, little more than a spectacle. Few are so happy, as they appear, and no one is so miserable, as he thinks himself. In the deepest of dungeons there is a consolation ; beneath a bed of spices lurks an asp, or an hornet; he is the happiest of men, who thinks himself so." Often, as I have seen him muse along the garden of Helvetius, has the following passage of Claudian occurred to my memory : Jpsa quidem virtus pretium sibi, solaque late Fortune secura nitet: nee fasribus ullis Krigitur : plausuque petit clarescere vulgi Nil opis exteruae cupiens, nil iudiga laudic Divitiis auimosa suis, iiuiuotaque cunclU Casibus, ex. alt 4 uiortalia despicit arc*. Of Happiness in general. 35 Blest with a temper, as mild and as benignant, as that of Rollin; an agreeablcness of manner, which in him, as in a thousand others, was not a substitute, but an accompaniment to moral ex- cellence, he was capable of eliciting order from chaos, and greatness from confusion. Bearing misfortune and prosperity with an equal placidity, not all the storms, or trials of life (and those had not been few), could, for any length of time, disturb the halcyon repose of his soul. Such was Harmo- dius H is faults ? who would wish to record them? Some men there were, who knew his person, but who were incapable of knowing his mind. An ichneumon has no knowledge of geometry. * These men censured him on various occasions. Would you know the outlines of their characters? They were men, who knowing the vileness of their own natures, and putting the worst con- structions upon the actions of others, resolved vice into constitution, and virtue into accident : Men, whose only microscope being that .of prejudice, were known too well to others, and too little to themselves: men, who being inca- pable of bearing any one's conceit, but their own, could neiiher give fame, nor take it away: men, who measured applause by ioudness, and D 2 36 Of Happiness in general. merit by success ; and, being able to feel but few other sensations, than those of warmth and cold, hunger and thirst, were occupied in guarding against the two former, and in gratifying the two latter. Leaden statues, rather than men ! Uniting, like the penguin, the qualities of men, fowls and fishes, they were too low for the exercise of his hatred; unworthy of his anger; and too little dignified even for his contempt. V. IF the sensualist is really the happier man, because he has the power of boasting with truth^ that he has ate, slept, and drank, more than any other man of his age, in vain may the moralist, or the poet, woo the favours of their mistresses. They may woo; but the fair ones turn an un- willing ear to their blandishments. Even a Cambrian poet has nothing to expect from them. " Despise me not for being poor ; I am not very rich, 'tis true: But if thou canst my lot endure, I shall be rich enough in you." A shame of poverty, and an unbounded ad- miration of wealth, bespeak a light, an arrogant, Of Happiness in general. 37 or a frivolous mind : for much more honourable is it not to want, than to possess the superfluities of life; as Cato, the excellent Cato, laboured so earnestly to impress on the memory of his friends. Equally wise was the saying of Menedemus, when a person, one day, said to him, that it was an admirable thing to have whatever we desire: "Ah!" replied he, " but a much greater happiness is it to desire nothing but what we have." It was this contempt of wealth, which induced Seneca so much to admire Demetrius of Corinth. " Much happier am I," said he, " when I am conversing with Demetrius, than when I am in the society of nobles, clad in the richest robes of the finest purple : and why do I admire him ? Because, even in the midst of poverty, I per- ceive that he wants nothing. Nature brought him into the world to shew mankind, that an exalted genius can live securely, without being corrupted by the vices of the surrounding world." One of the friends of Socrates enquiring of him, one day, who was the happiest man, that illustrious philosopher replied, " he who has the fewest wants." Thiswere a slender argument, and a doubt- ful axiom, in an age, when gold and silver are the 38 Of Happiness in general. only deities, and when he is esteemed the most pious, who is the most rich.* And yet, the splendid impostures of wealth are easily susceptible of detection to him, who thinks, that as the meanness of a man's fortune has no power to reach the soul, riches do but resemble corals, heaped upon mosaic pavements. For rightly appreciating the value of content, that surest indication of a clear and energetic mind, how do those colours fade, which have so long deluded our imaginations with visions belonging to fortune, to power, to wealth, to honour, and to glory! Qualities, which, in innumerable instances, have operated as poisons to the heart, and as an- tidotes to affection. Far, therefore, is happiness from being an alien to lowness of condition. For as fossil shells are found in the deepest caves, as well as on the tops <>i elevated mountains, so may virtue, and therefore happiness, be as well dis- covered in the most humble, as in the most elevated scenes of life: and when there found, the men, in \vhich they are enveloped, ought to Imncapalriarusticatisvernacula, (says St Jerome,) dcus Tenter est, ct in diem vivitur : et sanction est illc, qui ditior e*t. Of Happiness in general. 39 find a mansion and an asylum, in every nobler breast. If love is the paradise of youth, ambition the master passion of manhood, and avarice the pleasing torment of old age, the love of nature, once imbibed, charms, when love no longer whispers to our hopes; when ungrati- fied ambition leads to solitude; and when ava- rice listens to the measure of its folly. Of all animals, says one of the best writers of an- tiquity, man only is capable of perceiving grace, or beauty in material objects*; and yet, in the opinion of the far greater portion of mankind, that is the finest of prospects, which commands a sight of their own lands. " The simple, but expressive words my own (say they), have more harmony, than all thebravuras of Italy!" Of this number was, to the disgrace of his own taste, the celebrated Cosmo de Medicis, the most prudent and most virtuous of citizens, the pride of Florence, and the restorer of the arts. His villa among the Appennines, was his fa- * Itaque eorum ipsorum, quas aspcctu sentiuntur, mi Hum aliud animal (praeterhoininem), pulchritudinem, vcuustatein, convenientiain partiuui, sunlit. 40 Of Happiness in general. vouritc residence : not because it was more beautiful, than any other he possessed, but that every inch of land, that could be seen from his windows, was his own. Bishop Berkeley, on the other hand, considered himself as having a natural property in every thing he saw. " When I am in the country," said he, " all the fine seats near the place of my resi- dence, and to which I have access, 1 regard as mine. The same I think of the groves, where I waft. In a word, all that 1 desire is the use of things, let who will have rite keeping of them. By this means, I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain; with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, nor to the envy of others'." Ivory is esteemed in proportion to the good- ness of its colour, the fineness of its polish, and the delicacy of its grain: but wealth is regarded in proportion to the meanness, ignorance, and the baseness of its possessor. Enough to enstire us comfort is all, that an honourable mind de- eires ! " 1 have never had any other wish," says Cowley, in a letter to Mr. Evelyn, tf than that I might be master of a small house and large garden, with moderate conveniences joined to Of Happiness in general. 4 1 them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the study of nature." Pope, the poetof the worldly ! was of opinion, that poverty was the worst of evils ; and that to want money was to want every thing. But in order to be rich, as Seneca justly remarks, it is not so necessary to add to our stock, as to diminish our desires. Hence. to form a happy state, it is not so necessary to enrich it with commerce, as to banish poverty: an axiom, sanctioned by Plato in his model of a perfect Commonwealth. To be poor is frequently the attendant of an honourable mind; to amass great riches is always a circumstance for the exercise of our suspicion : while to be content, is to be richer in re, than all the monarchs of the east. Bor- rowing little from the future, to be content is to rest on the firmest rock, that hope can build upon; for then, and then only, do we enjoy all that nature esteems necessary to our wants, and all that our imagination thinks necessary to our wishes. Riches, like the garnet, is subject to many faults and many blemishes! since an inordinate love of them banishes truth and justice from the mind ; holds the world a slave ; and forms a 42 Of Happiness in general. golden Crucifix in every meaner breast. For at this ignoble and unhallowed shrine, flies every generous motive, and all that is dear to an honour- able man. Wide wasting pest! that rages unconfin'd, And crowds with crimes the records of mankind ! \Vanity a) Human Witha. The greatest of wealth consists in the contempt of riches; for though a poor man may want many things, yet as an avaricious one wants all things *, the former must, of necessity, be the richer of the two. Confounding the understanding, and infatuating the imagination, an unlimited desire of wealth be- comes " a calumny against nature ;" for this is that mean amour, which even the laws of Lvcurgusf' had not sufficient energy and influence to subdue. This " toil of fools," as Milton calls it, bewitches the common intellect, and becoming the tyrant of the mind, is the only passion, which allows no slumber. Drawing a film over the eyes of the weak, and * Desunt inopia: imiltn, avaritie omnia. Publint Syriut. f Arist. de Ilep. ii. e. 9. Of Happiness in general. 43 the ignorant, riches appear to assume every charm, but that of charity; but its mean and its idle magnificence engenders a mental poverty, which, when once it becomes enamoured of its own deficiency, is " the life, the soul, and heaven" of its thoughts. Hence, to live in a country, where poverty is the greatest crime, and wealth the only object of distinction, palsies every nobler impulse, as much as to Jive in a state, where penury and obscurity are the only safeguards. Nature, in all her changes, still preserves a modesty, which she never oversteps. The man of avarice, therefore, is a man divested of all natural character. To throw a bridge of silver over every rill, or raise " a golden calf, and then adore it," is to begin in ignorance, to continue in folly, and to finish in impiety. The error rises into vice; the vice magnifies into crime; and crime, as a natural impulse, takes refuge in atheism. Weary of the present, disgusted with the past, and only living in the flattering anticipa- tion of the future ; when that future does arrive, the golden dream vanishes, and leaves nothing to colour the perspective, but that gloomy truth, which whispers in the language of DERISION, that it is one of the worst of all impieties, and one of the most 44 Of Happiness in general. offensive of all impertinences, to imagine, that heaven made happiness only for the rich. Fortune depends entirely on external causes ; but happiness depends almost entirely on our- selves. Its principal ingredients are a manly mind, au affectionate heart, and a temperance of imagination. The first has the power of disarm- ing affliction ; the second of doubling every en- joyment; while the last guards us from wild wishes, and inconsistent expectations. These three primitives, united to a temperate fortune, will, at all times, ensure the love of the wise, the esteem of the good, and the envy of the base, the mean, and the malignant. This envy of the base, the mean, and the malignant, is almost necessary to happiness! Without discords there were little harmony even in the music of the spheres. Epictetus would never permit himself to emerge from the condition of abject penury: and Sir Thomas More was so great a despiser of money, that he says the Utopians made those vessels, which were employed for the meanest purposes, of gold and silver. " When the Anatolian am- bassadors arrived," says he, in a fine vein of satire, " the children, seeing them with pearls in Of Happiness in general. 45 their hats, said to their mothers, t See, mother! how they wear pearls and precious stones, as if they were children again !' ' Hush !' returned the mothers, ' those are not the ambassadors, but the ambassador's fools.' " Tacitus esteemed the Germans, who had little or nothing, a much more happy people than the Romans, who had every thing : and Seneca, who was rich almost to a proverb, wrote with en- thusiasm in the praise of an humble fortune: while Horace * declared, that, of all men, those who are solely actuated by a love of riches, are the most in need of hellebore. Milton's idea of wealth may be justly estimated by his character of Mammon f. If Voltaire esteemed the saying of Madame du Deffand, the ne plus ultra of philosophy, "-that those things, which we are unable to comprehend, we are not required to believe ;" much more so is the belief, that those things, which we do not possess, are unrequired for our happiness. Let those, therefore, rny friend, who are in possession of a competence, consider themselves as fortu- nate. Who had not rather be happy, than rich ? * Lib. ii. Sat. iii. 82. f Pa r. Lost. b. i. 1. 678. 46 Of Happiness in general. Since health, virtue, and content, are as muck superior to wealth, to rank, and to fame, as so- lidity is to extension, quality to quantity, vegeta- tion to unconscious matter, and reason to instinct. VI. IF happiness consists not in riches, or in great- ness of condition, does she permit her statue to be erected in the temple of fame, for men of florid views, or those of " imagination rich, and fancy exquisite?" Theophrastus, when on the bed of death, desired his friends to be more careful in enjoying life, as it flowed, than in at- tempting to acquire a posthumous reputation. " The life of man," said he, " loses muny solid things for the love of glory, which, in perspective, promises much, but deceives us in possession. If we can despise the applause of men, which, seeing in what manner it is bestowed, is worth but little, we save ourselves an infinity of toil and trouble. For many things are there in life, which are useless; but few that are productive of gene- ral good." Pliny, on the contrary, seems to have conceived, that fame was one of the ultimate and most important objects of ambition and existence. Estimation is, assuredly, a good most ardently Of Happiness in general. 47 to be desired; since a love of it is subservient to many valuable purposes. But fame, as it fre- quently is conferred without thought, is frequently enjoyed without merit; and is, therefore, no more a legitimate subject for inordinate ambition, than mere acquisition of territory is a legitimate ob- ject of contention in a prince. He, therefore, who is virtuous for the sake of. the fame, which virtue confers, is virtuous without the merit of virtue. But he, whose exalted spirit is more charmed with the service, he may render, than with the applause, which that service may com- mand, is truly and essentially worthy of an ele- vated name. Fame, like a diadem, however deservedly ac- quired, is far more a subject of envy to others, than of happiness to its possessor. For, engen- dering every intermediate degree of envy, from the coarse hatred of vulgarity, to the more polished smile of courtly visitation and refined hostility, it gratifies his vanity at the expense of his peace. His recompense consists in a bust crowned with laurels, and in a grave scattered with flowers. Even Horace, who basked in a court, gay, animated, and good-humoured as he was, was envied by the great, and calumniated by the vul- 48 Of Happiness in general. gar : while Tasso and Rousseau had cause to la- ment, even with teurs of anguish, the fame the; had acquired with so much industry and care. For poorly are the illustrious rewarded for the splendour of their deserts, by the envy, the unconquerable envy, which they are doomed to encounter from minds, immeasurably distant from their own. Fame, which some have dignified with calling " the sweetest music to an honest ear," is at its best but an infirmity; and at its worst a meteor of an eager brain : the breath of fools ! When it is the result of merit, it becomes a reversion, which our ashes are only permitted to enjoy. Fame, too, as it is generally bestowed, is little more than a cheat; and when operating as a stimulus to military ambition, nothing but an ignominy! It promises in happiness, and pa\s in misery. The tyrant of the tyrant: whose hopes, wishes, and labours close as they originally beiiun ; in chi- mera! Hence, Lycurgus esteemed an excessive love of glory a weakness, and an inordinate love of fame a crime. The practical benefits of both, he might have added, being, fur the must part, as poetical as the natiou of Amazons. As to posthu- mous fame ! Oh! how shall it penetrate the tomb? and with what effect shall it encircle a funeral urn ? \ Of Happiness in general, 49 And yet, as eternity is man's most ardent wish, and as ambition to be distinguished in the annals of our country is an ambition, which the noble never fear to recognise, the love of fame, with adequate correction, seldom fails to operate as an impulse to the accomplishment of those great and splendid actions, which bloated idleness never dares aspire to. When undeservedly bestowed, it wounds the bosom of ingenuous minds ; but when enjoyed commensurate with merit, the " imorrupia vox bene judicantium et bonorum" becomes a reward, equal to the toil of every difficulty and of every danger. VII. IF humility is so great an auxiliary of happiness, and wealth and fame so problematical in their results, what can we hope from greatness of con- dition ? The dust of diamonds is incurable poi- son! '' I have now r reigned nearly fifty years," said Abdulrahmati, the description of whose riches and power, palaces and precious gems, dazzle even after the expiration of many centuries, " in victory and peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches E 50 Of Happiness in general. and honour, power and pleasure, have waited upon my call, nor Hoes any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness, which have fallen to my lot. They amount to FOURTEEN *." " I made me great works/' says the sacred writer, " I builded me houses, I planted me vineyards, I made me gar- dens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits ; I gathered me silver and gold, and the peculiar treasures of kings ; whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them; I with- held not my heart from any joy. Then I looked on ah 1 the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour I had laboured to do, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and no profit under the sun." lain near Upsal by Magnus, son of the king of Denmark ; Swercher the Third fell in battle; Birger sought protection from a Danish king; Erick, resigning his throne, surrendered his person to his enemies ; Sigismund was deposed, and declared incapable of reigning; Gustavus Adolphus died in battle against an army of Imperialists ; while Charles the Twelfth, at whose name The world grew pale, Now points a moral and adorns a tale. Gustavus was shot at a masquerade; while his grandson plans and executes a pilgrimage to Je- rusalem ! In Denmark, Swane the Third was assassinated ; Christopher the First poisoned; while Christian died a prisoner in the castle of Callenburg. In Holland, William was stabbed in his palace at Delft (A. D. 1584); Prince Maurice died in a Of Happiness in general. 57 fit of melancholy ; while the De Witts, worthy to be ranked with princes, were barbarously mur- dered by the people, and wantonly lacerated after their death. In England, Ethelred died in battle ; Edmund on the body of his murderer; Edward the Martyr was stabbed in the back by order of Elfrida; Ed- mund Ironside died by the treachery of two of his chamberlains ; Harold lost his life and his kingdom on the plain of Hastings: while Henry the Second died of grief; he cursed the hour he was born ; he uttered imprecations against liis sons ; and dying at the altar was torsaken by his domestics, who stript him, and left him naked in the church ; Richard the First died by the hand of an archer : Edward the Second was deposed, and his son declared king in his room; he was confined at Kenel- worth, and lastly in Berkeley castle, where he died in the most excruciating tortures. His son, Edward ihe Third, died after a lite of activity and splendour, neglected and torsaken in his last moments by all his servants and favourites. Ri- chard the Second resigned his crown; was impri- soned in Poiiteliact castle, and there assassinated: Richard the Third died in the field of Bosworth with the crown on his head ; Charles the First 58 Of Happiness in general. was beheaded, and James his son abdicated the throne. What then are all those emoluments of ambi- tion, that have perplexed the fancies and desires of kings, of heroes, and of statesmen, from " Mace- donia's madman to the Swede f" Truly may it be said, that there are seasons, when the world mis- takes even lunacy for wisdom ; a jest and a riddle for fame; and cruelty and murder for honour and glory. Since the great, the august, and the mag- nificent, are titles, which have long become syno- nimous with rapine, extravagance, and murder; their wearers neither scorning a public theft, nor blushing at a public perjury. VIII. OPPRESSED with a love of fame, but with no heart or soul to attain its real honours, he, who is goaded by military ambition, finds no punishment equal to the violence of his own passions. He mounts a throne ! Too late he discovers, that a great fortune is a great servitude ; and that it is as nearly allied to disgrace as meanness is to extra- vagance. Retreating into his own bosom, as a Of Happiness in general. 59 spider retires to its web, after ransacking the globe for the gratification ot his passions, he finds at length the proud eminence, he has acquired, is poorly bartered, and but ill exchanged, for the social feelings lie has lost, by the dreadful pas- sions he has gratified Oh! for the .iisgust of him who, stepping behind a throne usurped, sees royalty, siript of ail its tinsel, weltering on its bio >dy couch! Well is it for the ease and satisfaction of mankind, that there is no more a royal road to happiness than there is to geometry. The life of military ambition is but a short, a miserable, and perplexing vision; and its best prospect but an empty monument. Shutting the door against every species of moderation, am- bition, vapoured with an ignoble pride, and swell- ing with imaginary pomp, becomes a prey to ardent wishes, and a martyr to unbounded passions: for truly and admirably has it been said by Sallust, in his History of the Catiline Conspiracy, that it is the nature of ambition, "to make men liars and cheats; to hide the truth in their bosoms, and to shew, like jugglers, another thing in theii mouths ; to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of an amiable inclination." 6O Of Happiness in general. Wantonly jocular in their cruelty, and cruel even in their hours of mercy, Sylla is spared and Nero is adopted, that the world may reap the be- nefit of Sylla's cruelty and a Nero's folly. Yet the world, perhaps, deserves no less ! For never will men be reconciled to those, whose mental exercise is for .their benefit, till the Alps sink into lakes, and the Andes dwindle into mole-hills. It was a knowledge of this afflicting truth, that induced Fontenelle with all the ardour of sincerity to declare, that if he had all the truths of the world in the palm of his hand, he would never conscntto open it! As the honour of a prince consists not in the splendour of his buildings, the number of his sta- tues, nor the extent of his gardens, so does it not consist in the richness of his robes, nor in the flat- teries of his courtiers. And as no character is more impenetrable than his, whose career has been attended by a continued series of prosperous for- tune, so, unless his object has been directed to the happiness of the million, rather than to the pride and inflation of the few, treason will walk in his path ; he will be a bankrupt in happiness; and an object of pity, and perhaps of contempt, even to his minions. When we minutely examine into the state of an- Of Happiness in general. C 1 other's happiness, we pause in the midst of our miseries, and become, as it were, reconciled to the evils of our condition. The noble mourns the li- mited circle of his influence ; he is consumed with ennui; or he grieves at the narrowness of his fortune. The rich sicken at the meanness of their origin; this bewails the largeness of his family; that with a corroded heart laments, that he has none. But all these wants and miseries are the blessings of a paradise, when compared to the wants and miseries of unbounded ambition. Eneas Sylvius wrote a book entitled, " Miserie curialium* :" Adrian IV. declared to John of Salisbury, as Barouius informs us, that all the miseries of his former life were mere amuse- ments, when placed in comparison with the popedom. And even Louis XIV, whom history ludicrously recognizes under the title of Louis the GREAT, condescended to envy the illustrious Fe- nelon. " Fenelon," says St. Pierre, "was the only man of whom Louis was jealous. And while he was sounding the war-whoop throughout Europe to excite admiration of himself ; while he was stoop- ing to be praised by poets, and remembered in * Translated by Barclay under the title of " Eglogues on the myseryes of Couriers and Courtei." 