CHAPTER IV.

ON PLEASANTNESS.

However, I supgood grace any I always recollect

I AM rather ashamed of this chapter, as I occupy too large a space in it. pose we should take with a honor that is thrust upon us. in such cases Dr. Johnson's well-known reply, "Was it for me, Sir, to bandy compliments with my sovereign?" This was when George the Third had held a conversation with the Doctor, and had said something complimentary to him.

I will now mention how it was that I came to write the following essay, which was a most unexpected and not a very welcome undertaking to me. I do not find much difficulty in writing sermons for my rustic audience, who have no thought or wish to reply to me; but it is a very different matter to write an essay which is to be read to such men as Ellesmere, Milverton, and Midhurst, who are to have an unlimited power of picking what I say to pieces.

It was the day after Mr. Midhurst's essay had been read. The weather was rough, and the

ladies did not accompany us in a walk that we took by the side of the Moselle. We began talking of the essay and conversation of the preceding day. Milverton seemed, I thought, to have laid aside the advocate's part which he had taken up, and to agree more for the moment with Mr. Midhurst than I should have expected. I bethought me that their conversation was a little like that of two barristers who have been maintaining the extreme views of their clients, and not bating one iota of their pretensions while in court, but who walk away together and perhaps talk quite fairly and reasonably about the case. However, I will let them speak for themselves, as far as I can recollect what they said.

MR. MIDHURST. I dealt with you very mercifully yesterday. I did not say a quarter of what I might have said. I did not dwell upon pain, fear, shame, or remorse. Look at the apprehensiveness of some men. I cannot describe it better than by likening it to the timidity of a defenceless animal which has a thousand enemies. You go into a wood, and sit quietly for a time. You hear a rustling noise, and see some timid creature that is unaware of your presence. You watch it. The most striking thing to notice is its constant terror. It nibbles a bit, looks round timorously, and is startled by the slightest noise. Its apprehensive eyes and ears are ever in movement. It knows the number of its enemies. It is like a thoughtful man.

ELLESMERE. Come: this is not fair. You did com

pare man to a lizard. If you begin to liken him now to a rabbit, or a squirrel, I shall uphold the dignity of man, and shall compare him to a jolly, laughing hyæna. Surely, we prey as much as we are preyed upon.

MR. MIDHURST. This is your way of defending, is it? Well, then, there is another topic I did not touch upon; and that is, the length of time that all vexation, worry, and calamity take to work themselves out. You read or hear of something disastrous; and you almost fancy that it did not take more time to be acted and to be suffered than it does to be narrated. MILVERTON. This is but too true: here you have made an excellent point. I have always felt that the great difficulty in writing or in reading history is to appreciate the length of time that adverse transactions occupied. A disastrous campaign is soon narrated; but the wearisome marchings and counter-marchings, the long sicknesses, the disheartening times of waiting (perhaps in some unhealthy but well-fortified spot) for the approaches of an enemy, are not appreciated. In fiction, too, how difficult it is to give a notion of longextended misery. In Macbeth how rapidly the action moves on; and it is not until you come to reflect, that you perceive the long course of abject cowardly guilt, of murder breeding murder, that the tyrant has had to go through; otherwise his weariness comes too soon upon you. So, in an ordinary man's life, you read of a time of ill-health, want of employment, pecuniary difficulty, discord with his friends or his followers, and the like. It is told in a sentence, and does not make much impression upon you. But this adversity took years perhaps to be surmounted. Your eye passes from emi

nence to eminence, whether of prosperity or adversity, that the man occupied ; but the long, damp valleys that he made his painful way through, or the deserts that he sojourned in, are not much thought of by you. There was little to be told about them.

Do not let us

ELLESMERE. Little is said also of the smiling, peaceful plains which he passed over. exercise our imagination all on one side.

MR. MIDHURST. Again, I did not make enough of mischance. I pictured one or two unpleasant positions; but I did not touch upon the numerous mischances which happen to all men. A poor woman has an idiot child, and she gains her living by needlework. This is a story I heard or read the other day. The child was ill, and she persuaded her employer to let her take home some velvet, or rich stuff, that she was working upon. For days she did not quit her garret; but, unfortunately, one morning, having hid her work, as she thought, she went out on some domestic errand. her return she found her idiot boy, with smiling selfsatisfied face, occupied in cutting the velvet into strips; and he had been for some time about it, for the impoverished mother said, that it would take three months of her work to pay for the mischief done by the idiotic diligence of the poor child. I can't tell why this particular story occurs to me; but life is full to the brim of such things. They make anecdotes for other people, and furrows in the cheeks of the sufferers.

On

MILVERTON. It reminds me of the mishap of a dear friend of mine, an eminent man of letters, whose manuscript of a second volume of a great work, put away in a cupboard, was quietly consumed each morn

ing in lighting the fire. I remember his telling me that it cost him the labor of fifteen months to re-write this volume; and that he attributed to this mishap a failing in his eyesight not yet recovered.

ELLESMERE. If I were to follow your example, I too could tell moving stories of flaws in title-deeds, of losses of important papers, and of slight mischances which certainly have proved hideous disasters. But Milverton gave, the other day, what answer could be given to these things, when he said, that all past suffering is a possession. Rather large and fine words, to be sure! But still they are better than nothing. And there is some truth in them, you may depend.

MR. MIDHURST. All I want you to consider is the number and weight of misfortunes that beset mankind. I have no doubt that, sitting on this gate for the whole morning, we might, without pause or intermission, relate mischances and disasters of which we ourselves have had full knowledge, and they should all be such as have sprung from the most trivial causes, in which the sufferers shall have either drifted, or fallen, or been snared, into misfortune.

And then there is the fearful adjunct that the destroying worm, or fly, or aphis, always attacks the plant when it is weak; and so, when a man has met with one misfortune, he is in the most likely condition to receive another.

If that simile does not I must divert you for a

ELLESMERE. Ha, ha, ha! win Milverton, nothing can. moment from your charming and light-hearted conversation to something that happened last summer at Worth Ashton. You know how all enthusiasts have the knack