62 UNWISE AMBITION. 



numbers, the division of one number by another, 

 the summation of a series^ or the solution of an 

 equation are all infallible recipes for sleep ; and, if 

 a moderate degree of preparation was necessary, I 

 have never been able to keep awake so long, as to 

 complete the square in a common quadratic. These 

 may seem to be trifling matters ; but, in truth, great 

 part of the enjoyment and happiness of our lives is 

 made up of such trifles ; and it is very often just be- 

 cause the sources of error and misery are in trifles 

 so light that we deem them unworthy of notice, that 

 we do not stop them at the outset ; but suffer them 

 to grow and gather, till our habits are debased, and 

 our happiness is destroyed. 



Indeed, it is through affected contempt for what 

 we consider to be small and simple matters matters 

 too minute and trifling for the range and grasp of our 

 extended and powerful minds that we are so often 

 ignorant of what we might easily know; baffled 

 with what we might easily accomplish ; and, in con- 

 sequence, miserable, when it would really cost us 

 less time and trouble to be happy. In matters of 

 bodily action only we do not so frequently fall into 

 those mistakes. We are not vexed and mortified 

 because we cannot shoot across the Thames by one 

 motion of the swimmer, or because every stroke of 

 the oar does not get us along a reach of that river. 

 We feel no mortification because we cannot plant 

 one foot at the general post-office and the other at 

 Bristol or at York ; and even Sir Christopher Wren 

 thought it no humiliation that the splendid pile of 

 St. Paul's had to be built up in a number of little 

 parts, stone by stone, and brick by brick. In all 

 these visible cases, which are, as we may term 

 them, matters of pure observation, we are perfectly 

 contented to take " the method of interpolations," 

 and we should be accounted stupid absolutely out 

 of our senses, if we even spoke of jumping to the 

 conclusion at a single bound. We know the length 



