vince in which he had dwelt so long as a man of Celts who in insouciant content most nearly resemble the Asiatics. A cosmopolite traveller journeying in Lower Canada, was one day greatly struck by the contrast in the appearance of two adjoining properties, both having a river frontage, both enjoying a fertile soil, and apparently exactly alike in all natural advantages. The first was admirably farmed, and neatly kept; the house homely but substantial, and in good repair; the fences strong, My illustrious friend, and joy of my liver! The thing you ask of me is both difficult and useless. Although I have passed all my days in this place, I have neither counted the houses nor have I inquired into the number of the inhabitants; and as to what one person loads on his mules, and another stows away in the bottom of his ship, that is no business of mine. But above all, as to the previous history of this city, God uniform, and in faultless order. This belonged only knows the amount of dirt and confusion to an Englishman. The adjacent farm was in that the infidels may have eaten before the com-a very different condition; the flocks and ing of the sword of Islam. It were unprofitable herds were ample; the crops were not bad, and for us to inquire into it. Oh, my soul! oh, my lamb! seek not after the things which concern thee not. Thou camest unto us, and we welcomed thee: go in peace. the dwelling large and ample; there was no appearance of poverty, but every sign of indolence and carelessness; the buildings dilapidated, the roofs defective, the fences, not indeed ineffiOf a truth, thou hast spoken many words: cient, but patched, as you seldom see except and there is no harm done, for the speaker is one in Ireland, with odds and ends of trees, old and the listener is another. After the fashion of thy people thou hast wandered from one place to gates, etc.; here a gap stopped by a plough; another, until thou art happy and content in there a break made good by a cart tilted We (praise be to God) were born here, in the opening. Our narrator visited the ownand never desire to quit it. Is it possible, then, er, a French colonist, and received of course that the idea of a general intercourse between a most hospitable welcome. His host was mankind should make any impression on our un-cheerful and complacent. After some converderstanding? God forbid ! none. up sation the visitor remarked that the roof was Listen, oh my son! There is no wisdom broken through in one or two places, and let equal unto the belief in God. He created the in the rain. "C'est égal, (said the proprieworld; and shall we liken ourselves to Him in tor,) I have only to move my bed to another seeking to penetrate the mysteries of his creation? Shall we say, Behold this star spinneth part. I can always find a dry corner to lie round that star, and this other star with a tail in." "But," observed the traveller, "I nocometh and goth in so many years? Let it go! tice that your fences are in the same state, full He from whose hand it came will direct and of holes and make-shifts." "Qu'est ce que guide it. cela fait! (asked the host), they do well enough to keep my cattle in and other people's out!" "Possibly (replied the traveller), but look at your neighbor; in what beautiful condition his hedges and divisions are kept." This was too much for the Frenchman; his native philosophy broke out at once: "Ah oui! le miserable!" he exclaimed in a tone of indescribable contempt-" that man toils from morning till night; is up before daylight, and working after dark; never goes to merrymakings; I would not be like him for worlds. I have enough; what need I more? Can a man eat with two spoons?" But thou wilt say unto me, stand aside, oh man, for I am more learned than thou art, and have seen more things. If thou thinkest that thou art in this respect better than I am, thou art welcome. I praise God that I seek not that which I require not, Thou art learned in the things I care not for; and as for that which thou hast seen, I defile it. Will much knowledge create thee a double stomach, or wilt thou seck Paradise with thine eyes? Oh my friend! If thou wilt be happy, say, There is no God but God! Do no evil, and thus wilt thou fear neither man nor death; for surely thine hour will come! The meek in spirit (El Fakir.) But apart from these extreme cases of content where content ought not to be, it is imWe think our readers will agree with us possible to become acquainted with those inthat there is something very touching in this stances of rational and well-founded satisfacsingular effusion, with its strange mixture of tion with a most moderate and limited present, of which continental life offers us so many excomplacent ignorance and pious trust, its content bordering on apathy, and its lofty com- amples, without feeling, or at least suspecting, passion for the laborious follies of the strug- that, as compared with our hurried and turgling and toiling Frank. Of course we are moiling existence, our neighbors have chosen not writing to recommend such a state of the better part. Look at Norway, for exammind. We merely wish to observe that it ple, which has attained, as nearly as possible, contains the germ and element of a wisdom to to that "stationary state" which most econowhich our busy bustling existence is a stran-mists regard with dread, aversion, and a feelger. As a pendant to this epistle we may give ing akin to shame. There the inhabitants an anecdote that we once heard, of that class may be said to form one vast middle class; there is no great wealth, no absolute destitu- |-the Swiss