LETTER TO MRS FRASER. 287 



yourself in my welfare ? Just by laying my whole 

 mind open before you. Two years ago there was not a 

 less ambitious or more contented sort of person than 

 myself in the whole kingdom. I knew happiness to be 

 altogether independent of external circumstances ; I 

 more than knew it, I felt it. My days passed on in a 

 quiet, even tenor; and though poor, and little known, 

 and bound down to a life of labour, I could yet anticipate, 

 without one sad feeling, that in all these respects my 

 future life was to resemble the past. Why should I 

 regret my poverty ? I was independent, in debt to no 

 one, and in possession of all I had been accustomed to 

 regard as the necessaries of life. Why sigh over my 

 obscurity ? My lot was that of the thousands around 

 me ; and, besides, was I not born to an immortality too 

 sublime to borrow any of its grandeur or importance 

 from the mock immortality of fame ? Why repine be- 

 cause my life was to be one of continual labour ? I had 

 acquired habits of industry, and had learned from expe- 

 rience that, if labour be indeed a curse, the curse of 

 indolence is by far the weightier of the two. It will 

 not surprise you, my dear madam, that, entertaining 

 such sentiments, I should have used no exertions, and 

 expressed no wish, to quit my obscure sphere of life for 

 a higher. Why should I ? I carried my happiness 

 about with me, and was independent of every external 

 circumstance. 



I shall not say that I still continue to think and 

 feel after this manner, for, though quite the same sort of 

 man at present that I was then, I have, perhaps, ascer- 

 tained that my happiness does not now centre so ex- 

 clusively in myself. To you, I dare say, I need not be 

 more explicit. But though, in consequence of this dis- 

 covery, I have become somewhat solicitous, perhaps, of 