62 Of Happiness in general. medals; celebrated in buildings, and idolized for his banquets; the mild, the virtuous, and the wise Fenelon was commanding the admiration of the world by a single book." Petrarch studied Cicero's two books on glory with the ureatest eagerness: a book, which to have lost is no unworthy subject of regret ; since it contained precepts, which, iheieis ample rea- son to suppose, would have corrected ihe folly of our notions in regard to the union of happiness and militaiy glory. The study of History, promoting the knowledge of human nature, records facts, illustrating max- ims for future government. " The witness of time," says Tully, " it becomes the light of truth, the life of memory, the mistress of life, and the messenger of antiquity." When we are compar- ing the relative merits of historical writers, who shall we associate with Herodotus and Thucy- dides? where shall we meet with the perspicuous energy, and the intimate knowledge of the mind's anatomy, which distinguish Sallust; or with the dignified eloquence, the animated pictures, and the minute delineation of passion that characterizes Livy? Taking philosophy for his guide, Tacitus, with an elevation of mind, an ardent love of free- Of Happiness in general. 63 dom and an utter detestation of every species of oppression, enters with sarcastic seventy into the actions and motives of men. No writer, justly observes Monsieur La Harpe, is so wounding to a bad king as Tacitus. Voltaire, unworthy the name of historian, was as poetical in history, as he was mediocre as an ] epic poet. Gibbon, possessing what the Abbe, / du Bos calls " la poesie du style" has the method of Quintilian with the depth and occasional sar- casm of Tacitus : but he wants that quality, sole- ly belonging to picturesque narration, which serves to imprint every thought and every occurrence im- mediately on the mind, and keep it there. In read- ing the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, we wander, as it were, in a garden of flowers : but undetermined which to touch, we touch nothing. As we wander through, we are captivated with de- licious odours ; but those odours being neither tangible nor permanent, we remember that we have been charmed, but forget the name of every flower, and the quality of every odour that en- chanted us. But as history can never be read with reflec- tion without producing horror at the turpitude, and astonishment at the folly of its principal 64 Of Happiness in general. actors, happy, preeminently happy, will be the period, when history shall cease to be an useful or an amusing study. It will at once prove the rirtue of the governors, and the happiness of the governed! Princes will be lovers of philosophy; magistrates will devote their time to the relative wants and duties of men ; and both w ill be alive to the truth of that sacred axiom, which teaches, that the truly illustrious of every country are those, who have embellished it with noble sentiments, nd adorned its annals with virtuous deeds. But as history has too long been written, de- grading human nature by recording the miseries, which the crimes and vices of the few have brought upon the many, it operates as a bagnio for the re- ception of the military; and exhibits the writers, as so many panders to the ambition of princes, and the profligacy of states. For the page of history resembles, and that but too faithfully, the following awful picture of hostility. " The neighbourhood of a great rivulet, in the heart of tropical conti- nents," says an African traveller, " is generally the place, where all the hostile tribes of nature draw up for the engagement. On the banks of this little envied spot, thousands of animals, of various kinds, are seen venturing to quench their Of Happiness in general. 65 thirst, preparing to seize their prey. The ele- phants are perceived in a long line, marching from the darker parts of the forest ; the buffaloes are there depending on numbers for security; the gazelles relying solely on their swiftness; the lion and tyger waiting a proper opportunity to seize ; but chiefly the larger serpents are upon guard there, and defend the accesses of the lake. Not an hour passes without some dreadful com- bat ; but the serpent, defended by its scales, and naturally capable of bearing a multitude of wounds, is, of all others, the most formidable. It is the most watchful also ; for the whole tribe sleep with their eyes open, .and are consequently for ever on the watch : so that, till their rapacity is satisfied, few other animals venture to ap- proach." Ambition, inflamed with military lust, and growing delirious in proportion to its enjoyment, prompts the object which it inhabits, to deeds which justify us in stigmatizing warriors as ueing in the human system, what tygers are among ani- mals, gluttons among birds, sharks among fishes, hornets among insects, and rattlesnakes among reptiles. 66 Of Happiness in general. IX. BE the name of Tomyris written in gold, or engraven on an obelisk of Parian marble! This princess caused the head of Cyrus to be thrown into a vessel of blood : " Glut thy thirst, monster," said she; " since thou hast so long thirsted for blood, drink thy fill, and quench thy thirst*." A punishment, like this, were too gentle for the Duke of Alva, and the modern Attila ! " I have always prayed to God," said the former to the king of Portugal, " that he would give me grace to destroy Saracens. I declare to your majesty, that I long to wade through rivers of their blood ; and I will accompany you into Africa with pleasure." " Citizens representa- tives !" said Napoleon, in a letter to Barras, Fre- ron, and Robespierre, " Citizens representatives ! upon the field of glory, my feet inundated with the blood of traitors, I announce to you, with a heart, beating with joy, that your orders are executed, and France revenged. Neither sex nor age have been spared : those who escaped, or were only mutilated, by the discharge of our i (publican cannon, were dispatched by the swords * Herod, i. 201. Of Happiness in general. , 61 of liberty, and the bayonets of equality. Health and admiration!" But in these days, Potemkin finds an apologist, Catherine a panegyrist, and Napoleon a thousand partisans. Truly has Ju- venal remarked, that equal crimes have found unequal fates, and while one villain ha^ been hanged, another has been crowned. In these times, almost every new year has been signalised by the production of a new monster. As barren of principle, as are the poles of vegetation ; in continual mutiny with their own inordinate passions; pitiful only with intent to effect a wider and more certain ruin ; and formed to stab a group of sleeping or of smiling in- fants; to gain a robe of purple, and a mere- tricious title among men ; some there are, who would crimson every valley of the earth, and derive an exquisite pleasure in striding, with rap- ture, over the ruins of the world. With counte- nances as ferocious, as those of Marius or Ju- gurtha, it were impossible to charm them into humanity: they become anathemas; and, de- serving no other audience than serpents, tygers, and crocodiles, to listen to their melody, their amusements are To quaff the tears of orphans, bathe in blood, And find a music in the groans of nations. F 2 68 Of Happiness in general. These are men, who, if they were capable of writing, would select for the exercise of their pens subjects, relating to deserts, to blights, to gangrenes, and to poisons. Condemned to eter- nal sterility in all the fruits of affection; cursed with hands, labouring against every man, and rapacious of ruin; even ihe few virtues they pos- sess lose the character of virtues, as sapphires are said to lose the freshness of their beauty on the bosoms of the incontinent. Fiercer and more untractable than the sons of Ishmael; expecting every favour, which fortune can bestow, yet bearing evident signs of hate to all the human race; viewing with rapture the burning of cities; palsying every effort, with which freedom shakes the nightmare of her slaver}'; every plan bespeaks a ruin ; every step creates a desert ; and while poisons operate in every fountain to cover their dishonourable diadems with a vain and worthless glory, dissatisfied in pursuit, and disgusted in en- joyment, they weep for greater worlds to conquer and to ruin ! The eye that weeps for Thammuz, is dry for Israel ! Then would they shut the faith- ful mouth of history ; proclaiming to the histo- rian, that silence is a royal quality. As well may they attempt to keep the sea from rolling, or the sun from shining : for, as surely as the lour car- Of Happiness in general. 69 dinal points of the ecliptic mark the four seasons of the year, will they discover, when perhaps too late, that neither birth, nor wealth, nor honour, nor glory, can save their hearts from agony, nor their names from infamy. When objects are viewed with a military eye, the finest of landscapes are degraded into ramparts, bastions, and circumvallations: can- nons speak the logic of kings; tyranny implies a glorious epitaph; while on the spot, where Attila's horse sets his foot, " the grass is doomed to wither." His tent is the box of Pandora; his march is the march of the furies ; his word strikes fear and desperation into the bosom of nations; he palsies where he touches, and he withers where he breathes. And if some natural impulses of pity are at length excited, he gives to those, whom he has injured, a cloth, " dipped in the blood of" husbands and of children, where- with to dry their tears ! Oh ! mockery of ruin ! As seals delight in storms, torrents, and other conflicts of nature, so warriors riot in blood, and revel in the tears of the widow and the orphan. Every gradation of fortune, they imprint with the form and the colour of crime ! ; And yet after all this toil and all this fury, the wonder and admiration, 70 Of Happiness in general. excited by their exploits quickly waste from human recollection; and, like the waters of the Niger, lose themselves in a desert ! And what is the personal result? All the flowers of Congo can never sweeten their memories; all the anodynes of the east can never lull them to repose: and, as in life, they derived " an exquisite pleasure from the grandeur of infamy," may they in death feel all the pangs, the tortures, and the horrors of unsuccessful tyrants! But all warriors are notTamerlanes; nor are all statesmen of the class of Sejanus! The observa- tion is just. But for one Alfred, and for one Col- bert, the world has witnessed a thousand Alvas, and a thousand Alberonis. In the golden age of litera- ture, the names of Machiavel, Tacitus, and Gibbon, will be unknown ! Not for their own vices, but for the vices and crimes, they have recorded in others. The memories of Caesar, Thamas, and Bar- barossa, will be buried in oblivion, and eternal dis- honour will pursue the memory of those, who in any age, and under any circumstances, have placed the crown of empire on the head of a tyrant. The human race is but little benefited, if, in loading Heliogabalus and Commodus with infamy, the memories of Charles of Sweden, and Frederic of Of Happiness in general. ^ 1 Prussia, are associated with glory. Humanity draws a circle round their monuments ; and hem- lock and nightshade cover their epitaphs ! X. IF the happiness of the monarch and the hero be dubious or chimerical, that of the statesman is not less problematical. " I was ignorant of the powerful charms and pleasures of a rural life," said the Chancellor de PHospital, who scorned a mean action, or a grovelling thought ; " I have stayed till my hair is turned grey, before I have learnt, in what condition true happiness is found. In vain would nature have bid me love tranquillity and repose, had not Heaven beheld me with a pitying eye, and disencumbered me from those shackles, which, without that friendly aid, I should perhaps never have been able to burst. If any one imagines, I thought myself happy at the period, when fortune appeared permanently attached to me, or that I deplore the loss of her splendid honours, he must be a total stranger to the feelings of my heart." Sir John Mason was a man of great expe- rience in public life, and no inattentive observer 72 Of Happiness in general. of human nature in all classes of society, and in all stages of passion. Upon his death-bed he lamented the little real use, he had made of his time. " I have seen five princes," said he to his friends, " and have been privy counsellor to four. I have seen objects the most remarkable in foreign countries, and was present at most of the transac- tions of state for thirty years. After all this ex- perience, 1 have learned, that contemplation is the greatest wisdom, temperance the best physic, and a good conscience the best estate. And were I to live again, I would change the court for a cloister, and my privy-counsellor's activity for a hermit's retirement." Such were the opinions of a man, whose genius and experience were well qualified to ascertain with justice the value of those things, which we may reckon almost among the nothings. " Habits, titles, and dignities," says Dr. Jortin, " are visible signs of invisible merits :" and, in the first bloom of their enjoyment, whisper even to those, who wear them, the truth of that pas- sage in Epictetus, wherein he compares fortune to a woman of quality, who prostitutes her person to the grasp of menials. Those, who richly merit those titles and dignities, starve for their Of Happiness in general. 78 fame; and a meagre statue* is their only reward. But, as a recompense for their fate, posterity hang over their memories with a pleasure, equal to that calm and languid delight, with which we contem- plate the images of rich and poetical minds. Whatever be his rank, his wealth, or his ability, no one can be esteemed fortunate, who has no ties of friendship, of blood, or of humanity, to chain him to existence. Fie creeps upon the earth as a worm ! The sun sets, the evening star rises, flowers expand, and the autumnal moon lulls all nature; but to him every joy is in per- spective, his bosom is void, and his heart is cheerless: for no one hails him as a friend, and no one regards him as as a brother, or benefactor. Well and often has it been said, that the world is a wilderness to him, who is destitute of a friend. A wilderness too, not of flowers or of plants, of rocks and of mountains, wild, yet not remote from beauty or sublimity ; but a wilderness of weeds, or a sterile, parched, and burning desert. In the deepest recess of nature, he, on the .con- trary, who feels the fine impulses of the heart, wanders not alone. In the midst of a court, the * Imagine macra. Jui\ Sat. vii. 74- Of Happiness in general. statesman nauseates the smile and the whisper, which invade him, unless his heart acknowledges to his judgment, that his glory is not wanting in the applause of those, for whose interests and happiness it ought to be his pride, and his glory to labour. I know, that our expectations are vain, and our hopes idle, when we presume to expect common men to concentrate their hopes, wishes, and interests, in the duties of a patriot ! But I would whisper in the ear of a minister of state, that if he would satisfy his hopes, his wishes, and his interests, completely and to the consummation of them all, he will divest himself of every thought, that has not a collateral, if not an immediate direction, for the interests of the country, whose minister he is. If he perform this imperative duty, rewards of every kind are sure to follow: rank, riches, and honour. Bank, conferred by his prince; riches, in the gratitude of his fellow-citizens ; and honour, that will carry him through the heart of an enemy's country. Like the chryso-magnet of Strada, he will attract iron and gold, wherever he goes : for as is the diamond among stones, roses among flowers, and the bird of Paradise among birds, so Of Happiness in general. 75 is patriotism the best and most beautiful of all the virtues. XL IF the ancients gave strength to Hercules, beauty to Venus, and sublimity to Jupiter; virtue combines the qualities of them all, and is to hap- piness, what the sculptor is to his marble, the painter to his canvass, and the musician to his instrument. It is the best of all escutcheons, as education is the best of all inheritances. A qua- lity, without which, the patent of a dukedom were but an imaginary distinction. And as New- tonian mathematics open the widest road to mechanical science, its practice forms the vesti- bule to every honour, and confers more dignity, than all the stars, ribbands and crescents, which decorate the nobility of England, Germany, or Turkey. Like the harps of Milton, virtue is always in tune. She strikes the chords, and melody lulls us in private, and harmony in pub- lic. Like the flowers of Congo, at the rising and setting of the sun, she charms the senses with delightful odours: she is an armour to the soul, 76 Of Happiness in general. as health is an armour to the body : she engen- ders a beauty in those, who practise her precepts, and renders every object, which depreciates her, despicable and ugly. Hence it arises, that nothing is more beautiful to our imagination and perception, than the vir- tuous feelings of women, and the noble actions of men. From this union proceeds that refinement of delight, which we experience, while dwelling on the memories of Alfred and Piastns, Hambden and Washington; and of such women as Madame Roland, Lady Jane Gray, and Madame Eliza- beth. For though material objects have the power of administering to some of our best re- ceivers of pleasure, yet, as they derive that power eolely from their faculty of producing in the mind references to intellectual beings ; it follows, of necessity, that the deeds and sentiments of correlative Beings themselves must have a more immediate and enlarged power of producing those emotions of delight, than objects, which possess only secondary relations. Birds delight more in the beauty, society, language and actions of birds, than in the contemplation of the leaves, copses, and thickets, in which they reside. Such Of Happiness in general. 77 also are the relative pleasures of insects, fishes, and animals. The affection indeed runs through the whole region of animated nature. Hence it ensues, that every one, even though his mother were an Ethiop or an Esquimaux, that excites our benevolence, our esteem, our friendship or our love, is, in proportion to the degree of affection that he excites, a literal bene- factor. Since the pleasure, he awakens from the exercise of those affections, contributes essentially to our comfort and happiness. He, therefore, who feels these natural obliga- tions, glides on in adversity calmly and inno- cently; in prosperity, in a dream of continual content. His virtue smiles; his religion is the personification of gentleness ; his heart is peace: and his errors and his foibles, leaning to weak- ness, rather than to vice, his misfortunes settle into repose; even as the Teverone, after falling from rock to rock, glides smoothly into the Tiber. Attentive, through all the mazes of existence, to that fine moral doctrine of Marcus Aurelius, that the grand business of man is to direct his manners, to command his passions, and improve his mental energies; when life lingers on old 78 Of Happiness in general. age, with far greater propriety than.Anacreon, may he exclaim with all the fervour of truth, Though to my head the snows of age have him,;, Yet my gay heart for ever makes me young. XII. As our sole capability of measuring time ori- ginates and consists in the observance of the heavenly bodies; so, in measuring happiness, the only criterion, by which comparative degrees can be formed, is the relative proportion of virtue and vice: between the powers and effects of which two operators, there being as wide and as striking a contrast, as there is in the exhibition of a hum- ming-bird near the extended wings of an eagle, or of a Lapland insect on the trunk of an ele- phant. Viewed through the prism of virtue, the true poetry of the heart ! all that men wish is reduced to its level; all that men obtain is measured by its worth : and when our passions rise in rebellion against us, this being the only guide to the city of refuge, she springs to our assistance with as much relievo, as the Venus of Philostratus sprang from Of Happiness in general. 79 the canvass. In her is centred all, that dignifies man in the finest blush of manhood, and all that can render him just, and venerable in age. Such is her aspect in the character of Agrippa ; a man whose duties are synonymous with his pleasures; for his pleasures are studious in vir- tues: both being, as it were, instinctive in his nature. A love of order, producing self-govern- ment, displayed in the silence of every passion, arms him with the peace and courage of inno- cence. Gifted with a great and vigorous mind, he has raised himself superior to those low and degrading cares, which operate on common minds, and bend them to the earth : while wisdom is the chief, the only sign of age, of which his frame is conscious. Synonymous with beauty, disarming adversity of its poison, and shining with all the divine effulgence of an Apollo, Virtue wears in him an aspect Not terrible, But solemn and sublime. Par. Lost. xi. 326. He is the mirror of mental excellence, as a young, a beautiful, and good woman is the Alpha and Omega of perfection. Bearing a just relation between promise and performance, precept and practice; pouring a per- 80 Of Happiness in general. petual sunshine over " a spotless mind ;" and engendering some of the sweetest satisfactions of the heart, Virtue becomes the 'green' of the soul ; and attracts happiness as naturally, as beauty attracts love, and magnificence commands ad- miration. Teaching a benevolence beyond the affections of man, she boasts an eloquence even beyond the po\vers of oratory. The word ' enjoyment' if written on her forehead ; and her results, like the pine-tree of Madeira, are sweet to the smell, beautiful to the eye, and grateful to the palate. Awakening images, of which all the ele- gant and wise are enamoured, she charms our youth, fascinates our manhood, and " rocks the cradle of reposing age:" for being, like the order of Ionia, the harmonizing medium between the delicate and the strong, the simple and the mag- nificent, she is as beautiful as the Metang of China*, or Le Brun's Mountains of Alabaster )-. Touch but one string of her harp, and all the finer nerves vibrate in unison. Acquiring for us friends, for whose vices and conduct we never have reason to blush; and every gift, which she bestows, being accompanied by a * Called the king of flowers. f Seen about 150 leagues west of Archangel. Of Happiness in general. 8 1 flower, she becomes as much the foundation of happiness, as arithmetic and geometry are the foundations of mathematics. In private life, she bears the impress of beauty; in public, the form and character of sublimity. Her rewards are eternal; and that her smiles denote the ex- pression of some curious felicity is a canon as just, as the system of Polycletus was the systerri of accurate proportions. The four beatitudes are science, courage, health, and virtue. The latter charms our ima- gination, as much as when we say of Hortensia, that she is the beautiful wife of an illustrious man. So necessary is she to all our practical no- tions of happiness, that a long series of vice is imperiously necessary to eradicate the love and admiration of her. Hence Collins makes her the daughter of truth and wisdom ; and hence it be- comes the duty and the interest of mankind to exalt our capability of its attainment, as one grand me- dium of exalting the nature and character of man. Her rewards are not only certain, as we have be- fore remarked, but eternal: whereas the enjoy- ments of vice, or of pleasure, are not only uncertain, but even when actually indulged, are but perishing. Engendering ideas, which language has no 82 Of Happiness in general. terms to express, and feelings, which the noble and the just alone are enabled to recognize, she sheds a lustre even over the turf of a peasant; and operating as the best consolation for the ingratitude of man, neither " death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things past, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," shall be able to separate her image from glory, nor her glory from happiness. XIII. THERE is no man so good, but that he labours under a vice ; nor any so criminal, who cannot boast of a virtue : none are there so wise, who have not their prevailing follies ; nor is there any one so weak, who is not capable of occasional energy. There is no garden destitute of weeds ; nor is there a desert, which has not its useful, its medicinal, and beautiful productions. Inflated with the pomp of their own shadow ; bowed to the earth with the weight of their own ignorance; or lost in hopeless insignificance, some men there are, who become the butterflies of a frivolous circle, or the armadillos of a ma- licious one. Hurried through the journey of Of Happiness in general. 83 life, without conceiving one thought, or per- forming one deed worthy of remembrance, they love the world, because it is an ample theatre for their wants and passions. Who would embark in the same vessel with men, so lost to every generous sentiment as these ? Ever discontented, inquisitive, and loud, they are vain in propor- tion to their ignorance, and impertinent in pro- portion to their presumption. Ignorance is the only Paradise they know. Admiring nothing ; esteeming nothing; and loving no one; they whisper to the candid, murmur to the ignorant, and babble to the envious. Ever at war with genius and with excellence, danger attends wherever they march. Envious without an object ; malignant without previous injury; unworthy to live, and still more unprepared to die, they im- pose a tax on every good and elevated man. To do good, and to do evil, are equally liable to the censure of such persons as these ; for our friends will much sooner forgive us our faults, than these men will forgive us our virtues. In the midst of this error of nature, however, one rich, superlative > consolation remains. If we do evil, we smart under the lash of the good : an evil to be remedied by reformation. If we do G2 84 Of Happiness in general. good, we move under the lash of .the vicious, whose applause is at all times a disgrace, and whose censure is always an honour. Their praise is an apology for shunning them; and their good fortune is one of the strongest and most ef- fective arguments in favour of atheism. And yet these men are so weak, so ignorant, so ridiculous and presuming, as to expect to be happy ! Pride, which, as Cowley says, debauches the judgment, is " the never-failing vice of fools !"