farmer has always appeared to us tion; peasants and proprietors live on to- to enjoy one of the happiest of human lots. gether, generation after generation, on the Educated, industrious, pious, and patriotic, the same land, and much in the same style as their citizen of a free state small enough for him to forefathers; fuel and food, though simple, are feel an appreciable unit among its inhabitants, both abundant; the men till the soil and fell-in a situation which nourishes no ambition the timber; the women manufacture at home that he may not readily gratify, and yet exthe clothing they need; each man's life, wheth-empts him from those gloomy cares and foreer he be farmer, laborer or artisan, is pretty bodings as to the future, which wear away the much cut out for him by circumstances and lives and sadden the domestic circle of thoucustom; as he grows up, he steps into the va- sands among the Americans and English,— cant niche in the community which was wait- there is much in his existence which we may ing for him (or if not vacant, he waits for it), well envy, and not a little which, perhaps, we without any thought of exchanging it for a might emulate. different one, or struggling out of it into one In Germany, especially in central and higher; there is much comfort but little lux-southern Germany, we find a numerous class ury-much cheerfulness, perhaps too much in middle life-to which we have no analogon conviviality; there is general equality and in England-who possess an assured but a general content. It is easy to live there-not moderate competence at which they are cereasy, scarcely possible to grow rich; the coun-tain to arrive in time. They have not, as in try is peopled pretty nearly up to its resour- England, when they have chosen their profesces, so that population can increase but slow-sion, and undergone their education, to plunge ly; as young men and maidens arrive at ma- into the hot strife and race of competition, turity, they fall in love, and are betrothed as and take their chance of obtaining a mainelsewhere, but they do not marry till a tenance or a prize by overcoming and dis“houseman" dies, or till, in some way or oth- tancing their rivals. If they have passed er, a vacancy is made for them; their sole de- through the ordained curriculum and persire and aim is, to enjoy their natural share formed the required tasks, their future is proof the goods of life, but not to increase that vided for, and they have only to wait for its share beyond the usual rate; they are satis-realization, which comes indeed a few years fied to equal, and do not aspire to surpass sooner or later, but about the advent of which their father's lot. Thus their existence glides they need to give themselves no anxiety. As on from the cradle to the grave, broken by no functionary, or surgeon, or lawyer, or master tumultuous crises, embittered by no pressing tradesman, their turn will come as soon as the anxieties, shortened by no fierce competition, niche they were destined to fill becomes vagoaded by no wild ambition, darkened by no cant; for the government, by its complicated dismal failures, but happy in a continuous and vigilant arrangements, has taken care activity, moderate in its aim, and sure of its that no profession shall be overstocked, that reward. They are stationary, but not stagnant. there shall be no more aspirants than there In Auvergne, we find a state of society al- are posts for them to fill. We are not now most precisely similar. There the peasants expressing any opinion as to the advisability are nearly all proprietors, and often rich, for of such a system of leading strings; we only they spend little and cultivate well. The call attention to one of its effects-which is hoardings, when spent at all, are spent in the exemption of a large proportion of the land; everything is made at home; sometimes middle and educated classes from harassing literally nothing is bought except the drugs to dye their wool; they live simply but plentifully; and generation succeeds generation in the same industrious and monotonous content. Wars and revolutions pass over their country; but they scarcely hear of them, and never feel them. In Switzerland, too, especially in the cantons of Berne and Zurich, we find much of the same primitive, unvarying, and enjoyable existence, though here the curse of "indebtedness," which seems inseparable from the law of equal succession, often sheds a perpetual gloom over the life of the peasant proprietor. But when he has escaped this evil, and has found the small estate which sufficed to his ancestors suffice for him also, and when his younger brothers have gone to foreign countries, to seek or make their fortunes, anxieties about their future or that of their children, and the consequent diffusion of a sort of quiet happiness and somewhat apathetic content of which here we have no conception. These men of scanty but of certain expectations enjoy the present in a respectable and often most worthy manner; they are educated, and have a moderate amount of intellectual and more of æsthetic taste; they love social pleasures, and have ample leisure for them; unless singularly gifted, they know they must remain in the humble sphere in which their route is traced for them; they have no grandeur to hope for, and no destitution to fear; ils ont de quoi vivre, as the expression is, and in order to be thoroughly happy need only to cut down their desires to the level of their means. Their life is a qui etly flowing stream, somewhat languid, per-right; but it is hard to persuade ourselves haps, with many bright