In the
midst of these I have experienced pleasures which I would not at any
time have exchanged for that of existing and doing nothing. I have
known many evils, but I have never known the worst of all, which, as
it seems to me, are those which are comprehended in the inexhaustible
varieties of _ennui_: spleen, chagrin, vapours, blue devils,
time-killing, discontent, misanthropy, and all their interminable
train of fretfulness, querulousness, suspicions, jealousies, and
fears, which have alike infected society, and the literature of
society; and which would make an arctic ocean of the human mind, if
the more humane pursuits of philosophy and science did not keep alive
the better feelings and more valuable energies of our nature.
THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS
You are pleased to be severe upon our fashionable belles lettres.
MR ASTERIAS
Surely not without reason, when pirates, highwaymen, and other
varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only _beau ideal_
of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the
speculative energy. A gloomy brow and a tragical voice seem to have
been of late the characteristics of fashionable manners: and a morbid,
withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded with moral and political
despair, breathes through all the groves and valleys of the modern
Parnassus; while science moves on in the calm dignity of its course,
affording to youth delights equally pure and vivid--to maturity, calm
and grateful occupation--to old age, the most pleasing recollections
and inexhaustible materials of agreeable and salutary reflection; and,
while its votary enjoys the disinterested pleasure of enlarging the
intellect and increasing the comforts of society, he is himself
independent of the caprices of human intercourse and the accidents of
human fortune.
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