I. E. M.

“ The truth is, the cup of happiness is very limited, and that of most men as replete as their sense of enjoyment can admit of; more than this is superfluous, wasted, and unappreciated, or even, as it were, condensed by the feeling of satiety which ensues; while, on the other hand, the rarer sources of happiness to another man will expand and fill the cup, blessed as he is with an "elasticity of spirits." ”

“ In a few days more I had reached the heart of Switzerland; but what a contrast had I experienced in passing from one country to the other! The whole of France, with the exception of my ever happy Loire, must surely be the most monotonous and unpicturesque tract of the whole continent; while Switzerland presents, at every turn, a combination [146] of the paradisaical and of terrific sterility. Smiling patriarchal pastures, walled in by granite mountains, frowning in eternal silence and solitude, save when thundering with the awful avalanche. ”

“ But the general and more prosperous lot—for a beneficent Creator has willed a preponderance of happiness—is pictured by, probably, the most pertinent and poetical simile ever devised. Keeping in view the career of man on earth, "the river," says Pliny, "springs from the earth, but its origin is in heaven. Its beginnings are insignificant, and its infancy frivolous; it plays among the flowers of a meadow; it waters a garden, or turns a little mill. Gathering strength in its youth, it sometimes becomes wild and impetuous. ”

“ The school is nothing more than an extensive room, with its floor lined with fixed forms, and the wainscot with sculptured names innumerable. One is guilty of a sad omission should he quit Eton without giving a crown to Cartland to perpetuate his name on the immortal oak. ”

“ When I look back at this period of my life, though it must be with a feeling of disapprobation—and when I coldly say disapprobation, I insinuate remorse—let me confess that I still do so with an undeniable leaven of envy; envy at the lawless liberty I enjoyed, not only with regard to my actions, but to my conscience; revelling in a deficiency of forethought and blindness of consequences, as truly delightful for the present, as overwhelming and deplorable for the future. ”

“ Has, then, the general happiness of mankind actually varied with different epochs? Were the lauded golden ages so much brighter than these of the baser metal? No more so, perhaps, than, in spite of Homer's assertion, were the heroes who contended on the plains of Troy superior in stature or force to those on the plains of Waterloo. As the human constitution accommodates itself to all climes, so our sense of felicity fits itself to external circumstances ”

“ One flogging, without the slightest stigma attaching to it, or reprimand, is the certain penalty of failure in his task. With hardihood or without it, I then had no chance, though, at all events, I acquired it, and that too, to such a degree, and I deemed the penalty so trivial, that I henceforth enjoyed a delightful sense of freedom and independence in its way. ”

“ I gradually arose from my trance to be conscious of the truth; and now even concluding it to be my duty to combat against the weakness, though in a joyless mood, I descended the ladder.
"Time and tide tarry for no man," and I think even less for me. The day had now come that I was to take leave of Keate and of Eton, and return to my father's house—and for what! ”

“ Hence arises the happiness of the saint-like and self-denying hermit; his complaint, "I can't get out!" lasts as long as he does, while he progresses with every flying moment; and conversely, the most unhappy man is the idle and irreligious one. Happiness was mingled with sorrow when Gibbon penned this most interesting but melancholy passage on the termination of twenty years' incessant labour, and which should give us a deep insight into the philosophy of life. ”

“ It was now about midnight, and the moon was shining brightly on the Abbey lake. Not a leaf was stirring, and all things as still as death, while the clear evening star shone cold and motionless over the dark edge of the forest, towering black and gloomy in the silent distance. ”

“ Sir George Curzon for me; you are more used to that sort of thing than I."
All my eloquence being thrown away upon him, and on that instant thinking of my little lady in the grove, I walked towards the group with my hat in my hand, without further hesitation.
"If you please, Sir George Curzon, there is a young lady in the shrubberies who wants you."
"I think, young sir," replied Sir George, "you must make a mistake."
"No, sir. She has lost you, she says; it is Miss Curzon." ”

“ My main guide through France was the Loire, which led me by a meandering route of nearly five hundred miles to the neighbourhood of Lyons.
Knowing, at that time, so little of the language of those who surrounded me, as actually to envy the fluency of a parrot which I heard chattering with, I suspect, the true Parisian accent, I can scarcely account for the feeling of thorough nonchalance with which I commenced my pilgrimage, and which ever accompanied me to its conclusion. ”

“ Thus having consumed nearly half my life—at all events, the better half—at a public school and the University, preparatory to a profession, my antipathy for which was exactly proportioned by my inaptitude for it, the sole result is, that I can now answer to the definition of a real gentleman, "one who has no visible means of a maintenance." ”

“ But the impartiality of Providence towards us in this respect, is very conspicuous, or a little examination into the subject will clear away what few doubts we may entertain concerning it; otherwise, we might feel a difficulty in reconciling the various degrees of happiness which we are apt to suppose prevailed throughout the world, or to exist at present between different persons, with our notions of justice, when we revert from the present refined and peaceful period, to those of barbarism and bloodshed, or think of the pampered alderman and the overworked and starving pauper. ”

“ We feel, however we may try to conceal it, that our acquaintances in later life may be playing a part, or at all events, may be guided more or less by interested motives; while, on the other hand, should sad experience not have taught us the same policy, it will inevitably happen, that sooner or later we shall have to deplore our imprudence. It is not so much that we are betrayed as misconstrued; our opinions are misinterpreted from ignorance of our real dispositions. ”