- Swelling the body in proportion to its emptiness, it is as naturally joined with folly, as repentance is married to intemperance. Operating, as duly combined lenses of a compound microscope, it overstrains distinctions, and sinks the soul in pro- portion to its impotence. True to their pride, and constant to their follies, profuse in little and in worthless ornaments, or dreaming in the vile repose of idleness, the men, whose minds are bloated with the dreams of imaginary consequence, think themselves as great, as the mountains which they climb. But their bodies cast no shadow ! Occupying the space between animal and vege- table life, and starting with a curious horror at the very idea of abstinence, their folly, destined to a fugitive existence, is but the harbinger Of Happiness in general. 85 of the dumb palsy. Unconscious, that pride and dignity are as distinct from each other, as a planet during its transit is from the body it eclipses, the shade of their consequence melts into air without even their own knowledge ; for truly may we remark, that we may be objects of the most contemptuous ridicule all the days of our lives, and yet remain ignorant of our folly to the day of our death. The man of pride has a petulant infancy, an arrogant manhood, and a repenting age: but " repentance comes too late, when the city of Basra lies in ashes." " We " rise in glory," says Dr. Young, with a fine antithesis, " as we sink in pride :" If we would correct ourselves, therefore, of that mean, that despicable, and repulsive vice, we have only to study a flower, observe the economy of an insect, or watch the phases of Venus. XIV. AGREEABLE emotions and sensations may be divided into three orders : those of pleasure, which refer to the senses ; those of harmony, which refer to the mind ; and those of happi- ness, which are the natural result of an union be- tween harmony and pleasure : the former being 86 Of Happiness in general. exercised in virtue; the latter in temperance. Harmony is principally enjoyed by those men, who possess, what has analogically been termed, taste; which Mr. Mel moth defines " that uni- versal sense of beauty, which every man in some degree possesses, rendered more exquisite by genius and more correct by cultivation." It is very remarkable, says Dr. Akenside, " that the disposition of the mural powers is always similar to that of the imagination : that those, who are most inclined to admire prodigious and sublime objects in the physical world, are also most in- clined to applaud examples of fortitude and he- roic virtue in the moral. While those, who are charmed rather with the delicacy and sweetness of colours, forms, and sounds, never fail in like manner to yield the preference to the softer scenes of virtue, and the sympathies of a domestic life." Exciting a love of true glory, and an ad- miration of every nobler virtue, taste exalts the affections, and purifies our passions ; clothes a private life in white, and a public one in purple. Adding a new feature, as it were, to the pomp, the bloom, and the exuberance of nature, it enables the mind to illumine what is dark, and to colour what is faded : giving a lighter yellow to the to- paz, a more celestial blue to the sapphire, and a Of Happiness in general. 87. deeper crimson to the ruby, it imparts a higher brilliance to the diamond, and a more transparent purple to the amethyst. Bearing a price, which only the heart and the imagination can estimate, and being the mother of a thousand chaste desires, and a thousand secret hopes, taste strews flowers in the paths of litera- ture and science ; and breathing inexpressive sounds, and picturing celestial forms, qualifies the hour of sorrow, by inducing that secret sense of cheerfulness, which, in its operation, Refines the soft, and swells the strong ; And joining nature's general song, Through many a varying tone unfolds The harmony of human souls. XV. IN respect to the superior enjoyments, which are to be derived from society and solitude, the particular results must necessarily be deduced from the tastes and the habits of particular minds. The world is a sphere for activity and ambition ; retirement for content, benevolence, and enjoy- ment. Both have their uses and their inconve- niences; both have their pains and their plea- sures. To be able to mix and to contend with the world, on terms of equality, is an advantage, 88 Of Happiness in general. involving uses of the first magnitude; but it is a still more important attainment, as Charon has justly observed, and shews a well-composed mind, " when a man loves to keep company with him- self: and a virtue, as well as an advantage, to take satisfaction and content in that enjoyment." To men, who mix pleasantry with gravity, with- out degenerating into folly ; and to those, who conceive, that they widen the sphere of their own happiness, by contributing to the innocent amuse- ment of others ; to those, who inherit, with their estates, a taste for the elegant and the beautiful, solitude, which to others is a scene of idleness and, ennui, becomes a sphere for continual mental activity, and the asylum of health, quiet, and in- nocence : while in its expression of felicity, it iresembles a bee-hive, situated on the edge of a rivulet, shaded by trees, in the centre of a desert. Meditating some noble work, the man of genius steals from the busy haunts of men ; and in the quiet .of retirement cultivates some art or science, or completes the execution of some great design*. Converting the silence of solitude into * Ut in \ita, sic in studiis, pulcherrimum et humanissi- in u in existiiuo, severitatem, comitatemque misccre, nc ilia in tristitiam, ban- in petulantiam procedat. I'lin. Ep. Is inihi deuium vivcre & frui aniuia videtur, qui aliquo Of Happiness in. general. 89 golden moments, he meditates on past labours, or matures designs for future excellence. From such objects, and from such amusements, some of those pure and exalted pleasures are enjoyed, which, arising from the union of a cultivated ima- gination, and an tincorrupted heart, form a full and perfect diapason. Far from the tumults of active life, the lover of nature and philosophy, though poor, perhaps, in worldly wealth, yet rich in mental endowments, may be compared to a traveller, who from the summit of the Andes sees the lightning flash over his head, and hears the thunder rolling at his feet. Untouched and unin- jured, his hours glide, like the splendour of a sum- mer's evening, when the sun, sinking behind the hill, the clouds are dipped in dyes of purple and vermilion. " If we should be told," says Barthelemy, ' that two strangers, cast by chance on a desert island, had found in the society of each other a pleasure, which indemnified them for being se- negotio intentus, pra-elari facinoris aut artis bonae famani quaerit. Sallust. de Bel. Cat. Aptissima sunt in hoc nernora, sylvaeque quod ilia cceli libertas, loeerumque amcenitas sublimem aiiiiuum, & beatio- rem spirit urn parent. Cic. 90 Of Happiness in general. eluded from the rest of the world : if we should be told, that there exists a family, entirely occu- pied in strengthening the ties of consanguinity by the bonds of friendship : if we should be told, that there exists, in some corner of the earth, a people, who knew no other law, than that of lov- ing each other, nor any other crime, than that of being wanting in mutual affection ; \vho would think of commiserating the lot of the two ship- wrecked friends? and who would not wish to belong to that happy family?" The Essenes appear to have arrived nearer to this state of pri- mitive simplicity and happiness, than any other order. Of all philosophers, ancient or modern, these appear to have been the most practically excellent. It is in vain, that we look for their prototypes, their equals, or their imitators. Those excellent men reduced all moral and reli- gious obligation to three general duties : vene- ration to God ; an admiration of virtue ; and a love of mankind. They adopted other people's children, but never married themselves; they despised wealth, and individually possessed none : residing in solitude, they had a community of goods, and a common treasury. In all instances they were true to their word, without the form or Of Happiness in genera I. 91 obligation of oaths. Living upon vegetables, herbs, and bread, they enjoyed life to an extended age, amusing themselves in the study of plants, and other branches of physiology. They were not only theoretical but practical philosophers, in their observance of duty and respect to the Deity, and in their strict integrity in the obligations of man to man. Society engenders a love of retirement, solitude a partial appetite for society : the one is a correc- tive of the other, and the union of both operates, as an antidote to misanthropy. ,: , .', Oh ! happy he ! whom, when his years decline, the peaceful groves Of Epicurus, from this stormy world, Receive to rest of all ungrateful cares Absolv'd, and sacred from the selfish crowd! Art of Health, B. iii. 1. 114. In the same manner as sleep restores the lubri- cating fluid, which strong exercise causes to eva- porate, retirement corrects the weariness of labour, and restores those energies, which have been im- paired by constant exertion : retirement, not inac- tively enjoyed : for where idleness prevails, vice prevails ; and where vice is long tolerated, crime 2 Of Happiness in general. walks with gigantic stride over all the land. It was a knowledge of this, which actuated that great and good man, who, after" a life of alternate ease and labour, caused the following inscription to be engraven upon his monument : " Here lies one, who was of some itse in the icorld, though he teas never known in it." Retirement, which is equally, and even far more valuable to the insulted patriot, than to the private gentleman, may be enjoyed to as much effect in a large city, as in the most retired hamlet of the Friuli mountains. Hence Ues Cartes assured Bal- zac, that he walked every day in Amsterdam with as much tranquillity, as he could do in the green alleys of his country-seat. In the solitude of Paris lately resided the illus- trious Kosciusko ! In his youth he was enamoured of a young lady of exquisite beauty, who returned his passion. Her relatives forbade his addresses, and she was united to one of the Polish princes. Smarting under the agonies of disappointed love, Kosciusko sought to recover his tranquillity in active life. Animated with an ardent love of free- dom, he embarked for America, and formed a dis- tinguished friendship with Washington and Franklin. At the close of the American war, he returned to Of Happiness in general. (>3 Poland. On the theatre of his native soil, h fought the battles of his country with determined resolution : fate, however, had decreed the ruin of Poland! and, after many reverses, in which he displayed all the energies of a great mind, the talents of a consummate warrior, and the enthu- siasm of a patriot, he fell covered with wounds. Upon opening his eyes, after lying some time in a state of insensibility, finding himself in the power of his enemies, he requested them to terminate his existence ; since life was become a burthen too heavy to be endured. The soldiers, however, pitied his misfortunes, and observed towards him a profound respect. He was conveyed to Peters- burg ! Sunk deep in crime matchless in all th worst vices of a woman, Catherine, irritated that any one should have presumed to oppose her de- spotism, cast him into a dungeon. There this martyr to all the best feelings of human nature lingered, in all the extremity of cold and want ; till death that unerring balancer of all distinc- tions ! arrested die progress of the empress. Upon the accession of Paul, he was liberated. But his country existing no longer, after many trials he resolved to hide his grief and his indigna- tion in a city, which contained many of the most conspicuous men in Europe, to several of whom 94 Of Happiness in general. he was personally known. In the heart of one of the largest cities in the world, he enjoyed, in the roost profound solitude, as much peace, as the remembrance of what his country once was would allow him to enjoy. But when the sun of liberty has set, there is, as Addison finely observes, " no rank so dignified as a private station." Retirement is the only theatre for literary men! There they are as beautiful, as swans in their na- tural clement ; and, for the most part, as awkward and inelegant out of it. In this theatre " IF FATE BUT GRANT THEM A SUBSISTENCE!" they ex- hibit the simplicity and proportion of the Doric order. Though retirement is the only place, in which we can correctly judge of the actions and the motives of men, we must embellish that seclusion v ith a previous knowledge of the world, or our opinions will be founded on a wrong data. Travelling over countries, without reflection, is not seeing the world ! We may journey from London to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to Prague, and in our return wander to Vienna, Brussels, Paris, and Madrid, and know nothing at last ! Hence it was with propriety observed of Lord Anson, that though he had been round the world, yet had he uever been in it ! I remember hearing Cleanthes Of Happiness in general. 95 boast, that he had seen a vast deal of the world, because he had voyaged to Ceylon, to India, and to China. A great mass of water he had seen, to be sure ! but sailing over water, and rattling over land, do not of themselves give a knowledge of the world ! No ! we must see, speak, and act with men ; hear their sentiments ; see how their passions operate ; and observe how great minds ex- ercise themselves over little ones ; we must not only see and hear, but we must reason upon what we hear and see : above all, w must suffer ! a knowledge of the world is never bought in prosperity. And here we may be permitted to remark, that a man " of the world," and a man " who has seen the world," are two different beings ; though they are so frequently confounded with each other, by the vain and the illiterate. The one can smile and tolerate a villain ; the other knows the secrets of the heart, in all its wilds and recesses, smiles at the folly of men, avoids temptation, and preserves himself. XVI. THE following picture exhibits the happiness of a man, who, having seen mankind in many coun- 96 Of Happiness in general. tries and in many attitudes, retired at last into the bosom of philosophy with a woman, whom he had long loved, and who had given him muny striking instances of elevated attachment. The happiness, he enjoved is in the power of everyone, who, to a competence, has sufficient discrimination to select and to estimate a virtuous woman; experience enough to feel the value of a moderate fortune ; and taste to prefer the simple enjoyments of life to those more costly and more fatal pleasures, which debase the mind, corrupt the heart, and enervate the body. Never do I meditate on the happiness of this elegant and accomplished pair, but I recal to mind that beautiful passage in Langhorne, where he compares connubial love to a stream flowing through a vale, with flowers blushing on its banks, overhung with boughs, " pure in its source, and temperate in its sway ;" flo\\ ing continually, yet never emptying its urn ! Among the mountains, that separate the canton of Underwalden from that of Lucerne, Nature appears to have fixed the abode of eternal tran- quillity. Retired in the bosom of a woody valley stands a cottage, like the nest of a nightingale among branches of myrtles. In this beautiful spot Of Happiness in general. 97 which seems as if it formed the entrance into Pa- radise, resided Mons. and Madame St. Agnes - Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love Uninterrupted joy, unrivall'd love, In blissful solitude. Par. Lost. b. Hi. 1. 67. Were we to alter the sex, no lines could be found more applicable, when applied to Madame St. Agnes, than the following : they belong to Ariosto. Speaking of Zerbino, he says Non e un si hello, &c. &c. Orl. Furiits. c. x. st. 84. No form so graceful can your eyes behold ; For nature form'd him, and destroy'd the mould. HOOJLE. While travelling through Switzerland in the year 1793, our friend, La Fontaine, honoured them with a visit. The following is the account he gave of this happy, elegant, and respectable pair. They have two children ; one son, and one daugh- ter. The cottage, in which they reside, is screened from the north by high rocks and mountains : on the east are observed several groups of stately sy- camores : in the front is a small garden, through which glides a current of water, which imparts a de- H 98 Of Happiness in general. lightful coolness even in the middle of summer. Towards the west is an orchard, planted with the choicest fruits of the country; while from the south to the south-west stretches one of the most beautifully wooded valleys, it is possible to imagine. On the portal of the cottage is in- scribed HORIS DUCERE SOLLICITjE JUCUNDA OBLIVIA VIT.. Over the chimney-piece is carved in Roman characters, INNOCUAS AMO DELICIAS DOCTAMQ.QVIETEM. In an alcove, at the west end of the garden, HlC SECURA QUIES. DlVES OPUM VARIARUM. NESCIA FALLERE VITA. MOLLES SUB ARBORE SOMNI. In this humble, yet elegant retreat, Monsieur and Madame St. Agues have resided several years; enjoying every real blessing that fortune can be- stow : health cultivated minds beautiful cbil- Of Happiness in general. 99 dren competence respectful neighbours and a small circle of acquaintances, equal in station, and respectability. If you would behold paintings by the first masters, rich furniture, sumptuous tables, and expensive dresses; -you must not visit the cot- tage of Madame St. Agnes. But, if you would stoop to be delighted with neatness, order, and economy, in no place will you witness them to such decided perfection. The amusements of this excellent lady bespeak the purity of her taste, and the innocence of her heart. She rises with the first blush of morning, and enters the bed-rooms of her children, while they are yet sleeping. Having assisted her servant to wash and to dress them, she leads them into her dressing-room, where she devotes a short time to the exercise of religious du- o ties. In the mean time, breakfast has been prepared; and Monsieur, upon returning from his morning walk, has the felicity of meeting his wife and his children, glowing with all the charms of happiness and health. The active portion of the day succeeds. Madame, ever attentive to cleanliness and order, is never idle. Her children, her books, her birds and her flowers, command alternate attention. Mon- sieur, on the other hand, engages himself in his H 2 1 00 Of Happiness in general. garden, his farm, or his orchard. Sometimes hje devotes the principal portion of the day to fishing, hunting, or shooting : and when the weather pre- vents more active pursuits, his pen and his li- brary are constant sources of benefit and amuse- ment. Dinner is always served with comfort and economy. From this time till six, he em- ploys himself in playing with his children ; in improving them in social precept; in exercising their memories ; in hearing them repeat detached pieces of poetry ; or in reading select portions of history. When the weather permits, the whole family take tea under the shade of an old beech- tree> at the foot of the garden. It is impossible to witness a more agreeable sight, than that of Monsieur and Madame St. Agnes, sitting on the edge of a rock, which juts over a small mea- dow, in which several of their sheep and cows are grazing, employed in watching the sun, sinking into the lake, and seeming to enjoy every moment as it flows along. When they return to the cottage, Monsieur devotes the remainder of the evening to reading, writing, or meditating. Madame, on the other hand, listens to her children's innocent con- versation, and never quits them till they sink'to slumber. The happy pair then partake of a slight Of Happiness in general. 101 supper, and, after a day of cheerfulness and com- fort, retire to rest within each other's arms. In possession of so many sources of happiness, he, who would not be content, would not be happy in the Elysian fields ! XVII. To be happy, after the true manner of happi- ness, what is required farther, than a moderate com- petence, gentle affections, and a cultivated mind? Let us then ridicule, with all the point and seve- rity of sarcasm, that ambitious, or that sordid soul, who would presume to be happy without content- ment, and without the affections. To be happy, and yet to be insensible of esteem, of love, or of affection ? monstrous prodigality of ignorance ! As well may we expect that pearls will grow upon hemlock, moss out of ebony, or laurels out of alabaster ! Take the affections away, and what, in the name of heaven, remains to us: What? why heat, and cold, and hunger, and thirst, and envy, and ingratitude, and ambition of the vilest sort ! admirable inheritances ! Possessing happiness if we would increase it, we must endeavour to add to the happiness of 102 Of Happiness in general. others : for, in proportion that we communicate, we receive : in tin: same manner as the magnet, by imparting its qualities, increases the quantity of its o\vn magnetism. Friendship and love we owe to all good per- sons in general ; but if we would enjoy those ele- vated affections to the highest measure of perfec- tion, we must, in the common intercourse of life, confine the former to one man, and the latter to one woman. In possession of these, our grand and most fortunate aim must invariably be di- rected to their ease, comfort, and pleasure : for the wish to dispense happiness renders the mind not unworthy of being associated with angels ; and as every act of beneficence multiplies the ties, \\hich connect us more intimately with hu- manity, the more we live for others, as Plato so often and so forcibly inculcates, the more do we live for ourselves. On this one principle, the whole science of human happiness depends. There are collateral causes, however, \\hich, contributing in a greater or a less degree, according to the taste and feel- ing of each particular person, operate, with no slight influence, in rendering that happiness of a more refined and perfect order. Of Happiness in general. 1 03 These we may refer to those peculiar plea- sures, which certain minds derive from a culti- vation of the liberal arts, a love of learning, and from a deep, or even limited, research into the secrets of nature, under the general name of sci- ence. To these subjects, my dear Lelius, I pre- sume to invite your willing attention : taking care, at the same time, to premise, that it is no part of my province to give an analysis of each art or science ; but merely to shew in what manner they may collectively administer to some of our best receivers of pleasure. 104 THE LIBERAL ARTS. " A DEAD, inactive piece of matter a flower, that withers a river, that glides away a palace, that hastens to its ruin a picture, made up of fading colours and a mass of shining ore strike our imagination, and make us sensible of their existence : we regard them as objects capable of giving us pleasure, but we consider not that God conveys, through them, all the pleasures which we imagine they give us." Such observations are worthy the pen of that writer, who could plan and execute Telemachus, and who could charm our judgment, and elevate our imagination, in that most beautiful essay, de- monstrating the existence, wisdom, and omnipo- tence of God ! For too apt are we to reason, as men have reasoned before us, and, claiming credit for delegated powers, to overlook the Creator in our admiration of his agent. But, having referred all piimary praise to our great Original, we are permitted to pay a secon- dary homage to the genius of man a source to Of Architecture. 105 which, in the pride and ignorance of our practice, we too often and too willingly attribute the rise, the progress, and perfection of Architecture and Painting, of Sculpture, and of Music The in- fluence of these liberal arts upon his mind, his manners, and affections, constitutes the subject of the following Part, OF ARCHITECTURE. I. THE building of cities may be truly styled a royal amusement. Solomon founded Tadmor; Omri, Samaria ; Hiel, Jericho ; and Jeroboam, Sechem in Mount Ephraim. Alesius, the friend of Agamemnon, built Alsium ; Adrian, Adriano- ple; Seleucus, Seleucia; Antenor founded Padua; and Dido, Carthage. The building of this city is admirably described by Virgil *. Alexander built one city in honour of his horse, and another in honour of his dog. But his motive for rebuilding Plataaa \\ as honourable to his cha- racter, since he raised that city from its ruins, be- * Eneid i. 435. 106 Of Architecture. cause its former inhabitants had made a present of their territory to the Greeks, in order that they might fight the cause of liberty on their own lands *. Cassar rebuilt Corinth, and recolonizcd Car- thage, because he was grieved at their fallen con- dition : while Pyrrhus founded a city in Epirus, as an acknowledgment of favours received of Pto- lemy and Berenice. When Hannibal was at the court of Antiochus, he pointed out to that prince a happy spot for a city, and advised him to take advantage of so eligible a situation. Charmed with the idea, Antiochus requesting Hannibal to undertake its superintendence, a fine city reared itself in a short time from its foundations, was called Artaxata, and made the capital of Armenia. Diodorus Siculus informs us, that many succes- sive kings were ambitious of increasing the city of Thebes, and of embellishing it with gold and sil- ver, with ivory, and a vast number of colossal sta- tues. Julian decorated Paris, and raised it to the rank of a capital; and Augustus adorned the city of Rome with such taste and magnificence, that it was his frequent boast that he had found it of wood, but that he should leave it of marble. He * Plut. in Vit. Aleiand. Of Architecture. 