flowers growing on its that all the wisdom-all the true estimate of banks, which they have leisure both to admire the objects and the worth of life-lies with and to cull; they do perhaps little for their the man who decides for the thornier and generation, but they lead a not undignified, rougher path. and assuredly not an unenjoyed or morose existence; they may cultivate all the amenities, and affections, and many even of the elegancies of the domestic circle, and if their minds are well trained and furnished, they may add to these the pleasures of calm and contemplative literary habits. Yet their income is of an amount which (after making full allowance for the different cost of living in the two countries) with us would be considered as utterly inadequate to furnish means for a happy or comfortable life, and to be content with which would be held to argue deplorable want of energy and enterprise. Now let us cast a glance at the contrasted tone of English and American social existence : we may class them together, for the main difference is, that in America, our state of struggle is even more universal, and carried on un der more favorable prospects of success. And we have a few who cling to the "even tenor" of existence as the preferable state: in our exaggerated and caricaturing descendants, scarcely any such are to be found. Now, we are no advocates for a life of inaction and repose. Activity is better than stagnation; exertion in pursuit of any object, is better than an existence with no object at all. We know In France, too, though long years of well that out of dissatisfaction with our prechange and convulsion have diffused a longing sent condition, have arisen all our successful discontent and restlessness through the urban conquests of higher and more desirable conpopulation, which as yet is fever only and not ditions; that to the restless energy and aspi energy, there still remain many in moderate ring temper of the Anglo-Saxon, may be and humble circumstances, professional men, traced a large proportion of the material procommis, and subordinate employés, who on a gress, and not a little of the intellectual propittance which would be considered as grind-gress of the world; that civilization, if it does ing poverty in England, contrive not only to not consist in perpetual advance, at least owes support life, but to embellish it and enjoy it. its origin and present perfection to perpetual They make the best of what they have, instead endeavor. But we cannot permit ourselves to af anxiously striving to increase it. They regard the struggle to be rich as worthy of ad"cut their coat according to their cloth." miration for itself. We cannot bring ourselves They are not tormented by the desire to imi- to regard the gallant and persevering energy tate or to equal those to whom fortune has which is devoted to "getting on in life," as been more bountiful. They are contented to consecrated to a high aim. We cannot perenjoy, while their analogues in England would suade ourselves at once, and without inquiry, be fretfully laboring to acquire. They are not as many do, to pronounce the life that enas we are, forever haunted by something in joys, as ipso facto and per se, meaner than the distance to be obtained or to be escaped. the life that toils. We mourn over energies They do not, like us, immolate the possessed wasted by misdirection, as much as over enerpresent on the shrine of an uncertain future. gies suffered to lie dormant and die out. The They do not pull down their house to build man who strives for a clear duty or a noble their monument. They perform cheerfully prize is beyond question a higher and wor and faithfully their humble and, perhaps, un- thier being than the man who glides through interesting functions, and devote the rest of life in happy and innocent tranquillity; but their time to simple, social, unambitious enjoy- we are by no means so sure that the man ments. There are others again who, finding who, having a competence, spends years and themselves at their entrance into life in pos- strength, and spirits, and temper, in striving session of a moderate competence-a small for a fortune, has made a wiser or a better patrimonial inheritance - deliberately pause choice than the man who, having a competo decide on their career. On the one side tence, sits down thankfully and contentedly lie the possibilities of wealth, the gauds of distinction, the gratification of commercial or political success, to be purchased by harassing and irritating strife, by carking cares, by severe and unremitting toil. On the other lie the charms of a life of unaspiring ease, of quiet nights and unanxious days, of the free enjoyment of the present hour-something of a butterfly existence, in short. Nine Yankees out of ten would choose the former; nine Frenchmen out of ten will prefer the latter. We do not here intend to pronounce which is to enjoy it with his family and friends. To be able to make "the future and the distant predominate over the present," is unquestionably to have risen in the scale of thinking beings; but it by no means follows, that whatever is distant and future ought to predominate over what is present and at hand. We agree altogether in the tone of the following remarks from the pen of our first and most genial political economist:— I cannot regard a stationary state of capital and wealth, with the unaffected aversion mani- | where there is little left to win,-while so fested towards it by political economists of the many social problems remain still unsolved, so old school. I am inclined to believe that it