“ Not a soul was breathing nearer to me than the poor old monks, who, hours ago, had crept to their dormitory in the farthest cloister of the Abbey.
The order among whom I was, was that of La Trappe, which is by far the most austere sect in Christendom. They allow themselves but five hours' sleep, and that on a bare board, without putting off their clothes. They perform masses each morning, from half-past two until six o'clock; they deny themselves any meat whatever, their meal invariably consisting of some oaten bread, with a little poor wine of their own growing, disguised in water ”

“ How many otherwise inoffensive persons have I known implicitly to adopt an opinion to the prejudice of their less fortunate acquaintance, merely from their deficiency of the world's wealth! But, not content with this, these persons, who are the very people to esteem poverty as the worst of ills, not satiated with his destitution, must do their utmost to sink him still lower by their treatment [95] of him; little suspecting, too, I should hope, that the most probable means of enticing a man to become a villain, is to convince him that the world deems him to be such. ”

“ The next morning, I rose before the sun, and squeezing through the bars of the stable window, threw out the saddle and bridle, went into the park up to my knees in dew, caught poor little Forester, and was away, while all at home were still fast asleep.
"Men are but children of a larger growth;" and in lieu of Horsa's-hill in front of my home, I have now extended my ambition to a region, which, let me confess, without any particular reason, I have pictured to myself as the nucleus of glaciers and avalanches—of mountains and mighty rivers. ”

“ I think that our Creator never meant us to be contented, and that we should always have something to look forward to and fret about—"It is thy vocation, Hal,"—or we sink into apathy, and become averse to the prospect of the last great change. "Well, Mr. Graham," said a once contented, but now expiring Nimrod to me, "after all you have said, give me a thousand a-year, and the old bald-faced mare again, and I don't care if I never see the kingdom of Heaven." Or, as Johnson parodied the enjoyment of the savage—"With this cow by my side, and this grass at my feet, what can a bull wish for more?" ”

“ The salon was nearly as sombre as midnight, and there was a delicate and oval face, brightened by a pair of large soft eyes, "with fire rolling at the bottom of them!" Long, long did I deplore my deficiency of the organ of language; for with such a person for my vis-a-vis, I could open my mouth but to eat!
We are little aware how exclusively we derive our opinion of others from their appearance and manner, and so independently of the sentiments they utter. Until we live among those with whom we cannot converse, it is impossible to be sensible of this truth ”

“ I sometimes feel that my fate, here and hereafter, has hinged upon it—this world is globular for the same reason that a woman's tear is. Are we the creatures of the merest chance, or of eternal predestination through all time, if there be such a thing as time at all? ”

“ But was the evil merely negative, one would hesitate to object to anything that has been adopted for ages by a foundation so admirably conducted as that of Eton, and which has ever worked so well; but an additional effect of this compulsory attendance is to induce, by the force of early habit, an indifference and callousness of feeling during divine service, which but few in after life have the grace to overcome. But are the tutors of the College sensible of similar effects within themselves? ”

“ During my pilgrimage, as I have traversed the monotonous plains of La Vendeé, the awful grandeur of the Alps, and the lovely yet sublime scenery of Italy, under every aspect—in summer and in winter, in sunshine and in storm—so have I, at times, been elated by the buoyant hopes of the present, as well as bowed down to the dust when I looked forward to the future. I have risen with the sun, my spirits vying with the freshness of the dawn ”

“ If, in a few years after we have left the school, we possess not a respectable knowledge of such common, and easily acquired subjects, as arithmetic, history, and geography, we alone are culpable; and the more the world makes us sensible of our deficiency, the more we deserve it, and the sooner we shall set about to apply the remedy. ”

“ Ever distant then in our days of boyhood, and that, too, while under the same roof, now that the casualties of after-life have dispersed us, we are become, to all intents and purposes, entire strangers one towards the other. ”

“ Should the boy have committed anything unbecoming a gentleman, he is invariably and appropriately punished by the manner adopted towards him by his own associates, and the feeling of the school in general. Let flogging, then, still be tolerated as a mere physical and convenient inconvenience—its effect, too, is but ephemeral, and soon becomes lost among the things that were. ”

“ Love at twenty is as nothing, unless one's a fool. Downright love exists only with boyish and the wildest romance, infinitely removed from every grain of common sense. I [72] will give an instance of this boyish weakness, though a ridiculous one.
There was a maid-servant in Eton, who was a modest, respectable, and certainly very pretty girl. Notwithstanding the stoutness of her ancle, she had made a deep impression on many of the bigger boys, though probably not one of them had exchanged a syllable with her. This girl now became betrothed to a Windsor tradesman. ”

“ If a knowledge of our own language be desirable, they afford the only means of understanding the true import of the words which constitute it; and when, at times, I have sufficient diffidence to suspect my own capabilities of forming a correct opinion in the matter, and examine into that of others, I have to acknowledge, not only that the advocates of the dead languages are the most competent judges, but that the persons who oppose them the most strenuously, are invariably those who are the least conversant with them ”

“ I neglected my studies, not to become listless and unemployed, but that I might earn more time for other, and, as most persons would think, less edifying pursuits, and was therefore invariably devoted to cricket, rowing, and foot-ball matches.
This, then, was the good or ill effect which resulted from the chance of circumstance. My father had at once concluded, that send a boy to Eton, pay the yearly bills, and his education was infallibly insured. ”

“ From the moment that I entered the college, I had been carelessly placed far above my acquirements; and constant flogging was inevitable, for a year or two at least, until, perhaps, by close application, I had made myself equal to my daily tasks. But this was a prospect by far too distant to be entertained by a boy of nine years old; for it is the ambition of a boy [43] not to be flogged at all—not as little as possible.
An objection to sending a boy early to Eton is, that should he have the hardihood to brave frequent punishment, he may be very nearly as idle as he pleases ”