107 had once an idea of rebuilding Troy ; to dissuade him from which, Horace is supposed to have writ- ten an ode, in which he introduces Juno declaring, in the council of the gods, that if any one, in the excess of his zeal, should presume to repair the walls of llion, the walls should be destroyed as often as they were repaired. Themistocles enjoved great pleasure in rebuild- ing Athens, after its destruction by the Persians : he erected several temples, and formed the Pyreus into a harbour. At a subsequent period Pericles was made surveyor of the public works ; and, during his administration, ediiices were erected, each of which, as Plutarch observes, would seem to have required the labour of an age. Nothing provoked the malice of his enemies more than these monuments of public munificence, and there was scarcely a crime, of which they did not, in the officiousness of their malice, openly or covert- ly accuse him. In answer to all these slanders, Pericles was accustomed to reply, that " as the state was pro- vided for all the necessaries of war, its superfluous wealth should be laid out on such works as, when executed, would be eternal monuments of its glory, and which, during their execution, would 108 Of Architecture. diffuse an universal plenty. For as so many kinds of labour, und such a variety of instruments and materials, were requisite to these undertakings, every art would be exerted, every hand employed, almost the whole city would be in pay, and at the same time be adorned and supported by itself*." Cesar took merit to himself for building the Forum of Romef, which, as a splendid monu- ment of the arts, did more honour to his memory than all his victories. This city at length, by the munificence of the state, became so magnificent, that Caractacus, king of the Britons, was abso- lutely lost in astonishment when he saw its pa- laces and temples, and could not forbear express- ing his amazement that the Romans, who possessed so many splendid palaces of their own, should envy the wretched huts and cabins of the Britons. * Plut in Vit. Pericles. f Plin. 37. Suet, in Vit. Ces. e. 2*. Of Architecture. 109 II. ARCHITECTURE Where most magnificent appears The little builder MAN is one of those arts by which a nation indicates its progress in refinement. " The history of archi- tecture," says a modern writer*, "like that of the other arts, marks out the progression of manners. Among the DORIANS it carried with it the auste- rity of their national character, which displayed itself in their language and music. The IONIANS added to its original simplicity an elegance which has excited the universal admiration of posterity. The CORINTHIANS, a rich and luxurious people, not contented with former improvements, extend- ed the art to the very verge of vicious refinement ; and thus (so connected in their origin are the arts, so similar in their progress and revolutions) the same genius produced those three characters of style in architecture which Dionysius of Halicar- nassus, one of the most judicious critics of Greece, remarked in its language. The DORIANS exhi- bited an order of building like the style of their Pindar like Eschylus like Thucydides. The * Burgess on the Study of Antiquities. 110 Of Architecture. CORINTHIANS gave their architecture that ap- pearance of delicacy and eflfeminate refinement which characterizes the language of Isocrates. But the IONIANS struck out that happy line of beauty which, partaking of the one without its harshness, and the elegance of the other without its luxuriance, exhibited that perfection of style which is adjudged to Homer and his best imi- tators." This art gives employment to the poor, and elegant amusement to the rich. These effects were observable in many parts of Pontus and Bithynia, when Pliny went thither as proconsul : since many of the principal personages, in those provinces, were emulating each other in deco- rating their native cities, in a manner to invite the attention and applause of the accomplished stran- ger. A forum and an aqueduct were building at Nicomedia; a gymnasium and a theatre at Nice; an immense aqueduct at Sinope ; and public and pri- vate baths were erecting atClaudiopolis and Prusa. This was one of the few passions, in \vhich the Emperor Trajan delighted to indulge. Trajan ! whose private letters display more of his virtues, than all the writings of historians, or the panegyric of Pliny ! This accomplished prince invited aH the artists of his immense empire to contribute Of Architecture. Ill to the decoration of his buildings ; of which the forum at Rome, the arch of Ancona, and his bridge over the Danube, were splendid monu- ments of his taste, his genius, and his public virtue. Hadrian distinguished himself in the same man- ner, and hence was called " the wall-flower" He- rodes, who acquired the appellation of Atticus, ex- pended the whole of his immense fortune in archi- tectural pursuits. He erected a theatre at Corinth ; a temple in honour of Neptune in the Isthmus; and baths and aqueducts at Thermopylae : while the people of Canusium, Epirus, Thessaly, and Boeotia, were equally grateful to the elegant and accomplished Herod, for numerous instances of architectural magnificence. From such architects as Trajan, Hadrian, and Herod, Vitruvius anticipated his receipt for the constitution of a good architect. In the present day in vain would be required the study of law, of history, medicine, music, and astronomy, though an architect were a mason, unless he possesses a competent knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, philosophy, and optics. Sancho f . of Portugal acquired the title of "The Restorer of Cities," for his zeal in rebuilding and repairing those cities, which had been destroyed during the wars, in which Portugal had been in- 112 Of Architecture. Yolved. But of all builders, the greatest were Seleucus and Probus. Tlie former founded no less than thirty-four cities, and enlarged several more ; while the latter rebuilt seventy cities in the short space of seven years. ur. FROM elevated, let us descend to humbler life : from men, who indulge their passion for their pride, to those, who can exercise it only for their use. For though it requires the patronage of states for its perfection, architecture is not de- graded, when it is employed for the purposes of convenience; which, being the cause of its origin, implies an union of fitness and beauty. When Socrates built himself a small house, he was reproached for it ! " Small as it is," said he, " I wish I were capable of filling it with friends." And when Ariosto erected a house in the city of Ferrara, which was remarkable, neither for size nor for splendour, one of his friends enquired, with some degree of astonishment, how he, who had described so many palaces, rich in all the splen- dour of decoration, could stoop to live in one so humble and undignified ; he replied, " a small lodging is enough for me ;" and taking his friend Of Architecture, 113- by the hand, and leading him to the portico, he desired him to read the following inscription : Parva, sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parta meo sed tamen sere domus. The Romans, from living simply, and in hum- ble residences, became, of a sudden, remarkable for the costliness of their houses. This passion was for some time resisted by the elder portion of the senate ; and they did not hesitate to levy a fine upon jEmilius Porsina, for erecting a house at Alsium, which they considered far too mag- nificent for a private person. Their villas, however, became so costly at last, that the riches of entire cities were not unfre- quently wasted upon them : and their poets, taking ideas from real objects before them, described others, which were esteemed even worthy the residence of deities themselves *. Horace reproves the luxury of his age in building palaces, which he thought himself justified in calling " regite moles," and which more resembled cities, than pri- vate residences. He closes the ode with contrasting the architectural luxury of his own times, with the Si verbo audacia detur, NOB metuam magni dixisse palatia cceli. I 114 Of Architecture. chastity and frugality of former ages*. Cicero has some beautiful remarks on the propriety of suiting the building to the fortune of the proprie- tor, and on the rules of general hospitality^: while Sallust, in his epistle to Caesar, observes most admirably, that " to set up ajine house or a villa, and to adorn it with buildings and statues, and to have every thing excellent, except the mas- ter, is not to have riches an honour to him, but to be himself a disgrace to them." The poets, to whom every thing producing ele- gant, bold, and striking ideas, is an object for the exercise of their imagination, succeed only in description of the external structure : for minute intricacies of internal arrangement distract their powers, and are umvorthy of their genius. Homer has given an instance of Jus skill, in the descrip- tion of Priam's palace ; and Pope exercises bis genius in erecting a temple for the residence of Fame : than the stupendous bridge of Milton over the waste of Ci aos, nothing in the concep- tion of the finest genius is more admirable; if we except the elevation of his own Pandemonium. Architecture affords many opportunities for Lib. ii. Od. xv. f *>e Off. i. c. xxxix. Of Architecture. 1 1 5 analogy and comparison. The Egyptians es- teemed a pyramid as the symbol of human life : hence it was frequently erected over sepulchres. Boyle calls the uorld " a temple." Horace styles Augustus, " the standing column of the empire*:" and Tully distinguishes concord, by calling it the principal column of a government. Homer compares a general embodying his men, to an architect cementing a wall : St. Paul styles Christ " the corner stone of the church + :" Lorenzo de Medici was railed " the arch, which had long sup- ported the political fabric, of which he was the centre:" and Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son on the subject ot manners and the conduct of life, says, " 1 would wish you to be a Corin- thian edifice, upon a Tuscan foundation." Pliny uses the expression of " Condere Poema" and Milton says of Lvcidas, that he could " sing and build the lofty ihymej." What fine passages, too, are those, where the same immortal poet compares Satan to a tower : and where he de- scribes him, as springing up like "a pyramid of fire." * Lib. i. Od. xxxv. f Ep. Ephes. ch. ii. v. 20. J Strada also alludes to the analogy between poets and architects. Lib. i. Prol. iii. 10. I 2 116 Of Architecture. Not the poets only, but critics and other emi* nent writers, refer to this art for many of their similitudes and illustrations. Thus the present governments of Europe have been compared to " Gothic edifices" improved by genius and taste. Thus too we say, " the model of the laws." Sir Richard Baker wrote a soliloquy of the soul, and called it " a pillar of thoughts :" astrology is said to have a good foundation, but a false su- perstructure : a corrupted nobility are esteemed the architects of national misery : and Beattie observes, that " sentiment and description may be regarded, as the pila&tresoi the poetical fabric : but human actions are the columns, that give it stability and elevation*." In comparing a pedant with a man of learning, an elegant writer concludes with the reflection, " that it is more grateful to the mind to contem- plate the structures of learning, as they stand finished and adorned, than to discuss the low ma- terials of their foundations." This, however, is rather too much in the school of Shaftesbury. Howel compares a firm mind to a stone bridge over a rapid river, beneath which the waters are Poet and Mus. part i. ch. ii. Of Architecture. 117 perpetually roaring; yet the bridge remains in security*: Berkeley notices a curious analogy between St. Paul's Cathedral and the Christian Church ; and Steele beautifully observes in the Tatler-j-, that he considered the soul of man, " as the ruin of a glorious pile of buildings; where amidst the great heaps of rubbish, you meet with noble fragments of sculpture, broken pillars, and obelisks, and magnificence in confusion. Virtue and wisdom are continually employed in clearing the ruins, removing the disorderly heaps, recover- ing the noble species, that lie buried under them, and adjusting them according to tHeir ancient sym- metry and beauty." We are informed by Vitruvius, that the Ionic order was formed on the model of woman, and the Doric on that of man: hence Scammozi calls the Doric, the Herculean ; the Tuscan, the gigantic ; the Composite, the heroic ; the Ionic, the matronal ; and the Corinthian, the virginal. IV. SOME of the most eminent PAINTERS have in- dicated a marked predilection for architectuie. * Book iy. Let. xxii. f No. 87. 118 Of Architecture. Rousseau seldom painted a piece, in which some architectural object WHS not included ; Bloemeu of Antwerp delighted in ruins ; Castiglione in ab- beys and castles; Bourdon in Gothic monuments; and Poussin in Grecian pillars and temples. Van Oost of Bruges embellished the back-grounds of his landscapes and historical designs with arches and obelisks ; while Dirk von Delen, painting temples, saloons, and colonnades, was a perfect master of arthitei tural embellishment. What objects can be more beautiful, than the temples of ancient Home, with which Claude le Lorraine has embellished his landscapes ? Some- times seated on a rock, covered with shrubs ; now on the side of a mountain, shaded by trees ; here festooned with ivy, and there falling into ruins. Sometimes a triumphal aich is exhibited, now a rustic temple; and, at intervals, are depicted fallen columns and porticoes, overgrown with moss, or mantled wish lycUens. " Perhaps," says Dr. Blair, " the most complete assemblage of beauti- ful objects, that can any where be found, is pre- sented by a rich, natural landscape, where there is a sufficient variety of objects : fields in verdure, scattered trees and flowers, running water, and animals grazing. If to these be joined some of Of Architecture. 1 1 9 the productions of art, which suit such a scene ; as a bridge with arches over a river; smoke rising from cottages in the midst of trees, and the distant view of a fine building, seen by the rising sun; we then enjoy, in the highest perfection, that gay, cheerful, and placid sensation, which characterises beauty*." Such scenes as these were frequently exhibited by Paul Veronese, who peculiarly excelled in painting of architecture: - his natural taste being improved and perfected by a constant attention to the buildings, erected by Palladio. Hence he was called " // pittor felice." Architecture, by the use to which it may be ap- plied, has the undoubted power of exciting to the noblest actions: since the monuments, pillars, and obelisks, erected to the memory of illustrious men, have in all ages acted as important stimuli to the virtues of the living. Laban and Jacob reared a pillar on their reconciliation; while the Ethio- pians, Arabs, and Celts, erected pillars to signalize their devotion. The Greeks and the Romans consecrated temples to Bacchus, Theseus, and Perseus. Augustus dedicated a theatre to the me- * Blair, lect. v. vol. i. 99. 120 Of Architecture. mory of Marcellus ; and the first column, erected to the honour of a Roman, was reared in admira- tion of Valerius Maximus. Trajan consecrated an arch to the Emperor Titus; Constantiue erected another in gratitude for having conquered Maxentius : and a column was raised in honour of Theodosins, in order to commemorate his victories over the Scythians. In Rome, bridges having a sacred character attached to them, the care of their reparation was intrusted to the Pon- tifex ; and when generals triumphed, they invaria- bly marched over the bridge of St. Angelo, from the days of Romulus to the accession of Pro- bus. It is curious to remark, that no arch is to be found among the ruins of Egypt : it was invented by the Greeks, who first used it for bridges and aqueducts. Its construction was one of the se- crets of the Ionian Dionysiacs; and was well understood in the middle ages by the Saracenic and Gothic architects : some of whose arches have a rich, a striking, and imposing effect. If the professed architect derive an elegant enjoy- ment, while beholding the arch of the Rialto at Venice, the Ponte Trinita over the Arno, and the Pont-y-Pridd over the Taffe, there is scarcely an Of Architecture. 12.1 arch, which does not administer to the pleasure, even of the most unpractised eye: concave erec- tions always affecting us moi e than convex ones ; because in the former we see the whole; while in the latter, seeing a part only, the imagination recognizes its power of exercise. V. THE influence, which architecture possesses in exciting religious emotions, is sufficiently proved by the circumstance of almost every nation having appropriated their must magnificent buildings to the service of religion. In the rudest, as well as in the most civilized ages of mankind, this custom has almost universally prevailed. Impossible is it to approach Stone-Henge that astonishing mo- nument of the religion of our forefathers ! with- out emotions of awe and astonishment : while the gigantic ruins of Elephanta are even more wonderful than the Egyptian pyramids. The effect of the Colosseum on the unenlight- ened Goths, who visited Home, is well described by cotemporary historians ; and when Dupaty entered its precincts, he was lost in awful wonder and admiration *. * Lett. Ixxiii. 122 Of Architecture. The eastern style of architecture was the most remarkable for greatness of bulk, the western for greatness of manner. The temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, and the church of St. Peter's at Rome, were the principal erections for the exercise of an- cient and modern criticism. The former took seven years in building; was roofed with cedar; and as every part of it was previously prepared, there was neither a hammer, an axe, nor any tool of iron, heard during the whole period of its erection. This temple being destroyed was rebuilt, and continued to excite the admiration of Western Asia, till its final destruction in the days of the emperor Ves- pasian. It is amply described in the pages of Josephus *. If the Jews held their temple in religious ve- neration, the Ephesians were nearly as proud of their temple to Diana an erection, which cost the labour of two hundred and twenty years, and so magnificent, that Pliny, the naturalist, styles it " Magnificenti that perfect model of an accomplished gentleman ! In such a treatise, the family of Este would exhibit itself in bold relief. For truly has it been said by a recent biographer of Tasso, that in the history of those patronizers of the arts, we find '* none of those rapes, murders, and oppressions, none of those conspiracies, seditions, and rebel- lions among their subjects, which present them- selves, at almost every page of the annals of the contemporary princes of Italy." The Athenians, in order to signalize their grati- tude and admiration of the conduct of Miltiacles, caused a picture to be painted, in which the Battle of Marathon was delineated. This pic- ture continued for several ages to animate that elegant people to patriotic deeds. Greece, the mother of the arts, the nurse of eloquence, the witness of many a virtuous and heroic action ; a country, once profusely adorned with Doric, 1 44 Of Sculpture and Painting. Ionic, and Corinthian monuments, erected (he first statue of gold to Georgias of Leontium, in honour of his extensive learning. The first raised in Italy was erected by a youth, in the temple of piety, as a monument of filial affection. The Romans erected statues even to their ene- mies. Thus they raised one of Porsenna, for hav- ing exercised towards them an act of generosity. Virtue, as well as valour, was rewarded in the game manner. Thus, when they placed a statue of Cato, the censor, in the temple of health, they embellished it with an inscription, intimating, that the statue was not raised for the victories he had gained, but for having restored good discipline and wise institutions, at a time, when the common- wealth had degenerated into selfishness and licen- tiousness. No persons at Rome were allowed to have any busts, statues, or portraits of their families, unless they had filled some office of public utility. He, therefore, who had statues of his ancestors, was styled " Vir multarum imaginum;" and was, in consequence, considered noble. At his death, the pictures of his ancestors preceded his corpse. The statues of heroes were anciently esteemed places of refuge and asylum. Cicero tells us, that statues were decreed to deceased persons much \ Of Sculpture and Painting. 1 45 more frequently than sepulchres*: hence Scipio African us caused the effigies of Ennius to be placed among the Cornelian family, because he considered him an honour to his family: that Ennius, whom Lucretius has so eloquently eulo- gized, and whom Quintilian compares to a grove of venerable oaks ! Ca3sar, who, in spite of his public murders, in- dicated at intervals a nobility of mind, which, in some degree, atoned for his gigantic ambition, in- dicated considerable magnanimity in reinstating the statues of Pompey on their pedestals, after they had been thrown down in the violence of party contention. It was on this occasion, that Cicero, who bore him a decided enmity, said, that by " rearing Pompey's statues, Caesar had erected one to himself." Alexander was equally correct in forbearing to raise the statue of Xerxes : a monarch, who was the scorn of his enemies, and the contempt of his friends ! Being at Per- sepolis, Alexander saw the statue of Xerxes lying incumbent, the crowd having pushed it down. Upon seeing it, the conqueror stopt. " Shall we leave you in this dishonourable condition ?" said * Majores quidem nostri statuas multis decrevemnt : *e- imlchra panels. 146 Of Sculpture and Painting. he to the statue, " in revenge for the war, you once made upon Greece ; or shall we rear you again, in honour of the few virtues, you might chance tp possess?" Having thus accosted the statue, as if it were animated, he paused; but at length passed on : thinking it unworthy of being replaced on its pedestal*. In the early ages both of Greece and Rome, statues were decreed to no one, who had not merited them by some public service, or some eminent virtue. In the age of the emperors, how- ever, every worthless noble, and every ignoraut and contemptible monarch, had the vanity and the power of erecting his own ! VI. CLEOMENES painted women so exquisitely, that a Roman knight is said to have pined to death for the love of one of his pictures ! and Polycletus, an artist excelling in graci , having drawn a Juno, in a manner peculiarly fascinating, Martial, in the happiest style of compliment, ad- dressed him with an epigram, in which he declares, * Plut. in Vit. Alex. Of Sculpture and Painting* 147 that if " Jupiter did not love his own Juno, he must of necessity love his." Junonem, Polyclete, suam nisi frater tuuaret, Junonem poterat frater atnare tuam. Mart. Lib. x. Ep. 89. It was said of Corregio, that every figure, which he introduced into his pictures, was, or had been in love. Looking on the pieces of this painter of grace, Annibale Carrachi declared, in a letter to one of his friends, that every thing -he saw as- tonished him. The adults were personifications of Love : " the children," said he, " live ; they breathe they smile with so much grace, and so much reality, that it is impossible to refrain from smiling and partaking of their enjoyment." The effects of painting upon a mind, labouring under the impulse of unlawful passion, is exem- plified in the instance of the celebrated Propertifi de Rossi. Falling in love with an object, who refused to return her affection, since she was married to another, she fell a martyr to her passion. Sinking into despair, she pined from day to day. Restless, listless, and miserable, the only consola- tion she experienced was, in forming a bass-relief, L 2 148 Of Sculpture and Painting. representing the history of Potiphar's wife ; and having finished it, she died ! (A. D. 1530.) The first public use, to which forms were em- bodied, and sculpture applied, was, most assuredly, religious. Thus " the Creator is forgotten in the worship of his creatures :" for, as Mons. Vol- taire observes, man has had in all ages, which have been unenlightened, a natural inclination to create God after the image of man. Barbarous nations, therefore, have had barbarous images ; and the association has been so difficult to con- quer, that even liberal and polished nations have not been able entirely to overcome it. The Phoe- nicians first erected statues in honour of their gods. Images were then used for sensible objects, and considered symbols of the various operations of the mind. The Indians regard a statue of eight arms an emblem of Omnipotence : while the figure of Fo, the great god of the Chinese, is a large image, twenty feet in height, with twelve hands, twelve arms, immense eyes, and a hideous face *. The Egyptians, who never formed notions of ideal beauty, enacted a law, as we learn from * For an account of their idols, vide Sale's Prelim. Disc. 17. Hottinger. Hist. Orient. 298. Of Sculpture and Painting. 