156 ON THE EDUCATION OF JAMES MITCHELL. 
serene contentment which, when not corrupted by other per- 
sons, both the blind and the deaf so often exhibit. When the 
blind are addicted to complaints on this subject, it entirely 
arises from the superfluous lamentations which they hear from 
those around them. This occasionally exists in circles in 
which a sickly and unprofitable sensibility is cherished ; but it 
chiefly abounds among persons who are indigent and neglect- . 
ed, and who indulge in the habit of bewailing their fate as a 
part of the talent of the mendicant. In these particulars no de- 
ficiency of manliness seems to have been betrayed by James 
Mircuett, though his privations are doubled; and, as he ad- 
vances in his intercourse with others, he is not likely to receive 
his impressions in a school in which any feelings tending to 
generate depression will be fostered. The glimmerings which 
he receives of his own state by a comparison with the advan- 
tages of others will add to his stock of information, and will 
contribute to render him more reasonable, without producing 
any mortification of his feelings. He must find himself always 
dependent on others ; but in this there is nothing to render 
the mind abject. Every man is dependent on the arrangements 
of nature and of society; and that species of erectness and 
fancied independence which arises from a forgetfulness of the 
condition of man is rather to be condemned as a poor and ig- 
norant pride, than regarded as a valuable prerogative accom- 
panying the possession of external advantages. 
VIII. 
