Part 3
I grieved for Buonaparté, with a vain And an unthinking grief! for who aspires To genuine greatness but from just desires, And knowledge such as _he_ could never gain? ’Tis not in battles that from youth we train The governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly and weak as womanhood. Wisdom doth live with children round her knees: Books, leisure, perfect freedom, and the talk Man holds with week-day man in the hourly walk Of the mind’s business: these are the degrees By which true sway doth mount: this is the stalk True power doth grow on; and her rights are these.
1801. Wordsworth.
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THE OLD MAN’S COMFORTS, AND HOW HE GAINED THEM.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried, The few locks which are left you are grey; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man, Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied, I remember’d that youth would fly fast, And abused not my health and my vigour at first, That I never might need them at last.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried, And pleasures with youth pass away, And yet you lament not the days that are gone, Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied, I remember’d that youth could not last; I thought of the future, whatever I did, That I never might grieve for the past.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried, And life must be hastening away; You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death, Now tell me the reason, I pray.
I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied, Let the cause thy attention engage; In the days of my youth I remember’d my God! And He hath not forgotten my age.
⁂ The above Stanzas are ascribed to Mr. Southey.
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_Encouragement to Persons of mature Age to cultivate the Mind._--Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the power of imagination has at an advanced period of life been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is “purged of its film;” and things, the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events, which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of _the pleasures of vicissitude_, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth:
“The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are op’ning Paradise.”
_Dugald Stewart’s Essay on the Cultivation of Intellectual Habits._
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_Cure of Drunkenness._--A man in Maryland, notoriously addicted to this vice, hearing an uproar in his kitchen one evening, had the curiosity to step without noise to the door, to know what was the matter, when he beheld his servants indulging in the most unbounded roar of laughter at a couple of his negro boys, who were mimicking himself in his drunken fits; showing how he reeled and staggered,--how he looked and nodded, and hiccupped and tumbled. The picture which these children of nature drew of him, and which had filled the rest with so much merriment, struck him so forcibly, that he became a perfectly sober man, to the unspeakable joy of his wife and children.--_Anatomy of Drunkenness._
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_Lesson to Rulers._--The Chinese Emperor Tchou set out on a journey to visit the vast provinces of his empire, accompanied by his eldest son. One day he stopped his car in the midst of some fields where the people were hard at work. “I took you with me,” said he to his son, “that you might be an eye-witness of the painful toils of the poor husbandmen, and that the feeling their laborious station should excite in your heart might prevent your burdening them with taxes!”
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_How to prolong Life._--For many years there prevailed in China an extraordinary superstition and belief that the secret sect of Tao had discovered an elixir which bestowed immortality. No less than three Emperors died after swallowing a drink presented to them by the eunuchs of the palace, as the draught that was to confer never-ending life. “The best method of prolonging life, and of making life happy,” said a wise Mandarin to one of these infatuated princes, “is to control your appetites, subdue your passions, and practise virtue! Most of your predecessors, O Emperor! would have lived to a good old age had they followed the advice which I give you!”
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A wise man’s kingdom is his own breast; or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of giving him solid and substantial advice.
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Time tries the characters of men, as the furnace assays the quality of metals, by disengaging the impurities, dissipating the superficial glitter, and leaving the sterling gold bright and pure.
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It was said, with truth, by Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden, that he who was ignorant of the arithmetical art was but _half a man_. With how much greater force may a similar expression be applied to _him_ who carries to his grave the neglected and unprofitable seeds of faculties, which it depended on himself to have reared to maturity, and of which the fruits bring accessions to human happiness--more precious than all the gratifications which power or wealth can command.--_Dugald Stewart._
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_A Ship of War._--It is a mighty and comprehensive problem to contemplate all the essential elements connected with the construction of so massy and stupendous a fabric as a ship destined for the terrible purposes of war, which, in the magnificent voyages it undertakes, has to cross wide and immeasurable seas, agitated at times by the unbridled fury of the winds, subjecting it to strains of the most formidable kind;--which shall possess mechanical strength to resist these, and at the same time be adapted for stowage and velocity,--which is expected in all cases to overtake the enemy, and yet must contain within itself the _materiel_ of a six months’ cruise. These and many other complicated inquiries which the naval architect has to contemplate, must all be involved in the general conditions of his problem, the elements of which he must estimate while he is rearing his mighty fabric in the dock, and be prepared to anticipate their effects before he launches his vessel on the turbulent bosom of the deep.--_Review of Hervey’s Article, Ship-building, Edinburgh Encyclopædia._
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_Average Duration of Life._--Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than the duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual; yet there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the inhabitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more uniform; and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year above the average number, seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the whole; nor did the number dying in any year differ from the number of those dying in the next by a tenth part.--_Babbage on the Assurance of Lives._
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How many minds--almost all the great ones--were formed in secrecy and solitude, without knowing whether they should ever make a figure or not! All they knew was, that they liked what they were about, and gave their whole souls to it.
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Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.