1 49 Eustathius, that their priests, kings, and gods, should, at all times, be modelled after one style. The ancient Arabs admitted image-worship * ; but those of the ages, after Mahomet, esteemed all re- presentations of men and animals abhorrent to nature. That extravagant and sanguinary im- postor destroyed three hundred and sixty idols f in and around Mecca. Excelling in the selection of imposing subjects, the ancient artists threw more passion into their expression, than any of the moderns : and this expression was a natural consequence of a greater elevation of mind. In the conception of their deities, therefore, they more than equalled the imagination of their poets. The Jupiter of Scopas was in marble ; that of Polycletus in bronze ; that of Phidias in gold and ivory. The statue of the latter sat upon a throne, inlaid with ivory and ebony, studded with jewels : the robe was em- bossed with flowers, and various kinds of animals. The exquisite character of this statue, says Quin- tilian, increased the ardour of Grecian devotion, and added lustre to the religion of the country. A curious instance is related of the effect of a * Bell's Journey from St. Petersburgh to Pekin. t Abulfeda. 107. 1 50 Of Sculpture and Painting. statue, in causing even tyranny to be awed from an act of desolation. Sapor, one of the Persian kings, having prepared to burn the temple of Apollo at Daphne, situated on the river Orontes, was so struck with the figure of the god, that he prostrated himself at the foot of the altar, and in- voluntarily adored the deity before him. The tem- ple, in consequence, was spared. The Turks are said to believe, that angels have no power to enter a house, which contains the portrait of a man ; hence their total neglect and prejudice against painting in general, and of por- trait-painting in particular. The priests of Tibet, on the contrary, esteem statues as being so holy, that they cause themselves to be buried in hollow images of metal. None were, however, as we learn from Diogenes Laertius, allowed in the Per- sian worship ; and this was the real cause of the Magi's requesting Xerxes to burn all the statues of Greece. The Jews were great enemies to every descrip- tion of sculpture. In ancient times they were en- joined not even to look upon an image ; and, in the present, they admit no statues into their houses as ornaments, much less iuto their tabernacles. Tertulliau, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Origen, Of Music. 151 Cyprian, and all the primitive Christians, totally abstained from image worship : and its absurdity is admirably exposed by the author of the book of Wisdom. It crept at length into the church, however, and lamentable are the effects even to the present day. Since the edict * of Leo, the Isaurian, interdicting the adoration of images, produced not a more sanguinary war in Asia, spreading into Italy, than the Christian wars since. A work , written for the purpose of reconciling the practice of image adoration with the decalogue, were worthy the sophistry of Baronius, and the subtlety of Aquinas. MUSIC. I. OP all amusements, says Montesquieu, music is the most innocent, and therefore the best-f. Pericles must necessarily have been of the same opinion, since he erected an odeum for the use of of the public . Epaminondas excelled on the flute ; Socrates learned music in his old age|j. * A. D. 7-26. f Spirit of Laws, iv. c. 8. J Plut. inVit. Pericl. Cornel. Nep. in Vit. Epaiu. II Val.Max.viii. c. 7. Quint. Lib. i. c. 10. 152 Of Music. In fact, it was an essential part of Grecian edu- cation *; and numerous are the instances recorded of the effects, arising from the simplicity of the JEolic ; the gaiety of the Ionic ; the solemnity of the Phrygian; the plaintiveness of the Lydian; and the martial character of the Doric mood. Cains Gracchus regulated his voice by music f; and the writer of the Ecclesiasticus regarded mu- sicians so highly, that he even ranked them in the number of illustrious im-ii |. In those times, poetry gave meaning to music, and music im- parted a natural grace to poetry : the one without the other being compared by Plato to a beautiful face, no longer young. Politian amused his lei- sure hours in playing on his lute; and Pope Gre- gory was scarcely more vain of the Tiara, than in possessing the skill to reduce the number of mu- sical notes ^. Henry VIII. was so ardent a lover of music, that he contributed several masses, which were sung in his chapel; and ordered trum- pets to be sounded over his grave : while his chancellor, Sir Thomas More, was such a pas- sionate admirer of this elegant art, that he caused * JEVi&n. Var. HiM. vii. 15. f Plul. in Vit. Gracch. J Bccl. cb. \\\iv. 1 3. $ From 15 to 7. Of Music. 153 his first wife to be instructed in all its kinds ; and his second was taught in the same manner, in order that it might assist in withdrawing her thoughts and imagination from an intercourse with the world. Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, Horace, and most of the more eminent ancient poets had a natural taste for music. It has indeed been said, that man is both a poet and a musician by nature ; harmony being the voice and language of nature. It is not, however, unworthy of remark, that Pope, who had as delicate a sensibility for all the harmonies of language and versification, as the best Italian poet or musician ; and that Garrick, whose voice was melody itself, had neither of them an ear or an inclination for music*. Linnaeus, too, possessed a taste neither for music, nor any of the liberal arts. The father of Montaigne, on the contrary, had so high a relish for music of every description, that he caused his son to be always awakened out of his sleep by it. The rapture, arising from a cir- cumstance of this sort, partakes of the character of enchantment : Then let some strange, mysterious dream Ware with its wings, in airy stream * Mirror. 154 Of Music. Of lively portraiture display'*!, Softly on my eye-lids laid: And as 1 wake, sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath. // Penterou. II. SPEAKING a captivating language to the heart, music has its analogies, as well as the relative arts of architecture and painting. We apply to each the relative term of harmony ; and the Greeks, perceiving these analogies and affinities, applied the term eqnally to poetry, to astronomy, and to general science. Hence their symbols were con- sidered allegorical of the harmony of nature : the sistra of Egypt was esteemed an emblem of the three elements of matter : and Pythagoras called measure man, and tone woman. Plutarch presents several musical analogies and illustrations : thus he says, that the harmony of the universe is composed of contraries, like a harp, ihe music of which consists of high and of low notes *. In his apology for writing the lives of bad, as well as of good characters, he illustrates his subject by referring to the practice of Ismenias, * Isis and Osiris 369. Of Music. 155 the musician, who taught his scholars to observe bad performers on the flute, as well as good ones. In his life of Phocion, he observes, that Homer frequently expresses things which are pleasant by the word menoithes, signifying that, which is sym- phonious to the mind ; what soothes its weakness, and bears not hard upon its inclinations. When comparing Numa and Lycurgus, he observes, that they governed their respective cities, as musicians govern their lyres : Lycurgus screwed up the strings of Sparta to a higher and stronger tone, since they had been relaxed by luxury: Numa, on the other hand, reduced the bold and harsher notes of Rome to a milder and more gentle key. Music, which affords an interesting subject for mechanical research, teaches us the best " language of sensation," by not only delighting us, while we are in the act of hearing, but in the exercise of our memories also. For an air, invented by genius, and composed with taste, delights the imagination, even when the music ceases to be heard. Its tones refine the taste ; and, disposing us to enjoy every collateral offspring of the fancy, give a dig- nified character to the faculty of thought, during the seductive operation. Hence a noble and he- 156 Of Music. roic action appears still more exalted, when it is remembered during a concert; and a patriot is more elevated in our imagination, when his virtues are celebrated on the harp or the lute. A calm evening becomes more seducing when it is ushered in by music ; and when relishing the beauties of a favourite writer, in a retired pavilion, how does the bosom swell with tender and pathetic emotion* if an Eolian harp murmur its bewitching music ! THE EOLIAN HARP. Music of Nature! Emblem of each sphere! How sweetly tranquil does my listening soul, At dewy eve, thy warbling murmurs hear, When, sooth'd to tenderness, thy measures roll ! Sometimes more loud, and now yet louder still, Sometimes more distant, and again more near; Waking soft echoes, and, with magic skill, Swelling the eye with a luxurious tear! Delightful flutterings ! Hovering tow'rds the sky, Ten thousand sylphs, on lightest pinions borne, To realms etherial, on your murmurs fly, And waked to melancholy feelings, mourn. Nature's best music ! Since its simple strain Lulls to repose each transitory pain. When we listen to soft and gentle vibrations, they accord with our sentiments of love and Of Music. 151 friendship; they awaken ideas of tranquillity, and recal to our imagination scenes, which have de- lighted us in a lovely and romantic country. Do we hear rural music ? Instantly are we trans- ported to those scenes, where the shepherd is seen reclining under a hawthorn ! Do we listen to a wilder strain? The river rushes down the valley, lingers along the vale, or washes the wall of a so- litary ruin. Who, that has reposed on the banks of the Arno, or the Brenta, hears an air of Italy, without wafting himself to the vales of Tuscany, the ruins of Bassano, or the four convents of Venice ? Who, that is charmed with the me- lodies of Scotland, permits not his mental eye to rest upon the lake of Loch-Leven, the glens of the Grampians, or the summit of Ben Lomond? The national airs of Ireland waft the native of that fruitful soil to the waters of the Shannon ; those of Wales to the romantic recesses of Snowdon, to the vale of Festiniog, or the banks of the Towy, Speaking of Scottish airs and melodies, Dr. Beattie thus beautifully expresses himself " What though they be inferior to the Italian ? What though they be irregular and rude ? It is not their merit, but the charming impressions they would recal to his mind, that so much inte- rests the native of Scotland: ideas of innocence, 15* Of Music. simplicity, and leisure, of romantic enterprize, and enthusiastic attachment; and of scenes, which on recollection we are inclined to think that a brighter sun illumined, a fresher verdure crowned, and purer skies and happier climes conspired to beau- tify, than are now to be seen in the dreary paths of care and disappointment; into which men, yielding to the passions, peculiar to more advanced years, are tempted to wander*." Who, that has visited Gascony or Languedoc, is not charmed, when he hears the beautiful melo- dies of the province of Auvergne ? He sees the vales, the cottages, and the rivulets; the grapes hanging in festoons from v ine to vine ; the pea- sants dancing on the village-green by the light of the moon: He sees he feels he partakes of their innocent enthusiasm, and joins in their obli- vion of every species of sorrow ! These pictures are not drawn in our imagina- tion, by those airs of difficult expression, in which the musical pedant delights; but by those simple melodies, which nature recognizes, and which glide insensibly into the heart, Untwisting all the charms, that tie The hidden soul of harmony. * Essay on Poetry and Music, part i. sect. ii. 162. Of Music. 159 These effects may, for the most part, be referred to their character of simplicity; the style of nature being so effective in exciting our admiration and sympathy, whether observed in a painting, in sculp- ture, or in architecture, in poetry, or in music. III. As music was always associated with poetry, in ancient times, it is beyond the art of present mu- sicians to create the emotions, which were engen- dered by the sweetness and pathos of the ancient chromatic ; by the grandeur and majesty of the Doric ; by the affecting tones of the Lydian ; or by the sacred awe, which was awakened by the Phrygian. Its influence in the hour of sorrow and chagrin have, however, been acknowledged with universal accredence. So soothing to the heart, and such placidity does it give to the mind, that it excites no surprise, that many of those, who have, to any high degree, cultivated this fascinating art, should have attained the measure of extended life. Exciting sensibility, which is the parent of taste, music accords itself to every passion, that has no painful tendency; and, except from illegitimate association, conveys no unhallowed image to the 160 Of Music. mind. Exciting noble conceptions, it fills the soul with a love of glory, and operates as a powerful auxiliary to human happiness. Awakening ten- derness, it fans the fire of the poet, and lulls every wild and guilty passion into peace. Under the guidance of philosophy, says Barthe- lemy from Aristotle, " Music is one of the noblest gifts of heaven, and one of the noblest inventions of man*. Calling us to pleasure, as philosophy calls us to virtue ; by their union nature invites us to happiness f." It is an art, says Quintilian, (ex- patiating on its use, its comfort, and its assistance to science), worthy the cultivation of the best of men; and of such high importance was it regarded by Aristotle, that he considered it, as being capable of producing a permanent effect in forming na- tional dispositions : while Plato esteemed a change in national music, as a certain sign of a change in national character J. Hence he admitted no mu- sic, but the Doric, into his republic ; and he would even have excluded that, had he not conceived, that it was conducive to propriety of manners, and to energy of mind. Polybius ascribed the humanity which distin- * Trav. Anac. vol. iii. 93. f- Trav. Anac. vol. iii. 109. Arist. Do Rcjuin. viii. c. 7. J Plat. DC Hep. lib. iv. Of Music. 161 guished the Arcadians, to music ; and attributes the utter contempt, in which it was held, as the effective cause, why the Cynethians were more un- polished and barbarous, than any other nation in Greece*. Music is one of the six essential points of know- ledge in China; even the Birmans esteem it for its use and comfort^; and that it has proved me^ dicinal, we have the united attestations of Aulus GelliusJ, Atheneus 5), and a host of respect- able authorities. That it can administer to the mind's disease, and become the medicine of grief, no one, skilled in the anatomy of the heart, will venture to deny. Gifted with the power of sooth- ing the passions, well may it be styled " Regum decus atque voluptas;" and with equal propriety might Rousseau call it " La consolations des mise- ries de ma vie" The Lacedemonians, as Suidas relates, were sometimes governed at the will of Ter pander's lyre ; they were lovers only of that music, which inspired virtue ||. Pythagoras is said to have pre- vented a band of intoxicated youths from burning * Poljb. Lib. iv. f Col. Syme's Journey, vol. iii. p. 93. JLib.iv. 13. Lib. xir. 5. II Arist. de Repub. Lib.viii. c.5. M 162 Of Music. a house by the power of musical persuasion \ ami Empedocles, by the same rhetoric, checked the madness of a youth, who threatened his adversary with instant death*. It is related too, that as a musician, named Claudian, was one day perform- ing in the Phrygian mood, before Henry III. of France, at the marriage of the Due de Joyeuse, one of the courtiers was so much excited by the ardour of the music, that he seized his arms with -a desperate intention, though in the presence of his sovereign : but he was instantly calmed by the musician's changing the mood. The truth of this story may, however, justly be doubted ; for music, as an elegant writer justly remarks, t( may inspire devotion, fortitude, compassion, benevolence, tran- quillity: it may infuse a gentle sorrow, that soft- ens without wounding the heart, or a sublime horror, that expands and elevates, while it as- tonishes the imagination : but it has no expression for impiety, cowardice, cruelty, hatred, or dis- content." That music has the power of animating whole nations to the most extraordinary results, the ef- fects of the Ca Ira, and the Marseillois Hymn, o * Jamblich, in Vit Pytbag. viii. Of Music. 163 heard during the revolution of France, amply tes- tify. The former impelled the French troops to such a height of enthusiasm, that no mode of re- cruiting was so successful as playing it : while the latter engendered the ardour, which won the battle of Jemappe. So assured were the Greeks of musical power, that the Spartans marched to battle by the sound of the lyre * ; and whenTheon was desired to paint a young warrior, eager for battle, he ordered trum- pets and other martial instruments to be sounded, in order to excite an ardent expectation and im- pulse in the soldiers; thus catching the fire and animation, depicted in their countenances -f . "So- lemn and dreadful was the sight," says Plutarch, " to see the Spartans measuring their steps to th sound of music, and without the least disorder in their ranks, or tumult in their spirits, moving fo!*- ward cheerfully and composedly, like harmony, to battle." . < ! > ,'.... ,T - '> IV. TACITUS remarks, and with truth, that the far- ther we trace the history of mankind, the greater * Pausan. Lib. iii. c. 18. f /Elian Var. Hist. Lib, ii, c. 44. M 2 164 Of Music. appears to have been the veneration for poetry and music. Luther, the rough and boisterous Luther, distrusted the man, M'ho had no ear for music; and Theophrastus, who wrote a treatise on this fascinating art, the loss of which we may ascribe to the conflagration of Alexandria, was accustomed to say, that it was the offspring of sorrow, of pleasure and enthusiasm. Pythagoras, who sung the poems of Hesiod, Homer, and Thales, in order to promote tranquillity of mind, considered music as the chief means, by which the soul could be raised above passion, and disposed to contempla- tion. His students composed their minds to rest by music in the evening; and in the morning played light airs, to animate them to a willing dis- charge of the duties of the day. They rose early; and, previous to the sun's rising, struck their harps, and sung sacred hymns. As it rose above the horizon, they dropt their instruments, and pro- strated themselves in awful adoration*. St. Dunstan introduced the organ into the ca- thedrals and monasteries of England, because he esteemed music one of the best preservatives against bad thoughts of every kind. Engendering Jaiublich. in Vit. Pjih. c.26. Of Music. 165 the finest and most elevated associations, who, that listens to the anthems of Palestina, the masses of Pergolese, the pastorale of Corelli, and, above all, to the Messiah and the Redemption of Handel, recals not to his enthusiastic fancy the Angels of Albani, or the Empyrean of Milton? Most nations have coincided with the idea, that music in religious ceremonies is acceptable to the deity. The Egyptians delighted their god Osiris with the Sistra. The Magi of the Persians played upon harps in honour of the sun; the Brahmins of India were accustomed to hail the first appear- ance of morning in the same manner ; the Hindoos believe, that the deities, presiding over the seasons, are attended by music ; and a select choir was annually sent to sing the honours of Apollo, at Delos, by the chief cities of Greece. Music pro- claimed the birth of Christ; and Milton makes it to have a salutary effect even upon the fallen angels * . Forming one of the principal ceremonies, in the Catholic worship, most cathedrals have bands, well appointed, and organs of great power. Homer and Hesiod represent the muses, as delighting the ears of their deities by the sound of their harmonies ; and the rabbis of the Hebrews, * Par, Lost, b. i. y. 549 562. 166 Of Music. ft people once peculiarly devoted to sacred music , believe, that angels stand before the throne of heaven, sounding harps and dulcimers to the praise of the Eternal To this idea, how beautiful is that fine allusion in Milton, where Eve, enquiring the cause why those stars, which adorn our hemi- sphere, should shine only by night, a season in which all the visible creation is accustomed to repose, Adam replies -Think not, though man were none, That Heaven would want spectators : God want praise. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep. All these, with ceaseless prnise, his works behold Both day and night. How often from the steep Of echoing hill, or thicket, have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole or responsive to each other's note, Hymning their great Creator? oft* in bands, While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk, With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds, In full harmonic number join'd, their songs Divide the night, and lift their thoughts to Heav'n ! Par. Lott. iv. How delightfully, too, has he described the matchless harmony, which prevailed before the throne, in those extatic regions : Their golden harps The angels took, that glittering by their side Of Music. 167 Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet Of charming symphony they introduce The sacred song, and waken raptures high : No one exempt, no voice but well could join Melodious part. Such concord is in Heav'n ! . ,,.1^ >*!. J/sJ';^J_.,' .4 ''-^ /-**-/ i .' A i / . j * i .* Akenside, in a passage of his Hymn to the Naiads, imitated from Pindar and Gray, represents Apollo and his " tuneful throng," disarming Mars of his fury by their melody : the eagle lying in- cumbent over the sceptre of Jupiter, who remits his terrors. In that " great moment of divine de- light," the Naiads listen in sacred silence, and every celestial bosom is ravished into ecstasy. The idea of Yriarte, too, was beautifully imagined, where, towards the close of his didactic poem, he intro- duces in an allegory, Taste appeal ing in the academy of the arts, when the prizes were about to be pub- licly distributed, and in which honours were about to be conferred on painting, sculpture, and archi- tecture, poetry, and eloquence. He represents Music as complaining, that, while those sister arts lived in splendour, she was forced to reside in ob- scurity, and to lead a life of sorrow and of pain : and while academies had often been instituted for their benefit, no honourable attention had been paid to her. In consequence of this complaint, 168 Of Music. Taste recommends the establishment of an academy of music. The proposal meets with general ap- probation. Every Art agrees to contribute to the honour of Music. Architecture promises to raise an academy ; Fainting offers to adorn the roof and the walls with emblematical subjects ; Sculpture, to form, for the entrances and niches, bu>ts, statues, and relievos of all those men, who have signalized themselves in the art. Eloquence promises to impart her best powers to him, who, in the best style of clearness and elegance, shall invent supe- rior theories, and lay down better rules than those, which are followed in the schools. Poetry, warm in the cause, and glowing With a divine energy, promises to polish language, to improve the drama, to celebrate the praises of Music, to consider her- self closely allied in affection; and that Music and herself will live in harmonious rivalship with each other. V. OF all our sensual gratifications, music is that, which most resembles the pleasure of the mind : forming, as it were, the connecting link between the body and the soul. Being one of the most de- Of Music. 169 licate of all our enjoyments, and touching the soul, and refining its nature, music lulls the pressure of necessity, charms the hour of misery, and appeals most powerfully from every grosser passion. With ideas of use, amusement, and elevation, equal to these, sacred are the moments, which we devote to music ! moments, in which, anticipating enjoy- ments of a still more sacred character, we listen, while all our best and noblest sympathies are awakened by the ease, the grace, and modu- lation of a Hayden ; the perfect union of parts, which characterizes the pieces of Corelli, that musician of nature ! the exquisite modulation of Purcell, echoing to the most agreeable senti- ments; the deep feeling, the correct taste, the un- bounded imagination of Mozart; the sweetness of the fascinating Gluck, who is said to have touched the lyre, that once belonged to Orpheus, and to have restored the music of the golden age : above all, the profound science, the deep chord, the swelling harmony, and the vigorous richness and compass of the inimitable Handel, the Homer, the Tasso, and the Milton of music ! 170 LITERATURE. THE influence of architecture, painting, sculp- ture, and music, however decided in its nature, must of necessity be partial ; since, to the know- ledge and enjoyment of those liberal arts requi- sites are necessary, which do not lie in the power of every one to supply. Those requisites are wealth, opportunity, and taste. Wealth to supply leisure; opportunity to select just models; and taste to elicit enjoyment from their harmonies and perfections. The in- fluence of LITERATURE is more extended in its operations, more chaste, and more certain. I. OF all the useful or the liberal arts, none is more essentially profitable, or delightful, than that of conveying, by specific signs, the various impres- sions of the mind : that sacred art, which, like the sympathetic needles of Strada, enables us to converse with those, we love and esteem, even at an immeasurable distance : that art, by which Of Literature. 