44- UNWISE AMBITION. 



removed from actual observation. The multiplica- 

 tion of two 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 prepara- 

 tion 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 en- 

 joyment and happiness of our lives is made up of 

 such trifles ; and it is very often just because 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 affected contempt for what we con- 

 sider 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 

 consequence 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 mor- 

 tified 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 next 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 



