more inveterate, shortly to become too difficult to conquer. Dispersed in society where good sense, piety, and intellect, give the tone to the discourse, these young people would be found silent, reserved, and embarrassed, wishing in vain they had words in which to clothe their thoughts, or courage to express their feelings, and ask an explanation of their doubts. And their minds must have more than the ordinary power of resistance, if they come not eventually to prefer the company of the trifling, the frivolous, and the senseless. Meantime the Oracle of Wisdom has declared, "The thought of foolishness is sin." What sin, then, in its habitual and confirmed expression, become by habit the language of our lives! What sin in the perversion of that power whose use is unlimited in good-in telling forth the praises of God-in speaking comfort to the suffering; in giving information to those that know not; in adding the highest zest to intellectual pleasures; the most exquisite enjoyment to social intercourse! Rational conversation is the means above all others calculated to correct our mental errors; to shame our selfish passions; to correct the false estimate we form of ourselves, and induce a liberal and benevolent consideration of the feelings of others. It is the genial fire applied from time to time to save the heart from the icy coldness that steals upon it amidst the selfish occupations of the world. It is the overflow of feelings too big for the bosom to hold and be at peace. It is the gentle consolation that neither nor sorrow, nor infirmity, forbids to us; the draught oblivious, in which suffering the most poignant can for awhile forget itself: the offspring of confidence and love, better thriving on the hearth of domestic age, privacy, than in the sullen splendours of dissipation. And is it even so, that of a gift like this, we make an instrument of folly-to dissipate every serious thought-to put to the blush every right feeling -to disseminate falsehood and mischief-wound others, and corrupt ourselves? GOOD OLD MARY. She, for her humble sphere by nature fit, Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true. COWPER. ALL who enter on the world are in pursuit of happiness. Each one questions of another where it is or fancies he perceives it from afar; but very few confess that they have found it. The young, starting into life with sanguine hopes and spirits gay, expect it everywhere: the more experienced, having sought it long and found it not, decide that it is nowhere. The moralist tells us there is no such thing; and the historian almost proves it by the miseries he details. Poverty says, "It is not with me;" and Wealth says, "Not with me." Splendour dashes by the cottage door, heaves the rich jewel, on her bosom with a sigh, and says that the dwellers there are happier than she is. Penury looks out upon her as she passes, loathes, her own portion, and silently envies what she must not share. Ignorance, with dazzled and misjudging eye, admires the learned, and esteems them happy. Learning decides that "ignorance is bliss," and bewails the enlargement of capacity it cannot find enough to fill. Wherever we ask, the answer is still, "Seek further." Is it so, then, that there is no happiness on earth? Or if it does exist, is it a thing of circum stance, confined to certain states, dependent on rank and station; here to-day and gone to-morrow: in miserable dependence on the casualties of life? We are often asked the question by those by whom the world is yet untried, who, even in the spring-time of their mirth, are used to hear the complaints of all around them; and well may wonder what they mean. We effect not to answer questions which never yet were answered; but we can tell a story of something that our ear has heard, and our eye has seen, and that many besides can testify to be the truth. And well may we, who so often listen to what we like not, be allowed for once to tell a pleasant tale. Distant something more than a mile from the village of Desford, in Leicestershire, at the lower extremity of a steep and rugged lane, was seen an obscure and melancholy hovel. The door stood not wide to invite observation; the cheerful fire gleamed not through the casement to excite attention from the passenger. The low roof and outer wall were but just perceived among the branches of the hedgerow, uncultured and untrimmed, that ran between it and the road. As if there were nothing there that any one might seek; no way of access presented itself; and the step of curiosity that would persist in finding entrance, must pass over mud and briers to obtain it. Having reached the door with difficulty, a sight presented itself such as the eye of delicacy is not used to look upon. It was not the gay contentedness of peasant life, that poets tell of, and prosperity sometimes stoops to envy. It was not the labourer resting from his toil, the ruddy child exulting in its hard, scant meal, the housewife singing blithely at her wheel, the repose of health and fearlessness; pictures that so often persuade us happiness has her dwelling in the cabins of the poor. The room was dark and dirty: there was nothing on the walls but the bare beams, too ill joined to exclude the weather, with crevices in vain attempted to be stopped by torn and moulded paper. A few broken utensils hung about the room: a table and some broken chairs were all the furniture, except what seemed intended for a bed, yet promised little repose. The close and smoky atmosphere of the apartment, gave to it the last colouring of discomfort and disease. Within there sat a figure such as the pencil well might choose for the portrait of wretchedness. Quite gray, and very old, and scarcely clothed, a woman was seen sitting by the fire-place, seemingly unconscious of all that passed around her. Her features were remarkably large, and in expression harsh her white hair turned back from the forehead, hung uncombed upon her shoulders her withered arm, stretched without emotion on her knee, in form and colouring seemed nothing that had lived her eye was fixed on the wall before heran expression of suffering, and a faint movement of the lip, alone giving token of existence. Placed with her back towards the door, she perceived not the intrusion, and while I paused to listen and to gaze, I might have determined that here at least was a spot where happiness could not dwell; one being, at least, to whom enjoyment upon earth must be forbidden by external circumstance-with whom to live was of necessity to be wretched. Well might the Listener in such a scene as this be startled by expressions of delight, strangely contrasted with the murmurs we are used to hear amidst the world's abundance. But it was even so. From the pale, shriveled lips of this poor woman, we heard a whispering expression of enjoyment, scarcely articulate, yet not so low but that we could distinguish the words "Delightful," "Happy." |