171 our sentiments are modelled, and our thoughts eternized ; by the silence of which we converse with the noblest and the best of men : bring all ages into one ; and enable us to trace the origin of states, the progress of mind, and the influence of its operations in all ages, and in all nations: That noble art, by which we take long journeys, climb high mountains, and cross immeasurable seas ; by which we hear, we see, we feel ! To read just thoughts, conveyed in elevated lan- guage, is, assuredly, one of the highest order of enjoyments ! It imparts to the mind a soundness of health, as exercise imparts new vigour to the body. Correcting the harsher feelings, securing the heart against the mean, the envious, and the worthless, it instils' that first and noblest of all properties, a temperate self-esteem; and, widen- ing our views, and elevating our sentiments^ it embellishes human nature, adds grace to rank, im- portance to wealth, and dignity to honour. When a love of literature adorns the statesman, it inspires a love of immortality: and, carrying him far above the little world of little maids, en- ables him to detect his own deficiencies ; and, giving facility to the just arrangement of all the materials of thought, produces mines of intellec- H2 Of Literature. tual wealth ; and, aggrandizing his views, elicits them on proper occasions, and directs them to proper ends. In youth it acts, as a stimulus, to every great and noble action; in manhood it is a refuge, and in age a sanctuary. Operating in all seasons, as an asylum from envy, and from the society and col- lision of degenerate minds, it cheers the bosoms of the good, and administers a recompense to the great. Above all it affords an inexhaustible fund of inspiration for an ardent admiration of Liberty. Alive to all the tendencies of ancient learning, and, in consequence, of ancient example, Napo- leon, the mean, the pusillanimous, and the cruel, on whose perjured forehead rests a greater bur- then of infamy, than has in modern times disho- noured and disgraced the annals of enlightened nations, Napoleon decreed, that ancient litera- ture should no longer be regarded, as an essential part of a liberal education ! Mahomet, in the same manner, discouraged, and at length prohi- bited, the study of philosophy, as one precaution- ary method of establishing his imposture. On the excellence of the mind Dr. Beattie has some beautiful remarks. " When we look at a landscape, we can fancy a thousand additional Of Literature. 173 embellishments. Mountains loftier, and more picturesque, rivers more copious, more limpid, and more beautifully winding; smoother and wider lawns; valleys more richly diversified; caverns and rocks more gloomy, and more stu- pendous : ruins more majestic ; buildings more magnificent ; oceans more varied with islands, more splendid with shipping, or more agitated by storm, than any we have ever seen, it is easy for human imagination to conceive. Many things in art and nature exceed expectation; but no- thing sensible transcends, or equals, the capacity of thought, a striking evidence of the dignity of the human soul." If such is the grandeur of thought, of all the occupations of man, that, which has for its con- templation the good, the beautiful, and the sub- lime, must, of necessity, be the most noble and the most dignified. This we feel to be founded in nature ; since those men have, in all ages, been regarded with peculiar veneration, whose powers have been directed to melt the heart with pathetic descriptions, to impress the imagination with beautiful images, and, preserving a native dignity of language, to sublime it with elevated and magnificent conceptions: thus expanding 174 Of Literature. the views and intellects of their readers, and lift- ing their contemplations far beyond this mean, this narrow, and debasing sphere ! II. CONCEIVING with a poet's eye, and embody- ing with a sculptor's chisel, the MAN OF GKNIUS acorns the mechanical order, in which dulness wraps its ignorance: and blending one beauty with another in many a varied shade and tint; and throwing promiscuously his multitudinous thoughts over all the page, he amazes and bewil- ders the intellects of those, who, in all the pomp of pedantic pride, and with as little taste as a Caffre or a Malay, would dignify the technichy of science, by adoring Aristotle, and sanctifying Aquinas. The MAN OF JUDGMENT, comparing, with accuracy, one thing with another, refuses to be captivated by any thing, of which he perceives not the origin, bearing, and extent. And as DIS- CERNMENT exercises its powers of distinguish- ing, the MAN OF PENETRATION enters into the secret motives of actions, and the most hidden thoughts of man : and while the IMAGINATION of some would grasp beyond its capacity of action, Of Literature. 175 JUDGMENT, which alone is equivalent to all the other mental qualities, brings all things under its control, and determines, with precision, in what manner one contrives, another executes, a third conceives, a fourth comprehends, and a fifth creates. One order of intellect delights the man of wit, of talent and ingenuity; a second, formed of stronger texture, pleases the sagacious and the subtle : a third, more richly favoured, and ani- mated with all the finer impulses, charms and in- structs the exalted sons of genius : while a fourth, to whose desires and capacities of mind the best and greatest favours of fortune are unequal, receives as high an enjoyment from the subjects of infinity, indivisibility, and eternity, as the man of taste de- rives from a view of extended vales, stupendous rocks, antique forests, and thundering cataracts. Dr. Blair defines TASTE to be the power of receiving pleasure from the beauties of nature and art. " It is no less essential to man," says he, ' " to have some discernment of beauty, than it is to possess the attributes of reason and speech *." Taste, to which the gay, the grave, the ignorant, * Lect. ii. vol. i. p. SO. 176 Of Literature. and the learned, arc equally unanimous in their endeavour to aspire, is, therefore, more or less, inherent in the child, as well as in the man ; in the savage, as well as in the native of Italy or Athens. FINE TASTE, which is a natural one improved by art, is the result of a nice distinction of beauty and sublimity, and operates as a corrector of the occasional eccentricities of genius. GENIUS, however, involves taste; and implies the faculty of invention, combined with the power of execu- tion. But, different as they are in quality, their interests and their objects are the same viz. vir- tue, nature, art and science. True TASTE, -When delicately fine, Is the pure sunshine of a soul divine ; The full perfection of each mental pow'r ; 'Tis Sense, 'tis Nature, and 'tis something more. Twin-born with Genius, of one common bed, One parent bore them, and one master bred. It gives the lyre with happier sounds to flow, With purer blushes bids fair Beauty glow ; From Raphael's pencil calls a nobler line, And warms, Corregio ! every touch of thine. CAWTHOHN. TALENT displays itself in imitation; while GENIUS, having an instinctive faculty of inven- tion, and delighting in new relations and in new Of Literature. 177 influences, impregnates nature with a new impres- sion. Genius always possesses talent; while talent frequently is destitute of genius : for a musi- cian, excelling in the difficulties and intricacies of execution, and capable of giving the fullest effect to every pause and intonation of Handel, may yet be utterly incapable of composing the simplest original melody. HARMONY denotes talent ; MELODY genius. If talent would thrive, it must be cherished by the world: Genius, however, being for the most part neglected, forms, as a natural consequence, a world for itself. Talent is a faculty for one direction ; but genius is confined to no admeasurement. Scorning the rules of art, it shews itself by a quick perception of apparently contrasted qualities, fas- cinates by its coruscations, and displays a lively sense of beauty, and a strong feeling for the sub lime: which, glancing from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth, enables him to point out an analogy between a man and an insect, a grain of sand and a planet. Talent is frequently created by education; genius, on the other hand, is invariably quickened in the cradle. Talent produces for contempora- ries; genius weaves its own laurel, and produces K 178 Of Literature. for posterity. Neither deceived by the specious- ness of authority, nor governed by the tyranny of high names; at one time all nerve; at other times all sinew; with his lamp continually burn- ing ; possessing a true sensibility to the beauty of virtue, and the ugliness of vice, the man of genius, grasping the whole of the material world, and delighting in excursions in the intellectual, lives in a circle of his own forming. His sensa- tions are events ; a desire of immortality is his infirmity ; esteeming his body only as a fabric of temporary use, he conceives the MIND to be the only true essence of the Divinity, and the proper ornament of man. Go where he will, " he leaves a pearl behind." Men of genius, as much superior to those of talent, as the ruby of Ceylon is to the ruby of Pegu, reflect those impressions, which they re- ceive, as it were, from instinct, \\ith fidelity and force. How are they regarded ? When we hear of a man of genius, we seem, as if \ve were in- clined to hail him as a god ! we see him, and, finding him a mere man, we become reconciled to our own deficiencies. We are disappointed, un- less we find honey on his lips, the globe in his hand, and his eye rolling in the finest frenzy of inspiration. Of Literature. 179 Why have we the folly to expect these things ? A man of genius, however gigantic his genius may be, feels it not only convenient, but indis- pensably necessary, to glide from his eminence, when he mixes with men ; and, if he would un- derstand, or be understood, to reduce himself to the measure and standard of his audience. Should he not do so, instantly is he reduced to the rank of a pedant ! If, therefore, we would guard him from an humiliation, so utterly injurious to his pre- tensions, let us permit him to mix with the world on terms of equality : and if his mind will occa- sionally take a flight beyond the stars, permit him to avail himself of his own opportunities ; that he may soar, when he can soar, without giving offence. When the eagle would gaze upon the sun with pride, he takes his flight to the summit of a mountain. The finger of the Eternal touches the lips of the poet, as he reposes in his cradle ! The hal- lowed infant is unconscious of the touch ! The finger of God passes over the nerves of the ex- cellent in sickness or in sorrow ; and, having ac- quired the use of their judgment, and the exercise of their imagination, they recognise the touch ! N 2 180 Of Literature. Magnetized with the extasy of the knowledge, that they are destined for future happiness, the touch unnerves them. Like the coast of Calabria, they become monuments of all that is beautiful, magnificent, and ruinous ! Such is the distinction between being touched in the cradle, or in the season of youth and manhood! The former produces a Milton ; the latter re- duces a Tillotson into a Brothers- The one let us treat with pity and with reverence; the other with respect, admiration, and honour : since he belongs to that order of men, who, in every age, have been supposed to derive an inspiration im- mediately from heaven. Those persons, whom the Platonists esteemed inferior to God, but superior to men ! Those exalted characters, who enjoy the most enviable immortality upon earth ! whom we never mention, when dead, without reverence or delight; whose precepts we get by heart ; whose memories are sacred with us ; whose characters are dear to us ; and whose birth-places and monuments are the Meccas of enthusiasts. Are men, so highly prized when dead, irreve- rently valued when living ? Of Literature. 181 Yes. By whom ? By men, who are unlearn- ed, unskilled, ungifted, and unanointed. Men, who mistake science for heresy, and knowledge for witchcraft ; who celebrate the praises of barbarism, and dignify the impertinence of folly : vain, worldly, and ignorant ! Men, that creep and crawl upon the earth ; and, in comparison with whom, genius soars and soars beyond the sun ! Placing prejudice between knowledge and themselves, they are totally insensible of their own eclipse ; and wage war, in all the folly of miscon- ception, with learning, talents, and genius, be- cause, having no power to distinguish between light and darkness, ignorance and truth, they are unable to elicit sparks of wealth from the elec- tricity of genius. Perceiving no riches indented on his forehead, nor rank inwoven in his coat, they value a mind highly gifted, in the same man- ner, and in the same degree, that oysters value pearls, and insects value marble. One of the principal causes \vhy genius, in this cold and calculating world, succeeds so ill, may be traced to that indifference, with which men, whose lives are occupied in a contemplation of the beautiful and the sublime, regard all temporary advantages. Knowing but little of the baseness 182 Of Literature. of men, till experience teaches it in misfortune; easily cheated by others, and too easily deluded by their imaginations and the excellence of their natures, they feel at length the value of wealth, by becoming dupes to the cunning, and martyrs to the mean and contemptible villany of others. Such is the principal cause, that contributes to make such men indigent, and to keep them so. Erasmus lived with difficulty, and died in poverty. Cervantes perished in the streets of Madrid. Cambens, to the eternal disgrace of his age and country, died in an hospital in misery and ruin. Chatterton, the finest youthful genius, that ever adorned a country, was left to suicide. Artedi was buried at the cost of another ; and Castell, who devoted a large fortune, and seventeen years of unremitted application to his Lexicon Hepta- glotton, and who assisted in the formation of the Walton Polvglott Bible, was rewarded neither in proportion to his learning, his abilities, or labour. Butler received no profit for his Hudibras from the profligate and worthless Charles : he lived in want, and received interment at the cost of a friend. Linnaeus never received more than a ducat a sheet for any of his writings, though he wrote forty different works. " I have tried," said Of Literature. 183 that illustrious character, " whether diligence and urn-emitted labour can create respect. In this attempt I have enfeebled my frame ; and what is worse than all, I am killing myself without the satisfaction of leaving a provision for my children." In this distressing condition he remained for se- veral years. Here let us stop : it is a subject too painful to be dwelt upon ! A judge is per- mitted to enjoy his perquisites; a bishop his rents ; a rector his tenths ; a general his pay ; and the statesman his salary : but the poet-^- Oh, spirit of the immortal Spenser ! the poet is doomed to drink the bitter cup of poverty and sorrow. Such is the fate of the poet ! Let no one, therefore, of inferior qualifications, complain, if he receive no compensation for his merits, and no reward for his industry. HI. BUT indigence is not the only evil, that literary merit has to dread. The envy, which assails it, is far beyond the calculation of a good man ; and equally beneath the attention of a wise one : yet it operates on the happiness of both! Parrae- nides, whose code of laws was an honour to Elea, 184 Of Literature. screened himself from the envy of the multitude in the retirement of philosophy. Pythagoras was the victim of a party at Crotona, and died in wan- dering from town to town. Thucydides was ba- nished from Athens for a period of thirty years; and Libauius was driven from city to city by the envy and jealousy of rivals. Few men were more pestered with the malice of their cotempo- raries than Cicero ; while Galen was so envied by his brother physicians, that he became at length apprehensive of his life. Galileo was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Inquisition ; Copernicus was screened from per- secution only by his death; Ramus, whose writ- mi's contributed so much to banish Aristotle * from the schools, was twice obliged to quit Paris, to avoid the vengeance of bigotry, and perished at last in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. .Dr. Harvey, who taught the circulation of the blood in animals ; and Dr. Hales, who proved the cir- culation of the sap in trees, both encountered the opposition and envy of their cotempora- ries. Linnaeus struggled long against the preju- dice of his opponents; while his writings were * lustilutioncs dink-eta- ct Arislolelicoe animadversiones. Of Literature. 185 suppressed at Rome, and condemned to be burnt* ! The clergy of the Parliamentary army heightened the death of the excellent Chillingworth by their meanness and barbarity: Campanella encoun- tered a host of enemies at Rome, Naples, and Bologna; was imprisoned; tried us a criminal; and put seven times to the rack. The reputa- tion of the Cid armed all the wits of Paris against Corneille ; and Domenichino was so envied by the painters at Naples, that he became utterly weary and disgusted with life. It is enough to bring the moon from heaven ! These instances, worthy of occupying a page in Valerianus' treatise on the Infelicity of the Learned, are sufficient arguments, with the weak and the worldly, to reconcile their vanity to the measure of their ignorance. With opportunities to know, and to feel, the force of all this, who can peruse, without indignation, the following senti- ments of Horace Walpole ; " A poet and a painter/' said that right honourable personage, " may want an equipage and a villa by wanting protection ; but they can always afford to buy pen, ink, and paper, colours and pencil." Pen, ink, and paper, colours and pencil ! And pray, * A. D. 1758. 186 Of Literature. my lord, where is the satisfaction of having pen, ink and paper, colours and pencil, if a man has a large family, and little to eat and little to drink ? Conld vanity ever have so measured its folly, as, for one moment, to let you suppose, that you were equal to Homer, to Camoens, to Tasso, to Cervantes, to Erasmus, and to Butler ? And yet, I tell yon, my lord of Orford, that every one of those illustrious men not only lived, but died, and were buried in want ! One work of genius ought to make one man's fortune. You, my lord, had meat, and drink, and fine clothes, and fine houses, ah, and you had also talents ! Yes, my lord, you had talents, but you had no genius : neither were you a lover of genius. May heaven defend the sacred republic of letters from such a proud, conceited, superficial, coxcomb as this ! A man, who, because want never reached him, seems to have supposed, that want could never reach the good ! Two arguments against the cultivation of letters may, with infinitely more justice, be drawn from the absurdity of pedants, and the malevolence of critics. Beings, which though of different na- tures, habits, and tempers, operate equally as weeds to choke the garden of learning and science. The Of Literature. 1 87 former, teeming with something that is past, yet totally unskilled in all that is passing ; of great reading, but of little knowledge ; adepts in lan- guage, and yet mere infants in their acquaintance with men or with science. Vain with imaginary importance, or wrapt in impenetrable dulness, they raise a smile at every line, or pour an antidote over every page. Deriving the little, they possess, from the illumination of others, as the shadow of the earth derives its light from the refraction of the atmosphere, a stupid admiration do they gather from the vulgar; while they solicit the praise of the ignorant by their frivolous energy and la- borious imbecility. Proud of pedantic research, they read notes, commentaries, glossaries, and title pages, till, ceasing to be capable of reading mankind, we might almost be justified in saying, that in after life they will form some of the par- ticles of that dusky ring, which rolls around the orb of Saturn. To these men nature is silent. The modern critic ! wholesale dealer in libel and paradox*! The argument derived from the malevolence, with which men, occupied in tracing * When the following remarks were shewn in confidence to a friend, he advised me, by all means, to suppress them. "And why ?" enquired I. "Why? because if you print 188 Of Literature. the same road, have attacked each other by the way, is a serious and a powerful one; and cau them, you will sign your proscription." " Indeed ?" "As certainly as the sun shines." " Sign my proscription?" " Yes ! sign your proscription ! " " With whom ?" " With the critics." " What order of critics?" " What order of critics!" "Ah! what order ?" " Why with " " with the mean, envious, ignorant, and malicious critics." "Well ! and are not those the very men, whom policy would advise you to conciliate? Have they ever wounded you?" " Never!" " Why then, let them alone. Let them alone, iu the name of heaven '.Let them hiss, and snarl, and bark as much as they will, as long as they neither hiss, nor snarl, nor bark at you." " But my subject demands it." " Then leave your subject incomplete." *' Oh ! that were cowardice indeed!" " Cowardice! more of prudence, I believe." " But after all, what have I to fear ? If I lose with the bad critic, I may possibly gain by the good one. No honourable man likes to have his profession disgraced ; and it is possible, that if I create one enemy in this quarter, I may create five friends in another." "Five friends! no, not one! and even if you should, I thought you had known enough of the world to be conscious; that one enemy may do you more harm, than twenty friends can do you good." " But my subject requires it, my dear sir; what can I do?" " I don't know what you can do, but I know what you will do ; and that is repent." " From the age of twenty-three, I have feared neither the arm of man, nor the tongue of woman ; even from the Duke and his Duchess to the peasant and his wife. As to paper-bullets!" " Paper-bullets! Good morning! you may be a man of very good abilities, and of very good Of Literature. 189 only be encountered by allowing the fact, and by shewing, that sensible as we are of the gigantic disgrace, which the malevolent critic has brought upon literature, it is, in some degree, compensated by the honour, which Aristotle, Quintilian and Longinus, Lowth, Beattie, and Johnson, have conferred upon an art, which, in no age so suc- cessfully as the present, is powerful in the hands of a coward, a calumniator, or an assassin. " Cri- ticism," says one of the above-mentioned writers, " is a study, by which men grow important at very little expense; for he, whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet sup- port his vanity by the name of a critic. Criti- cism," he continues, solely devoted to the mere business of this vapouring world,, form an adequate idea of the enjoyment, which Vaillaut received even from a Of Science. 251 single lily in Africa; nor that which Helvetius de- rives from observing the change and sleep of plants, so ably written upon by Acosta, Prosper Alpinus, Brewer, and Linnaeus ; the general analogy be- tween plants and animals ; from the amber (a vegetable substance, mineralized by some secret operation of nature,) to the thirty thousand seeds enclosed within the capsule of a poppy; from quantities beyond the fluxions of a botanist to qualities; graduating at every step, till, resting on the delicate conformation and singular proper- ties of the oriental sensitive, he diverges to the in- vestigation of the principle, whence the moving plant derives its impetus; an impetus flowing from an internal, as that of the sensitive is from an external impulsion. Authority has been adduced to invalidate the doctrine of the sexual properties of plants. But science admits of no reference to authority, unless supported by nature : for science, like a ques- tion in arithmetic, proves its own points by the illustration of facts. It admits nothing as cer- tain, which is not the result of experience ; when, therefore, a system is once discovered to accord with nature, not all the theories, even of Newton himself, have power to overturn it ; and if an hy- S52 Of Science. pothesis in regard to nature involves intricacy, we may at once presume it to be false. The poets, ever ou the watch for new images, are never more successful than in those illustra- tions, which they borrow from the vegetable pro- ductions of nature. " Why did I not pass in se- cret," says Ossian, " like the flower of the rock, that lifts its fair head unseen, and strews its withered leaves in the grass r" In a scene of Ot- way's Orphan, Chamont, taking Monimia by the hand, addresses Acasto in a manner, which (though not altogether in strict conformity to dramatic passion) is highly poetic. You took her up a little tender flower, Just sprouted on a bank, which the next frost Had nipp'd; and with a careful, loving hand Transplanted her into your own fair garden, Where the sun always shines : There long she flourish'd, Grew sweet to sense, and lovely to the eye, Till at the last a cruel spoiler came, Cropped this fair rose, and rifled all its sweets, Then cast it like a loathsome weed away ! Orphan, Act iv. sc. 1 . In the whole range of scriptural poetry, a more beautiful application than the following is scarcely to be found. It has been imitated by Thomson Of Science. 253 " Consider," said the Messiah, " the lilies how they grow ; they toil not, and they spin not ; and yet, I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which to-day is in the field, and to-morrow is cast into the fire, how much more will he clothe you *." Divines illustrate from this science as success- fully as the poets. When Dr. Clarke presented his sermons to Mr. Whiston, in which were some nice distinctions and refinements, Mr. Whiston, who was walking in the garden of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, asked him, how he dared to venture into such subtleties ? And shewing him a nettle, that grew in the garden, told him, that that weed, small and despised as it was, contained far better arguments for the being and attributes of a God, than all his metaphysics. If the poets have a natural bias for flowers and plants, the painters derive nearly an equal satis- faction in delineating them on canvass, In painting flower-pieces Van Huysenf, Marcel Luke xii. 27, 28. f Two flower-pieces by this master in the Houghton col- lection were valued to the empress of Russia at <1200. 