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 

 Mitchell, 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. 



