GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 289 



of human life and fortune, moving like a thing of life over the 

 billows, and, as she ploughs her proud path through, as it were, a 

 flood of liquid silver, throwing the glittering and brilliant tresses 

 of jewels from her neck, who has had this experience, and will 

 not feel how little to be desired, either for the body or the mind, 

 for health or enjoyment, for the animal or the moral man, is a 

 state of inanity and sluggish repose ? 



The poets those ethereal beings, who deal in fiction, and 

 whose imagination becomes a sort of ignis fatuus, a &quot; Will-of-the- 

 wisp,&quot; leading them they know not where love to descant upon 

 the Golden Ages or the Paradisiacal state, when men, without 

 care for food or clothing, had nothing to do, but, under a calm 

 sky and a soft air, to lie down on banks of fragrant flowers, by 

 the side of gurgling streams, under the shade of spreading aro 

 matic trees, and let the richest fruits fall into their laps, and 

 listen to the JEolian strains of the winds whispering among the 

 branches, and the melodious songs of birds of the gayest plu 

 mage fluttering around them, and abandon themselves to the 

 charms of a purely animal and sensual existence. But what 

 reflecting man would desire such a life as this for himself, and 

 would not feel an intolerable restlessness, and especially a morti 

 fying consciousness that it falls, one may almost say, infinitely 

 below the capacities of his nature and the purposes of his being ? 



I cannot look out of my window, where I am now writing, in 

 Trafalgar Square at Charing Cross, without seeing a world of in 

 describable life, and bustle, and activity. The night in London 

 is seldom longer than from half past two o clock until four o clock 

 in the morning, when the flood-gates begin gently to open, and 

 gradually the rushing torrent of life pours through in a turbid 

 and boisterous flood. After the waters begin to move with force, 

 there is perhaps not a minute in the day when more than a thou 

 sand, or rather thousands, of people cannot be counted from my 

 window. Here are carriages without number, from the splendid 

 chariot with its noble horses, its gorgeous equipage, its liveried 

 servants, and its precious cargo of figured porcelain, down to the 

 humble gig, the dray-horse, the wheelbarrow, and the donkey-cart 

 with its precious load of garbage or of dog s-meat. Here are 

 shops without number, replete with all the most exquisite produc 

 tions of science, genius, art, and mechanical contrivance, and full 

 of buyers and sellers. Here are crowds of men, women, and chil- 

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