254 Of Science. of Frankfort, and Maria Sybilla Mariana of Nu- remberg, were much celebrated : and to such ex- cellence did the Greeks arrive in that elegant art, that Philostratus, while examining a picture, ex- claimed, " I admire so much the dewiness of those roses, that I could almost say their very scent wa$ painted." The most distinguished painter of flower-pieces among the Romans was Pausias, who became a proficient in his art in a singular manner. He was enamoured of a nosegay girl of great beauty, named Glycera. This girl had a most elegant method of dressing her chaplets, in order to at- tract the attention of her customers. Pausias, to ingratiate himself with the fair chaplet-weaver, exercised himself in painting the various garlands, that she made. It was, however, Glycera's ca- price to vary her chaplets every day. This was to exercise the patience of her lover. It afforded much amusement, says Pliny, to remark the skill of the painter, and the natural chaplets of Gly- cera striving for . superiority. At length Pausias became s\ich a proficient in this department of painting, that he composed a picture of his mis- tress weaving a chaplet, which was of such excel- Of Science. 255 lence, that Lucullus gave Dionysius of Athens two talents for a copy of it *. This tale is happily introduced into the Hortorum of Raping. The Chinese physicians, as we have already ob- served, cultivate botany with peculiar solicitude ; while those of Europe have added other branches of natural philosophy to the general course of their scientific pursuits. Though a just idea of the capa- cities of the mind cannot be much assisted, even by the most minute inspection of the body, and though there is too much reason for the assertion, that per- sons are longer lived in countries, where the art of physic is unknown ; and though we may say, with Petronius, that medicine, as generally ap- plied, is more a hope for the mind, than of essen- tial use to the body, physic is not only a liberal and a noble science, but one of the most profit- able departments of philosophy. Searching into the mysteries of nature is a bar- ren study, unless it is applied to some practical purpose ; ' and physic, theology, and philosophy * Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxv. c. 10. xxi. 2. f- Sic quondam factus Glycerae de munere pictor Pausiados, : cum, per discrhnina mille colorum, Pingebat flores, quos ad se nympha ferebat. Inde suos cliam, Serum de stamine textus, Illusit vaiiis texentum cura figuris. Of Science. are of little use, if, like Paracelsus, the professor affects a mystery in them all, and darkens with still greater darkness those principles, which it is his duty to strengthen and elucidate. As a science of use, it belongs to the professed practitioner to treat ; but as one of amusement, as well as that which treats of the human frame, and the prin- ciples of its functions, we may observe with Hip- pocrates, that they are essential u hymns of adora- tion to the Eternal Being." But however agreeable the observance of plants and flowers, their colours, forms, and varieties may be, it is not sufficient merely to know by what names they are distinguished, under what classes they are arranged, into how many species they are divided, and their respective periods of germination : their properties must be analysed, their uses calculated, and all of them traced to the apparent end, for which they were endowed. In this captivating enquiry we shall observe them to enjoy a species of sensation peculiar to them- selves, and from which they are relieved by the operation of sleep; their properties to vary at the caprice of soil, and according to the different changes of existence ; and to be capable of pro- ducing diametrically opposite effects, according Of Science, 357 to the time, and the measure of application. And so subservient are all these qualities, and changes of qualities, to the purpose of administer- ing to the tastes, the wants, and the disorders of men and of animals, that, in conjunction with a few powerful minerals, they constitute the prin- cipal alteratives, evacuants, and restoratives, in the whole materia medica. Some operate as sudorifi cs, stomachics, car- minatives, antiseptics, aperients, and emollients; others are useful in melancholy, and in warming and stimulating the solids ; in opening obstruc- tions, and in strengthening the tone of the bowels ; - in disorders of the breast ; in softening acri- monious humours ; in correcting diseases of the eye ; in purifying the blood, and in bracing the nerves. Some are of essential service in the palsy, in flatulencies, in rheumatic, hysteric, and spasmodic affections; in dysenteries, and hae- morrhages; in restoring emaciated and debili- tated habits ; in scorbutic, cutaneous, and asth- matic diseases, in dropsies and in epilepsy. Some are preservatives from epidemic disorders; others are effective in correcting diseases arising from the want of exercise, and in the abatement of hypochondriacal spasms, and intermittent fevers. 258 Of Science. Some possess the power of producing sleep ; and others, having the cordial qualities of an anodyne, in the opinion of many oriental physicians, con- tribute even to the prolongation of natural life. Thus whatever remedies may be applied by phy- sicians in their endless changes of systems and hy- potheses, those of nature will be still the same a thousand years to come, as those which operated five thousand years ago. Such are a few of the properties, and appa- rently final uses of vegetables. But if we would dive more deeply into this most interesting brancfi of physiology, we may venture to promise, that a satisfaction will be experienced equally agree- able and solid as that, which a dissector enjoys when in theory he contemplates the anatomy of the ear and the eye; and obtain as wide and as deep an insight into the causes and effects of ap- parently unconscious bodies, as the metaphysician acquires of the knowledge of spirit, by analysing the principles of the human mind. But every effect being the natural result of a cause, every observable cause must be the natural result of a previous cause ; which, like the endless evolutions of a circle having no visible diameter, centres in a being invisible andspiritual, omniscient, Of Science. 259 omnipotent, omnipresent, and eternal. Hence and let Locke and Newton answer to the truth ! all our proofs are relatives, all our conclusions hypo- thetical, and all our logic little more than splendid oratory. We think little, presume much, and know nothing : for with all our pride, and all our arro- gance, we have not yet been able to bring the sim- plest art to perfection ; nor is there a science, that is not in its infancy. VII. NATURAL HISTORY, being divided into two branches, one of them teaches us to ascertain the name, the species, and the class of every object; the other, its habits and its history. If the latter is the more amusing and instructive, the former is not the less necessary and useful. Indeed the first is to the second, what the scale is to harmonic sounds, and grammar to language. Happy the man, whom these amusive walks, These waking dreams delight! no cares molest His vacant bosom : solitude itself But opens to his keener view new worlds, Worlds of his own : from every genuine scene Of nature's varying bund his active mind S 2 26O Of Science. Takes fire at once, and hi* full soul o'erflowi ' yVlth Heav'n's own bounteous joy: He too creates, And with new beings peoples earth and air, :i And ocean's deep domain. Whitchead. VOff4MflB .n'MCfl OffT. * .;'." i. : t") Natural history comprises a knowledge of am-, mals, birds, tislies, insects, plants, fossils and shells, with the general and particular formation of the earth. Among the ancients, those who most de- lighted in tliis science were Aristotle and Theo- phrastus, Pliny, .'Elian, and Solinus. .Among the moderns, Aldrovandus and Gessner, Ray, Wil- loughby, suid Lis'er, Linnaeus, Buffon, Swammer- dam, Agiicola, and Mercutus. Sounding t' e dtpths of oceans, and ascertaining the elevation and conformation of mountains, are not more agreeable to the navigator and geologist, than for the naturalist to observe the instincts of animals, the habits of insects, the temperament of birds, and the formation of plants. With Buf- fon, Kitcher, Valetta, and Le Luc, to enquire into the causes of earthquakes and volcanoes; with Tournefort, to dive into the deepest mines, de- scend the darkest caverns, and to search the most magnificent subtei ranean grottoes. To investigate the causes of the burning mountains of Java, Ice- Of Science. 26* land, Sumatra, and Japan ; to account for the ap- pearances of new islands, and the swallowing up of old ones ; the motion of the tides ; the causes and effects of currents ; with the various changes, which the motion of the sea produces on the earth : to behold animalcula? even in stones and marbles ; in the humours of animals ; on the down of a peach ; and on the back of a beetle : and thence, acquiring a consciousness, that every bird, fish, and flower, are all so many bodies, giving life, sus- tenance, and shelter to innumerable animals. Not a single species of which is there existing, that does not, as Biberg so well has remarked, deserve a separate historian. To possess learning without a knowledge of nature is far less useful, than to possess a know- ledge of nature, with a partial proportion of learn- ing*. For, however we may be led, as we ad- vance in life, to swerve from nature and to mix with men, till we derive pleasure only from a con- templation of art, seldom do we tail to revolve; and, perceiving the error of our excursion, to recur, and to remain fixt to nature at last. Hence ';*'TEtiatn illud adjungo, soepius ad laudcm atque virtulciu naturam sine doctrina, quam sine natura voluisse doctrt- nam. Ct'c. 262 ^ Of Science. arises the distinction of poets: for never was there a great poet, who was not, at the same time, a great naturalist. For it is nature, that gives life to every page and every line ot poetry. Homer was minutely acquainted with all tlu natural pro- ductions of Greece ; Virgil and Lucretius, with those of the whole ancient world ; and Milton, with those of the age, in which he had the misfor- tune to live. Nature, governing a vast empire, is ever in action, and exhibits a perpetual theatre of life and animation, from one system producing a thousand, and from one effect a thousand causes for as many results. The lower we descend into her productions the greater is the display of variety: for nature soli- citously increases her productions, in proportion to the demand. Few are the dissimilitudes of men; in quadrupeds, the number increases; in birds and in fishes, it is greater still : while the number of insectile species is so exceedingly mul- titudinous, as to be almost innumerable. No one can observe them without wonder; few without pleasure : and though some superficial writers have stigmatised the study of insects, by calling it a species of green sickness, we may truly re- mark, that the telescope opens not to the eye of Of Science, 263 the astronomer greater wonders, than the micro- scope opens to the eye of a naturalist. Hence it arises, that some derive as much enter- tainment from an insect, as another from enquiring into the uses of deserts and solitudes ; the cause of the earth s flattening at the poles; and why at the equator it should increase in circumference. Since, then, all learning and pleasure are rela- tive, who will presume to censure a naturalist for deriving satisfaction from the sight of an insect ? For being pleased with the division of sexes ; the beauty of the papilio ; the ingenuity of the wasp ; the sagacity of the bee ; and the wonderful results from the efforts of the corallina ! Let us, there- fore, occasionally discourse on the sexes and clas- sification of insects; of their transformations from the egg to the maggot; from the maggot to the chrysalis; from the chrysalis to the fly. Nor let us forget, that some marine Mibstauces, which are taken for vegetables, are actually of insect formation ; and that some insects give root to plants, from the leaves of which insect- of a higher rank in the general srale derive thrir ubsistence! Though the habits and history ot ! ISH BS arebut little know n, the small proportion of information, which naturalists have been able to procure, is 464 Of Science: more than sufficient to repay the trouble of at- taining it. Among fishes are observed several peculiarities, which form remarkable contrasts to the whole animated world. K \ct-pt the ceta- ceous and cartilaginous kinds, they betray a total disregard for their own young ! uhil<> their lives form a continual scene of hostility from one end of the ocean to the other. Though interior to terrestrial animals in mental sensation, their speed is prodigious ; and though in poss ssion of no auricular organs, their sense of tour.h is the most exquisite of all animals. Though voracious, they are capable of long abstinence ; and though ex- ceedingly vivacious, truly astonishing is their mea- sure of increase : some cods having, in one roe, uo less than nine millions of eggs ! Occupying the scale between beasts and fishes; with an eye as large as their brain ; with a curious simplicity in their anatomy; BIRDS possess an astonishing quickness of sight, and a peculiar de- licacy in their auricular organ. And while some possess an olfactory acuteness, others appear to have a total insensibility to all the scents " either of the held, or of the grove." Highly amusing is it to watch their respective habits; to mark their antipathies, and to observe their solitary or Of Science. 26 domestic pleasures; their various tempers; their separate styles of architecture; times of incubation, and their anxious solicitude for their own offspring; the fixed character of some; the migratory disposition of others ; the varied length of their ages ; the docility and timidity of one class ; the rapacity and utter contempt of all law and right that distinguish another. In fact, no species in nature presents a more agree- able variety in temper, in habit, and in character, than the six orders of the feathered kingdom. Few are there, so utterly insensible to the finer operations of the mind, who could not derive pleasure from the art of comparing the capacities of animals with the inferior orders of animated beings ; their superiority over vegetables in pro- curing their subsistence; and in their powers of sensation, perception and memory. Observing their contrasts, unions, and harmonies ; calculat- ing where instinct retires, and reason begins, who would not be proud, after proving the fallacy of that doctrine which would teach, that all animals under the rank of man are mere au;oiuata, to finish with a persuasion, that even beasts, birds, and other animated beings, have an internal system 266 Of Science. of morality and conscience, by which they are secretly and intuitively governed. VIII. BUT though pleasure is derived from attending to minute objects of nature, Man derives more en- joyment from the larger creations ; since they best accord with the grandeur of his mind, and the capacities of his nature. Every department fur- nishes a vast field for observation and enquiry ; not only as to external and internal structure, but in the degree of intellect, with which the meanest object is endowed. Tracing the progress of in- stinct and reason ; the warmth of affection, and the strength of passion ; turning all nature into an amphitheatre of curiosity and magnificence, and investigating her laws from the largest to the minutest particle of matter, he must be of all men the most dull, who shall presume to call the study of natural history dull! Only so is it to dry and to blunted imaginations. There is, on the con- trary, scarcely a science more instructive, more profitable, or more beautiful. The arts of paint- ing, of sculpture> and of music, are but hand- Of Science. 267 maids in the temple of happiness, when placed in the scale of competition and comparison ; since it enlarges the mind to an immeasurable extent, and reduces the senses to act as subordinate agents in the promotion of happiness. To a lover of natural philosophy, who investi- gates with precision the affections and the pro- perties of material substances, with their causes ; and tracing the origin, the government, and the final destination of bodies, there is not an animal, nor even a mineral, that does not afford an agreeable amusement and an essential profit- " Wherever he travels," says an elegant writer, " like a man in a country, where he has many friends, he meets with nothing but acquaintances and allure- ments in all the stages of his way. The mere un- informed spectator passes on in gloomy solitude ; but the naturalist in every plant, in every insect, and in every pebble, finds something to entertain his curiosity and excite his speculation." In the dullest retirement of the Hebrides he would dis- cover something, on which his heart might repose, and would 6ndsome object, on which to exercise his benevolence. He sees a new creation in every bud that expands; hears music in every bird that warbles ; the fairy landscapes of a dewy morning 268 Of Science. give him more satisfaction, than all the decoration* of mosaic, or all the splendours of a palace;- while the casual uses of a finger will lead him by gradation into all the mysteries of anatomy, la fact, this universe, as Boyle beautifully says, from Cicero *, is " a magnificent temple of its great au- thor ; and man is ordained by his powers and qua-> liiications the high-priest of nature, to celebrate divine service in this temple of the universe." Oh! blest of Heaven, whom not the languid song* Of luxury the syren ! not the bribes Of sordid' wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils Of pageant honour, cau seduce to leave Those ever-blooming sweets, which from the store Of Nature fair Imagination culls To charm the enlivened soul. For kim the Spring j;, . Distil-, her dews, and from the silken gem Its lucid leaves unfolds; for him the hand Of Autumn tinges every fertile branch With blooming gold, and blushes like the morn : Each passing hour sheds tribute from her wiflgs, And still new beauties meet his lonely walk. Aktniide, But however we may admire the boundless pro- fusion of nature, unless in our relative progress. * Thus Tally, speaking of the gods,'* quorum hie muudus otnnis eatet Templom et Dprnus." Cic. 2. Leg. 26. Of Science. 269 \ve trace each cause, and consequence to their au- thor, it becomes a fruitless, and comparatively a useless study. And yet NATURAL PHILOSOPHY has frequently been discountenanced by men, whose interest it was to continue and confirm the reign of ignorance, and the tyranny of superstition. Anaxa- goras was first imprisoned, and then under the ne- cessity of secretly retiring from Athens, for having ventured to teach the unityof the godhead, and that the world was not the effect of chance or necessity. Aristarchus was summoned before the Areopagus, for teaching the diurnal rotation of the earth. Cornelius Agrippa was expelled his country for making philosophical experiments. Roger Ba- con, the first of European chemists, he who taught the rarefaction of air, who prepared phosphorus, who was the modern inventor of telescopes, who understood the whole science of optics, and who was the inventor of gun- powder, even Bacon was persecuted for his ex- periments and researches into nature. Galileo, slemming the torrent of a barbarous age, was imprisoned for teaching the Copernican system of astronomy. Virgil, bishop of Salisbury, was pro- claimed and burnt as a heretic, for maintaining the doctrine of the antipodes. Van Helmont was 270 Of Science. thrown into the dark dungeons of the Inquisition, for his skill in natural causes ; and nothing pre- vented Copernicus, (who was obliged to suppress his book "De revolutionibus Orbium Ccelestium," for six and thirty years,) from the vengeance of priestly faction, but his death. IX. SUCH are the persecutions, which men of supe- rior contemplations have undergone, as rewards for their discoveries in natural philosophy. Dis- coveries, which, more than any other pursuits of men, have recommended their authors to the Crea- tor of all ; since they gave to mankind proofs, the most comprehensive and convincing, of his great- ness, wisdom and power. Checked by superstition, which seldom fails to construe the plainest of language into perpetual allegory, natural science has ever been discounte- nanced, in proportion to the ignorance of national character : for bigotry, in the blindness and fury of its zeal, has frequently denied the demonstra- tions of geometry itself. Long was science a tissue of error and contra- diction ; imparting little more benefit, than what Of Science. 271 Aristotle derived from resolving all things into matter, privation, and form. Beginning in para- dox, professors wandered in error; and with as confused an idea of substances as of causes, they adopted a manner of definition, which, like the pedantic jargon of the schools, confounded instead of enlightening, and engendered an empiricism of language, and a subtlety of sophism ; till, loaded with technical phrases, science became the pro- perty only of men, who, with the natural solici- tude of dulness to conceal its ignorance, banished all elegance of thought and illustration, separated science and the liberal arts, and waged war with the plain, the simple, and the elegant, because they were not as dull, as technical, and as mecha- nical as themselves. . Scaliger shewed an evident disregard for science ; and Madame Dacier had a thorough contempt for experimental philosophy. Others, too, have presumed to slight even geometry itself, because they imagined it to possess no immediate tendency for the improvement of manners. Those, who argue in a manner so unphilosophical, take but a limited view of their subject. All present learning forms but the rudiments of future knowledge. Genius sometimes conquers, where labour fails ; Of Science. and labour overcomes, where genius is unrewarded. Genius and labour, therefore, have alternately for- tunate results. It follows not, then, that because some men, even of eminence, have had no power to trace an evident use, that such use has no real existence. Man, it is true, possesses no decisive power of tracing nature to her elements, but in attempting to elucidate her manner he becomes, in some de- gree, a partaker in her secrets;- and powers, of which he had himself been long unconscious, ema- nate like the effluence of perfume from the bud of a rose : for nature has characters, which every one can read, and themes which all can under- stand. In reading those obvious impresses, the mind becomes awfully struck with that sublimity of principle, which proclaims a providence and an original Creator. Such are the impressions we receive in the transition, which leads us to a consideration of the density and pressure of the atmosphere ; its powers of counteracting the heat of the sun, and its g-.neral and particular effects on animal sub- stances. After investigating the cause of the formation of clouds, the degree to which some of them are electrified, with their relatived height, Of Science. 273 shapes and colours, the speculation may be ex- tended to the observance of the general uses for which they are designed in the grand economy of nature. And since animal and vegetable life de- pends on that invisible fluid, which we denominate air, no useless pleasure is derived from the sub- ject of aerology; by a knowledge of which che- mical processes have been so materially facilitated. Observing with precision its uses in the practice of medicine, and in the art of general health; enquiring into the effects of the gravity of air on animals and vegetables ; ascertaining its capabi- lity of dilation and compression, and the effects of its elasticity on bodies in general, with JEpinus, Cavendish, and Franklin, we may traverse the whole circle of the causes and consequences of electrical phenomena. Beginning with the observance of the magnetic qualities of amber by Thales, and that of the tounmalin by Theophi astus, we may, after a slum- ber of nineteen hundred years, trace electricity to the period when Barlowe and Gilbert wrote on the phenomena of magnetical directions, the at- traction of dissimilar, and the repulsion of similar poles, with their general increase of magnetical T 74 Of Science. quality, in proportion to their communicating their properties to other substances. Otto Guericke discovered electrical repulsion ; Hawksbee the difference between positive and negative electricity; -Van Kleist the electric shock; Cunzeus the method of communicating that shock; and Franklin immeasurably advanced the science, by identifying lightning with the electric fluid. Investigating its use in the produc- tion of snow, hail, ice, clouds, rain, and tempests, and in the regulation of the winds and climates ; and observing its powers in the fructification of vegetables, on the health and spirit of animals, we may speculate on its pervading the whole circle of space ; flowing among the fixed stars, and giving life and motion to every satellite, to every planet, and to every system. X. THE mathematics create a habit of patient in- vestigation, and, inducing perspicuity in arrange- ment, subject the imagination to the dictates of the judgment. Teaching the science of quantity, whether subject to number or to measure, and proving that demonstration is the highest species Of Science. 