would many grievous wounds still unhealed, so many be, on the whole, a very considerable improve- noble paths still unfrequented or unexplored. ment on our present condition. I confess I am We still press madly forward in the race, not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human though the goal can present us with no new beings is that of struggling to get on; that the attractions; we still struggle "to get on,” trampling, crushing, elbowing, treading on each though we have got far enough to command other's heels, which form the existing type of so- all the substantial acquisitions and enjoyments cial life, are the most desirable lot of human of a worthy life; we still persist in striving and kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms toiling for added wealth, which can purchase of one of the phases of industrial progress. The for us no added happiness, and in the hot comnorthern and middle States of America are a petition we push aside or trample down many specimen of this stage of civilization in very fa- who really need what we only desire. New vorable circumstances; having apparently got rid roads, faster ships, more rapid and cheaper of all social injustices and inequalities that af fect persons of Caucasian race and of the male locomotion, speedier transmission of intellisex, while the proportion of population to capi- gence, greater physical comforts, all these tal and land is such as to ensure abundance to are valuable things, and objects of legitimate every able-bodied member of the community who exertion. But of these we have now almost does not forfeit it by misconduct. They have the enough; we have pushed on long enough and six points of chartism, and they have no poverty; far enough in this exclusive line; there are and all that these advantages seem as yet to have other fields to be tilled, other harvests to be done for them (notwithstanding some incipient reaped, other aims to be achieved. Thousands signs of a better tendency) is, that the life of the and thousands of course must, till some blessed whole of one sex is devoted to dollar-hunting, change comes over our social state, spend life and of the other to breeding dollar-hunters. This in striving for a living, and thousands more is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire must concentrate all their exertions on the to assist in realizing. Most fitting indeed is it, acquirement of a competence; but why should that while riches are power, and to grow as rich this competence be made, by our increasing as possible, the universal object of ambition, the luxuriousness, an ever vanishing point? And path to its attainment should be open to all, why should those on whom no such hard newithout favor or partiality. But the best state cessity is laid, imitate their needier brethren? for human nature, is that in which, while no one Why should not those who have a fortune is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any sufficient to supply all reasonable wants, and reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of to guarantee them against anxious cares, pause others to push themselves forward. awhile upon the dusty and weary thorough fare, and try to form a juster estimate of the purpose of life, and the relative value of its aims and prizes? Why should we so cling to the undoubted but fragmentary truth that enjoyment lies only in the race, in the contest, in the effort? The successful barrister at the summit of his profession and the height of fame, is so overwhelmed with business that he has time neither for sleep, nor society, nor recreation, nor literature; his strength is overtasked, his life is slipping away, he has not even leisure for the sweet amenities of the domestic circle; he is amassing thousands which he does not want and cannot spend; he is engrossing briefs which poor men thirst for in vain ;-yet when does he ever resign a portion of his business to hungry competitors? when does he ever resolve upon "shorter hours,"-less toil and less emolument? When does he ever say to himself—" I will no longer spend my labor for that which is not bread, and for the food which satisfieth not; I will pause, I will rest, I will enjoy, I will contemplate, I will consecrate my remaining years to my family, to my country, to my soul? The physician, in the same way, who has worked his way up to the first practice and re That the energies of mankind should be kept in employment by the struggle for riches, as they were formerly by the struggle of war, until the better minds succeed in educating the others to better things, is undoubtedly more desirable than that they should rust and stagnate. While minds are coarse, they require coarse stimuli; and let them have them. In the meantime, those who do not accept the present very early stage of human improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for being comparatively indifferent to the mere increase of production and accumulation. I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation, that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure, except as representatives of wealth; or that numbers of individuals should pass over every year from the middle class into a richer class, or from the class of the occupied rich into that of the unoccupied.* It is indeed a sad spectacle, that of so vast a proportion of the national energy still devoted to mere material acquisition, still laboring in a field in which such ample harvests have been already gained, still pushing on in a direction * Mill's Pol. Econ., ii. 318.