them into the account, I can truly answer that, within the circle of my knowledge, those persons have been the happiest who have best deserved to be so. They have had most enjoyment in prosperity, have struggled best with difficulties, and borne affliction with the wisest spirit and the truest resignation. Some indeed I have known who, amid the privations inseparable from scanty means, or under bodily affliction, or the sorer pressure of worldly and inevitable cares, have yet been objects of admiration and example rather than compassion, because their minds were well regulated, and they were in the enjoyment of that peace which passeth all understanding. SIR THOMAS MORE. And which have been the most prosperous, the upright, or the worldly wise? MONTESINOS. I see the worldling flourish like a tree planted by the water side, and his leaf does not wither. SIR THOMAS MORE. But is the fruit of happiness brought forth there in due season? MONTESINOS. There are many sorts of happiness. The Geologist does not plod over these mountains with more patience, hammer in hand, when tracing where the slate demarcation ends and the sienite begins, speculating the while upon the formation of mountains and the manufactory of worlds, than the sportsman with his fowlingpiece on his shoulder, whose greatest ambition is to tell of the birds that he has bagged. The great capitalist when he adds some score of thousands to his enormous wealth, envies me for adding to my treasures a book long sought and brought from afar, as little as I envy him. Gryll will be Gryll and have his hoggish mind." And Tom Fool is as happy in the company of Jack a Dandy, as I have been when conversing with C. or W. or R. or Walter Landor. Each has his fill of enjoyment; and if there are few who have an after-taste of it when they chew the cud, it is because the ruminating portion of the human species is but a small variety. SIR THOMAS MORE. Montesinos, that reply is a rambling one. Mere transient enjoyment is not to be taken into the account of happiness for an intellectual and immortal being. That man alone can be called happy who is at peace with his own heart and with his Maker. Your own observation must have shown you that those whose desires are regulated by wisdom, and whose course of life is what it ought to be, seldom have reason to complain of fortune. This country is not yet so corrupted, even with all the efforts which are made to corrupt it, and all the causes which are at work to increase its corruption, but that good conduct and good character pass in it for their just value. Is it not so? Have you not just acknowledged that, in the circle of your own immediate friends, the best men are the happiest? MONTESINOS. It is strictly and righteously so. SIR THOMAS MORE. And it is strictly and righteously otherwise with those whose desires are inordinate; or who, following the pursuit of wealth or power, devote themselves to those objects with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their strength. Success brings with it no happiness to them; and age makes them feel the worthlessness of such pursuits as surely as it overtakes them. MONTESINOS. If they could learn by others to be wise, SIR THOMAS MORE. Thus poets have sung, and moralists have taught, and preachers have proclaimed from the pulpit. But of what avail are precepts, when the whole tendency of your institutions, and the whole practice of society, counteract them? The object of a good and wise man in this transitory state of existence should be to fit himself for a better, by controlling the unworthy propensities of his nature, and improving all its better aspirations;..to do his duty first to his family, then to his neighbours, lastly to his country and his kind; to promote the welfare and happiness of those who are in any degree dependent upon him, or whom he has the means of assisting, and never wantonly to injure the meanest thing that lives; to encourage, as far as he may have the power, whatever is useful and ornamental in society, whatever tends to refine and elevate humanity; to store his mind with such knowledge as it is fitted to receive, and he is able to attain; and so to employ the talents committed to his charge, that when the account is required, he may hope to have his stewardship approved. It should not seem difficult to do this: for nothing can be more evident than that men are and must be happy in proportion as their lives are conformed to such a scheme of divine philosophy. And yet think you that there are ten men in a gene ration who act thus? MONTESINOS. It God be merciful to us! We are unprofitable servants at the best. Yet there is much that may be pleaded, and something assuredly I trust that will be admitted in our excuse. is not always willingly, or from temptation that we go astray. Society has an original sin in its constitution, as certain as the mysterious disease of human nature. We are born and bred in it, and from the highest to the lowest, even those whose disposition would lead them to better things, are put out from childhood and as it were bound over to the service of the world! SIR THOMAS MORE. There is an example before our eyes. Yonder children are on the way to a manufactory, where they pass six days out of the seven, from morning till night. Is it likely that the little they learn at school on the seventh, (which ought to be their day of recreation as well as rest,) should counteract the effects of such an education, when the moral atmosphere wherein they live and move and have their being, is as noxious to the soul, as the foul and tainted air which they inhale is to their bodily constitution? |