275 of evidence, they give a superlatively enlarged idea of the mechanical operations of nature. Who then shall presume to doubt the satisfaction of Philolaus, when he discovered that the earth revolves upon its own axis ; of Anaxamander, when he perceived the obliquity of the zodiac ; of Hipparchus, when, struck with surprise and astonishment, he witnessed the appearance of a new star; of Eudoxus, when he first applied geometry to mechanical purposes; of Thales, when he proved that the angles in a semicircle are all right angles ; or of Archimedes, when he determined the relative distance of the moon from the earth, the planets from each other, and the fixed stars from the orbit of Saturn ? Neither can we estimate the satisfaction with which Cassini beheld the satellite of Venus ; discovered Mars to revolve upon its own axis ; and determined the velocity of Jupiter and Venus. And when Fontana discovered the belts of Ju- piter, and Huygens the ring of Saturn ; when Galileo (justly styled the father of modern phi- losophy) observed the phases of Venus to vary ; invented the cycloid in geometry; proved the galaxy to be a profusion of stars ; the sun to re- volve ; Jupiter to have satellites ; and discover- T 2 276 Of Science. ed the general laws of motion: when Tycho Brahe determined the effects of refraction, disco*- ven'il a new star in Cassiopeia equal in splendour to Venus, then observed it to change its colour and to disappear; and when Lord Napier in- vented the logarithms ; the satisfaction and de- light of those illustrious men must, assuredly, have partaken of a character, far removed from the common sensations of ordinary men. Sensations experienced equally by Kepler, when he perceived, that planets describe equal areas in equal times ; and that the squares of their periodical times are as the cubes of their distances ; by Gassendi, when he first observed Mercury to pass over the disc of the sun ; by De la Mire, when he discovered mountains in Venus higher than those of the moon; and by 11 alley, when he found sufficient data on which to calculate the return of a comet. When Horrox announced the transit of Venus over the sun's disc ; when Bradley ascertained the progressive motion of light ; and when Her- schell, Olbers, and Piazzi discovered the new pla- nets ; what mind of a common order will pre- sume to imagine, that it has, at any time, expe- rienced emotions equally sublime ? Emotions to be exceeded only by those of the trauscendant N ew- Of Science. 211 ton, (whose tomb elicits a ray, " that illumines all the universe,") when he demonstrated the motions and figures of the planets ; the causes of the tides, and the refrangibility of the rays of light ; when to his theory of sounds, he added the theory of colours ; matured the laws of gravitation and projection, and invented the doctrine of fluxions ; beyond which the human mind is probably de- stined never to pass ! It were a rapture which his heart could feel, but which no language could express. As we ought not to calculate the powers and intellects of one man by those of another of infe- rior order, so ought we not to estimate the happi- ness of those, whose views of life and things are bounded by a narrow capacity, with that of those, who possess the rare and highly- qualified power of pursuing nature to her secret recesses. Adding all the genius of antiquity to all the science of the moderns, such men as Galileo, Kepler, Locke, and Newton, men who took in at one view more than are contained in volumes, were not only formed for a superior order of happiness in them- selves, but as rich, assays to others; teaching them to what a height the powers and intellects of mere men are able to be sublimed. 218 Of Science. Truly may it be said, that as these men, whose eye, making the voyage of the universe, and to whom the Eternal has unfolded The world's harmonious volume, there to read A transcript of himself, received the faculty of discovering systems so ab- struse, and yet so beautiful, they imbibed a greater portion of divine reward. For so great and so transcendant a feeling is experienced from medita- tions so elevated as these, that we feel, in some degree, disposed to coincide \vith the opinions of the Quietists, that the soul of man, when in a state of perfection, will rest in perfect tranquillity, and be solely occupied in the contemplation of nature. For it must necessarily follow, as Aristotle has finely remarked, that the Deity mu*t, out of regard to his own qualities, regard with his peculiar favour those, who, in the deepest recesses of retirement, devote their contemplations to the study of eternal truths. Living, they receive a reward in the ele- vation of their own minds; dead, they will doubt- less be permitted to explore those regions, which their imagination had compassed in a state of sub- lunary existence. Of Science. 279 XL EVEN the most unenlightened receive pleasure from observing with the naked eye the motion of the sun; its rising and its setting; and when it mounts its meridian in all its splendour and glory : the different phases of the moon ; its increase and diminution ; its progressive inarch through the heavens, and its gradual approach, and distancing from the sun. To their untutored minds all is wonder, astonishment, and delight. Thus the Nubians never see the moon without rapture. Every night it shines, as we are told by Mr. Bruce, they come out of their huts, say a few words about her brightness, and testify their joy at her first ap- pearance by motions of their hands and feet. In ancient times the study of astronomy was principally cultivated by shepherds. Hence it formed one of the most agreeable subjects in pas- toral writing. Virgil, feeling that every natural object properly belonged to this department of poetry, and recalling to mind the history of He- siod and Orion, makes his shepherds discourse of astronomy, as well as of husbandry: Of Science. Ut his exordia primis Omnia, ct ipse tcncr mundi concrcverit orbis, &c. Erl. vi. 33. Correcting a narrow spirit, the idea of order in the universe increases upon us, as we acquire a wider knowledge of nature's laws : while the first grand view of the planetary system is the most beautiful, that can possibly be imagined. The range from the summits of mountains has no- thing to compare with it. In contemplating this magnificent system, all inordinate passions sub- side ; while the heart, feeling impressions from infinite power and infinite wisdom, acknowledges the perpetual hymn, which it modulates to the eternal mind. Tracing the history of this exalted science from the Indians and Chaldees, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and Arabians ; its revival in Europe after a long and apparently eternal -lum- ber of many ages ; and pursuing it, step by step, from the time in which attraction was surmised by Copernicus, adopted by Kepler and Gilbert, Bacon, Robertyal and Galileo, to that era, when it was more fully comprehended and explained by Newton; the man, whom these pursuits have power to chai in, finds no pleasure more suited to Of Science. 281 the grandeur of his mind, than that of discoursing on death with Porteus ; on the immortality of the soul with Plato, Brown, and Sherlocke; with Boyse, Smart, and Newton, to treat of the im- mensity, the omniscience, the goodness and omni- potence ; the unity, spirituality, and omnipresence ; immutability, wisdom, rectitude, and glory, of the Giver of all intellect, and the Dispenser of all happiness. Subjects, which make the soul glow with a divine energy, and in which, lost and bewil- dered in the enthusiasm of our admiration, that silent symphony of the heart is awakened, which, vibrating in its finest and most exquisite chords, constitutes of itself the noblest offering of an ele- vated mind. XII. A SHORT time since Euryalus accepted an in- vitation from Helvetius, to spend a few weeks with him on the coast of Merionethshire. Soon after his arrival, the day beginning to close, they walked out to enjoy the pleasure of seeing the sun sink in the west. Bending their course towards the sea, they sat down upon one of the rocks ; and, without 282 Of Science. either of them feeling an inclination to interrupt the silence that prevailed, amused themselves, for some time, in watching the curling of the distant waves. At length, the evening star began to ex- hibit itself in all its splendour. " It has never surprised me," said Helvetius, " that the sun and the moon should have been the first objects of adoration in the infancy of nations. The Ara- bians and Sabei worshipped the stars; the Chal- dees the moon and the planets ; and the Egyp- tians, under the names of Isis, Sothis, and Osiris, deified the dog-star, the moon, and the sun. Neither," continued he, " is it singular, that many of the most enlightened men of antiquity should have considered the planets, as so many globular substances, animated with portions of divine in- telligence. Astronomy seems to have been a science, which occupied the attention of men long before those of botany, medicine, ormechanics. Its origin, therefore, may be referred to that era, when mankind occupied the milder arts of life, and when the principal riches consisted in Hocks and in herds. The Assyrians were great astronomers, as the lonians were great naturalists. The Egyptians of Heliopolis first computed the year ; and from them Herodotus, Plato, Thales, and Pythagoras, Of Science, 283 introduced the sublime science of astronomy into the schools of Greece and Italy. Now for my ar- gument! The Greeks gave names to the several constellations, and to most of the principal un- formed stars. I have always considered those names highly absurd, and impertinent ones. Lions, ser- pents, and bears ! who, I say, that considers one moment, is not disgusted, that lions and bears should occupy stations, which ought to be filled with the names of great astronomers, excellent monarchs, wise legislators, and eminent poets ? Let us return, and amuse our leisure in planning new planatary vocabulary." Upon this, Helvetius rose from his seat, and, taking the arm of Euryalus, returned home. After much consideration, and not a little argument, as to the fitness of persons to particular stations, the two friends formed a new scale of planetary honour. When they had finished, Helvetius, in a strain of ardour, not altogether natural to him, exclaimed, " Lions, serpents, and bears ! Let them quit their stations in the skies, and return respectively to their own countries. Lions to Asia, serpents to Africa, and bears to Greenland." And so most assuredly they would, had our friend Helvetius as much 28* Of Science. influence in the world of astronomy, as Olbers, Herschel, or Piazzi. The next evening the two friends repaired to the same spot, and Helvetius renewed his enthusiasm. " This is the science," said he, " which, in many an age, has subjected its votaries to the vengeance of. the priesthood! may the punishment of those bigots be the envy, ari.sing from the glory that en- circles their victims! This is the science, which not only acts as an antidote to atheism, but as a sure and conclusive argument for the perpetual duration of the soul : for human nature, as ./Eschi- nes, the Socratic, has justly remarked, never could have arrived at such a height, as to be capable of building cities, of founding commonwealths, of viewing and contemplating the heavens, the revo- lutions of planets, the rising and setting of the sun, their eclipses and equinoxes, unless the soul was possessed of a divine spirit, which con- veyed to it a knowledge so extensive and sublime. That spirit, therefore, must be immortal*. " As- tronomy is the foundation of just chronology ; and being the corner stone of geography, and na- yEschincs Philosoph. Dial. Hi. De Morte, p. 166. Of Science. 285 'vigation, its wide application, and its practical importance for all the purposes of foreign com- merce, become, in consequence, evident to the most superficial observer. But these effects, highly important as they are, are not the only measures of its use. Compassing the whole arch of vision, and shooting through the sphere of nature into the immeasurable width of innumerable sys- tems, the mind, struck with the grandeur and magnificence of the spectacle, and the order and the symmetry, observed throughout the whole, impels the soul, with organs of inspiration, to a reference to an eternal cause ; which, elevating the mind, fixes every movement of the soul, and engenders that dignified humility of thought, which, giving a practical negative to all the visions of Spinoza, operates with all the clearness, certaint} 7 , and evidence of a mathematical truth, und with all the awful authority of an actual revelation. '* But, however comprehensive the genius of Py- thagoras, Copernicus, Newton, and subsequent astronomers may be, even their speculations em- braced but a partial measure even of one system. For beautiful and magnificent as are the various globes of our sphere, and animated, as they must be, with beings, whose forms, natures, qualities, 286 Of Science. and capacities, are adapted to the climates of their relative orbs, but whose natures we have no judgment to recognize, nor imagination to pic- ture, form but one system among millions of systems, glowing with life and light and motion ; and at a distance, so immense, as to possess no sensible parallax. " To these systems, (which collectively form the universe), our system is connected by bodies, which, by reason of their eccentric courses, are supposed at one time to be vitrified with heat, and at another to be petrified with cold. AH these systems, most probably, vary in effect. For it is not absurd to suppose, that as gravitation is the connecting principle of one system, even centrifu- gal repulsion itself may operate, as the connecting principle of another. Such wonderful objects for meditation," continued Helvetius, " stampt in characters, coeval and eternal, bearing the colour of simplicity, and filling the vast circle of the uni- verse, appear to be worthy the contemplation of angels ; since only a favoured few are ever per- mitted to enjoy them. " They are evidences conclusive of the greatness and magnificence, which, in a future state, will be Of Science. 287 the elevated portion of the good. A greatness, and a magnificence, such as no ear has heard, and no eye has seen : and which can never be imagined, till the principle of a perpetual motion is laid open to mathematical science. All the work of one great and efficient power, to which all existing knowledge does but point : which in light and in life, in power and in intelligence, graduate to infi- nite progression ; and in the scale of which our sun and our system are, but what a moment of time is to eternity ; what a ray of light is to infinity ; and what the knowledge of an insect is to the science of an incomparable mind ! " We see we hear we wonder, and adore." XIII. BUT not among globes only does nature address herself to all the more elevated chords of the heart. In hamlets and in villages, in towns and iu cities, she presents the most interesting of all her creations to the attention of the moralist, the divine, the philosopher, and the statesman. This argument is MAN : of all the creation the most perfect ; of all phenomena the most wonderful. 288 Of Science. The spacious west, And all the teeming regions of the south, Hold not a quarry to the curious flight Of knowledge, half so tempting, or so fair, As man to man. Akenside, P. I. iii. L 7. Finely has man been called a hieroglyphic, de- noting astonishment ! Closing the scene of gra- dations to our limited perception, he appears, by the vastness of his mental powers, worthy of being associated even with angels: and yet, beautiful as is his frame ardent as are his pas- sions extensive as are his capacities and won- derful as is his genius, it is a subject of un- speakable regret, that, in taking a wide, or even a limited view of society, we perceive how few of those passions and capacities are exerted in a direction, which can produce, as an ultimate end of their exercise, a pure and legitimate hap- piness. On whatever theatre he acts, we see him a prey to his own passions; a dupe to his own delu- sions ; or a martyr to all the agonies of fear and anger, of jealousy and remorse. Occupied in important trifles, his youth is sp^nt in preparation, and his manhood in forming schemes for age : Of Science. 289 and when that age does arrive, melancholy are our reflections, when we observe it to be wasted in la- menting opportunities gone by, virtues unexercised, and time unenjoyed. Under these impressions, he cannot be uselessly employed, who, even \vith feeble powers, would endeavour to open the channel for an increase of enjoyment to those, who are already content ; and, by striving to dissolve the spells of melan- choly, to open the portico of hope to those, whose afflictions appear too powerful to admit even of an anodyne. He would, therefore, be well and honourably employed, who would devote a few years of attention to the consideration of the in- fluence, which science and the liberal arts may be supposed to possess over the morals and th hap- piness of mankind : to shew in what manner and to what degree, each art or science enlightens our minds; qualifies our passions ; elevates our con- ceptions; and dignifies our best and warmest affections: and, by giving a higher and. more exalted idea of our own nature, enables us to form a more enlarged conception of the sovereign Giver of intellect and sensation. Teaching us, in fact, to be wiser to-day than we were yesterday; u 29O Of Science. and furnishing a hope, that we may still be wiser and better on the morrow. XIV. SCIENCE is in immediate contrast to MF.TA. PHYSICS. Science is a knowledge of what is presumed to be absolutely certain : metaphysics embrace speculations on what is doubtful and unknown. The one charms us into admiration i in the other, we go wooing to continual disap- pointment. For with all their labour, subtlety and obscurity, metaphysicians do little more, than erect monuments to perpetuate the memory of their ignorance. Hence the ancients represented the god of metaphysics in an almost constant state of intoxication. Subjects of this uncertain nature, encumbering the mind, fly from our research, as fast as we pur- sue. The land of promise is ever at a distance, and has deluded and disappointed a long list of abler, better, and wiser beings than ourselves. Let us, therefore, discourse humbly and cautiously of the origin and nature of ideas ; of sensation and the instruments; of perception, retention, ap- prehension and conception. Thence diverging Of Science. 291 from abstract and general to the association of ideas; to consciousness, evidence, and demon- stration. Then, changing the chord, we may enter with caution into some of the phenomena of matter and form ; the essences of bodies, and the existence of matter ; of space, of motion, and number; of time, infinity, and eternity; of the properties of mind in general ; its substance, identity, and probable immortality : and, after taking a wide and comprehensive view of man and his capaci- ties, close our speculations with discoursing with humility on the being, powers, and attributes of God. These and others are the subjects of metaphy- sicians, as they follow in their essays and treatises. But as some of these subjects are those, in which the information of man appears to be the most limited, and his mind the most imperfect, it were wise not to enter too deeply into enquiries, which only elude our research ; and in which we are led from hypothesis to hypothesis, till, lost in a maze of doubt and uncertainty, we close our airy speculations with the acknowledgment, that after long and patient investigation, after an unre- mitted desire of reducing all things to their ori- u 2 292 Of Science. ginal standard of perfection and truth, we are be- wildered with our own reflections, and obliged re- luctantly to confess, that we know nothing at last: the first principles of intellectual sensation being beyond the delegated faculties of man ! From those subjects not unwise were the tran- sition, that would transport us into the garden of MORAL PHILOSOPHY: ascience,whichinallages has charmed the wise, and delighted the good; and which, forming the grand ethical link of so- ciety, traces man from his origin, and pursues him through all his relative connections of infancy, youth, manhood, and age; his passions, affec- tions, tendencies, and duties. Above all, to the contemplation of that Eternal Being, in whom every thing centres, and from whom all beings, thoughts, and feelings, immediately proceed. A species of intuitive knowledge, which, to the full benefit of an evident demonstration, adds all the richness and beauty of form and colour. For the noblest study, which can engage the re- search of man, is that, which, while it avoids those airy speculations, which lead to nothing, centres in a knowledge of what is best to be known ; which makes us wiser and happier, by directing our influence to the benefit of society; and which Of Science. 293 has for its object the institution^ by degrees, of a paradise on earth. This was the ultimate ambition of Socrates* when he presumed to direct the attention of Greece from the study of natural philosophy to that of ethics ; from researches, which ended in obscurity, to those grand principles of reason and science, which engender happiness for the pre- sent, and which point it for our enjoyment in con- nection with the future. XV. FEW studies are more productive of an elevated delight than those, which direct us to the general plan of the universe, and to the acquirement of a knowledge of those minute and almost imper- ceptible links, by which we mark the progress and existence of sensation, from the lowest order of microscopia, to that of animalculae, and the in- sect; thence to the animal, and lastly to man. Forming one vast and beautiful system of gradual connection. Endeavouringto discover wherevege- table life finishes, and where animal life begins ; where instinct closes, and where reason opens : Separating reason from mechanism, to trace not 294 Of Science. only the gradations of instincts, but to acquire a knowledge of whether animals have the power of improving those instincts, of enlarging their ideas, and of qualifying their passions. Admiring the vast and regular harmony, pre- served throughout the whole of nature, here, presenting an awful spectacle of terror and mag- nificence, and there, a boundless profusion of the most fascinating beauty, objects are contemplated, at one time as minute and as exquisite as the veins, the nerves, and arteries of insects : at another, works extending into immeasurable systems. If we soar, we become lost in immensity! if we descend) we are equally lost in an exquisite mi- nuteness ; both equally remote, not only from our knowledge, but even from our imagination. All and every thing denoting the universal presence of an infinite mind ; and a power, capable of eliciting harmony from discord, and of effecting one great and decisive end by a thousand different ways. And discovering, that the rose and the nightshade, the tiger and the elephant, the bee and the hornet, the shark and the minnow, are equally useful in their separate spheres, the mind becomes poetical, and finds a pleasing difficulty, in chasing away those fairy visions, which float Of Science. 295 upon the fancy, and which would soar to that point of knowledge, in which, discovering the principles on which nature acts, we seem, as if we were almost capable of conceiving the manner, in ' which life is imparted to the oak, instinct to ani- mals, and reason to man. The mind, ever attempting to soar, takes a far more sensible gratification in beginning with matter, rising into vegetation and instinct, and finishing with mind, than in beginning with mind, and finishing with matter. Delightful, therefore, is it to trace from that point of littleness, which is first enabled to be called matter, because it can be seen and felt, to that infinite spirit, which can neither be seen, nor conceived. From the small- est of pulverized matter, to the grain of sand, thence to vales, to mountains, and to globes. From satellites to planets; from planets to comets; from comets to suns ; from suns to a system of stars ; from one system to thousands ; from thousands to millions, and almost to infinity*. A universe so immeasurable, that were even the * The term mfinitt may apply to space, to time, t6, 282. Hippocrates, 256. Hipparchus, 275. Hoadley, 321. Hogarth, 220. Hoole, 97. Horace, 10,45,47, 107, 113, J15, 153, 193, 194, 206, 213,216. Horrox, 276. Hoadley, 193. Homer, 114, 115, 134, 135, 137, 155, 165, 186, 262. Hospital, 71. Howel, 116. Huygens, 275. Jerome, St. 38. Johnson, 189. Jones, 194. Jortin, 72. Josephus, 122. Jovius, 195. Julian, 201,216. Justin Martyr, 150. Juvenal, 12, 73, 194. Kalm, 241. Kapler, 241. Kepler, 237, 239, 276, 277, 280. Kircher, 260. Klaproth, 246. Kleist, 274. Kunckel, 242. Lactantius, 311. 328 Index. Laiudown, 27. Lavoisier, 242. Langhorn, 96. Libanius, 184,211. Linneus, 153, 182, 184, 240, 250, 260. Lister, 241, "260. Livy, 62, 195, 226. Lipsius, 195. Locke, 1, 259, 277. Loffling, 241. Longinus, 189, 221. Lowth, 189. Lucian, 13. Luc, Le, 260. Lucretius, 135, 145,262. Newton, 228, 238, 251, 276,277,280,281,285. Olbers, 276, 284. Origen, 150. Osbeck, 241. Osorius, 312. Ossian, 252. Otway, 25'.'. Ovid, 4, 153. Machiavel, 70. Maigran, 237. Marcell, 254. Margraff, 246. Martin, 241. Mason, 71. Martial, 147. Mercator, 237. Melmoth, 86. Medici, Lorenzo, 201. Mercutus, 260. Middleton, 15. Milton, 42, 45, 75, 79, 97, 114, 135, 138, 165, 166, 180, 190, 199, 201, 212, 262. Montaigne, 153. Montin, 241. Montesquieu, 151. More, 44, 152. Morel, 231. Morhoff, 201. Mozart, 169. Napier, 276. Paul, St. 115. Paul Veronese, 119,139. Palladio, 119. Parrhasius, 133. Pamphilus, 134. Parmegiano, 139. Palestina, 165. Pallas, 242. Panaetius, 136. Parmenides, 194. Paracelsus, 256. Petrarch, 12,62, 138, 227. Perrault, 125. Persius, 194, 209. Pelisson, 214. Petronius, 255. Phidias, 149, 222. Philostratus, 254. Philolaus, 275. Pierre, St. 61. Pindar, 167, 197, 226. Piazzi, 276, 284. Plato, 2, 41, 102, 137, 152, 160,281,282. Plautus, 221. Pliny, 12, 31,46, 88, 110, 122, 132, 133, 195, 199, 204, 211, 212, 224, 225, 226, 254. Plutarch, 106, 107, 137, 141, 154, 163, 222. Index. 329 Pope, 41, 114, 129, 137, 153, 193, 223. Porteus, 281. Poussin, 118, 140. Polycletus, 146, 1 49, 222. Politian, 132. Polybius, 160,212. Praxiteles, 198. Prior, 214, 228. Proclus, w * * '' -.'.-. *.'. * * * * * 4 * * * * * * * * * * * Q # * * * * * * * * TT * * * * * . * ; * * * * *