-3d Ed. putation, and is earning wealth far beyond his perception that existence was given us for noneeds, and has no rest night nor day,-who ble aims, not for sordid acquisitions-that when can never take up a book, and seldom finish a a sufficiency is once attained, the pursuit of dinner, and scarcely ever go into society, and wealth brings many cares, sacrifices, and pri only at rare intervals run for a hasty holiday vations, and its acquisition can purchase only into the country,-how rarely does he retire fresh luxuries which bring no fresh enjoyment. and leave the field to rising rivals, till his in- If this idea could but gain entrance into the firmities compel him? In these and similar upper circles of society; if the rich and great cases, indeed, it often happens that it is not those whose well established and recognized the desire of acquisition, nor yet the love of position gives them absolute freedom, if they their profession, which retains these men in choose to take it-instead of living in a style their unresting harness, but the conviction of inordinate luxury which others are always that they could enjoy no other life; they re- endeavoring to ape or emulate, were to set an main "slaves of the oar because they could example of simplicity and moderation, to exnot be happy in their freedom. They have change gorgeousness for taste, to prefer the lived so long and so exclusively in their work arts which adorn life for those which merely that they have lost all relish for the simpler minister to its voluptuous smoothness, to desert and quieter enjoyments of existence; litera- a career of hollow splendor and joyless show ture and science have no longer any charms for one of true and beneficent social influence; for them; political and public objects, ignored if those who can and do give the tone and deor forgotten for long years, cannot now excite cide the direction of the national mind would their interest, and their sympathies with so- out of true wisdom and real preference, tacitly cial life have become extinct or feeble. What impose upon themselves some "sumptuary greater condemnation can be passed upon the laws," and adopt a style of living which should narrow groove in which their life has run make display vulgar, and opulence therefore upon the partial and fragmentary cultivation comparatively useless, it is not easy to conof their being which has brought them to this jecture how rapidly the contagion of the sound pass-upon the social system which so favors example would spread downwards, how vast this one-sided, machine-like, incomplete, un- a proportion of the supposed necessities of dignified existence! It is true that as matters genteel life would be instantaneously swept are now arranged in England, and in the state away, and how sudden a chill would come af fierce competition in which we live, and over the present universal and feverish pas move, and have our being, this devotion of sion for unnecessary wealth. Sound political the whole man to his work seems indispensa- economy would frown upon no such triumph ble to success-it is one of our most grievous of rationality; those who resolve to live sensi social evils that it should be so; but it is ow-bly need not fear that they will thereby ining very much to the very instinctive and fringe any scientific principles or natural laws. pertinacious strife "to get on" which we com- We preach no restriction of civilized man to plain of a strife not indeed objectless, but the simple requirements of the savage; we continued long after the original object has wage no war against acquired tastes or artifi been obtained. For if our mode of life were cial wants; we do not seek to discourage simpler, if our standard of the needed or the those who can, from indulging in the elegan fitting were more rational and less luxurious, cies or cultivating the refinements which soften if our notion of a "competence" were more and embellish life; we only desire to limit real and less conventional, and if we were luxurious expenditure to that which confers more disposed to stay our hand when that real and not unworthy enjoyment, and to tercompetence was gained, this competition minate the pursuit of wealth when all the would become far less severe and oppressive; means of true happiness which wealth can purmen might possibly have to work nearly as chase are already in our reach. We would at hard in their several callings, but they would least have every man be content with the full work for fewer years, and the earlier retire- goblet, without seeking to dissolve within it the ment of the successful would make more fre- needless and untasted pearl. We wish to see quent openings for the needy and the striving; the middle and upper life of England less a the barrister and physician would be satisfied scene of bustle, of effort, and of struggle, and with making their £5000 or £10,000 a year more one of placid content and intellectual for fifteen years instead of for twenty-five; serenity; less of a mad gallop, and more of a and they would have the double gain of cre- quiet progress; less of a dusty race-course, ating a vacancy for others, and of retiring and more of a cultivated garden; less of a ca themselves before life had become wholly reer which disgusts us in our hours of weari dry, dull, disenchanted, and unenjoyable. ness, and sickens us in our moments of reflecThe thing wanted is the general adoption tion, and more of one which we can enjoy of a juster and worthier estimate of the true while we tread it, and look back upon without meaning, pleasures and purposes of life-a shame and regret when it is closed. |
