442 



UN HUMAN HAPPINESS. 



Is the practice of virtue most contributory to a man's individual hap- 

 piness ? The libertine says No ; and he seeks for it in his mistress, v/honi 

 he changes as often as he changes his dress. The glutton says No ; un- 

 less a good city-feast be virtue ; for the soul of happiness with him con- 

 sists in a haunch of venison and a brisk circulation of the bottle. The 

 spendthrift says No : you may as well seek for happiness in a hay-stack : 

 happiness, my dear Sir, you may depend upon it, consists in nothing else 

 than a good stud, and a pack of hounds. The gamester, in hke manner, 

 says No ; and he directs us to a pack of cards and a pair of dice. Even 

 the miser joins in the general negative, and would fain persuade us that it 

 resides in the meagre and miserable ghost that constitutes his own per- 

 son, or the meagre and miserable pursuits to which his person is daily 

 prostituted. 



Now all these have, no doubt, their respective enjoyments ; but do they 

 constitute happiness in any fair sense of the term ? are they permanent ? 

 J do not say through life, but for four-and-twenty hours together. Many 

 of them, on the contrary, are of that violent kind that they wear themselves 

 out in an hour or two ; and what is the state of the system before it reco- 

 vers sufficient energy for a renewal ? To say that it is as empty as an air- 

 pump would be to give a better character of it than it deserves. It is not 

 empty ; it is still full ; full of bitterness or insupportable languor, sickness 

 at heart or sickness at the stomach. Even the miser, who, properly 

 speaking, provides for a longer range of enjoyment than any of the rest 

 of this precious group, is a victim while he is a worshipper, a sacrifice to ^ 

 -anxiety while an idolater of Mammon. 



We are at present, however, merely following them up through a 

 'single day ; but life is a series of days ; in its ordinary estimate, of three- 

 score years and ten. And he who is a candidate for happiness must pre- 

 pare himself, not for a single day, but for the entire term : he must save 

 his strength, and proceed cautiously, for there is no race in which he may 

 so soon run himself out of breath. His motto may perhaps be, A short 

 life and a merry one ;" and this, in truth, is the motto, and not the motto 

 only, but the brief history of most of those whom we have thus far consi- 

 dered. For consumption, dropsy, gout, or chagrin and suicide, make 

 not unfrequently a woful havoc in their ranks before they have cleared 

 two thirds of the pleasurable career they had proposed to themselves. 

 Let them, then, have their motto if they will ; but let them not boast 

 that they have found out the specific for making life happy ; for all that 

 ihey Jiave found out is a specific for throwing both hfe and happiness 

 away at the same time. They have had a few fitful bursts of enjoyment ; 

 but the price has been enormous, — a costly birthright for a mess of pottage. 

 He only can fliirly boast of happiness, place it in whatever way you please, 

 who, on casting up the account, can honestly say that it has accompanied 

 him through the long run. 



There is another and a very different set of people, both in the higher 

 and^lower ranks of life, who also occasionally try to persuade themselves 

 that they are happy, and who are sometimes actually thought so by those 

 around them : and these are the listless and idle, who loll and saunter life 

 away as though it were a dream ; and who, in truth, are more alive in 

 their dreams than in their waking hours. Now happiness consists in ac- 

 tivity : such is the constitution of our nature : it is a running stream, and 

 not a stagnant pool. It shows itself under this form from the first moment 



