BE/lUfiFUL NEST 
 
THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the collection of 
 Julius Do erne r, Chicago 
 Purchased, 1918. 
 
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Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. A 
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 U. of I. Library 
 
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Of THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
THE HAUNTED HOUSE. Seep. 'll. 
 
LIFE’S PLEASURE GARDEN; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ^Contritions of n Papg ^ifc. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. HAIG MILLER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 “the mirage of life,” “the culture of pleasure,” etc. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 56 Paternoster Row, 65 St. Paul’s Churchyard, 
 And 164 Piccadilly'. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 R. Clay, Sons, and 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, QUEEN 
 
 Taylor, 
 
 VICTORIA STREET. 
 

 I 71 -H 
 N\toi 5. 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 By multitudes/’ observes an eloquent writer, Chris- 
 tianity is mistaken for a minister of terror sent to oppress 
 poor mortals with m. oping melancholy, and to do a deadly 
 office on the happiness of mankind.” In the following pages, 
 which have already appeared in the Sunday at Home, an 
 attempt is made to combat this gloomy impression by sketch- 
 uig in a simple and anecdotical manner the leading conditions 
 of a happy life, and the mode in which these conditions 
 are affected by Christian truth. When Mary Queen of 
 Scots mounted the scaffold at Fotheringham, almost her last 
 words were a confession that life had proved to her a thing 
 full of vanity and misery. She had chased the Mirage of 
 Life. But, happily, there is a brighter side of the picture, 
 and we desire in these pages to exhibit that side. Life, 
 it is true, under its best conditions must ever be a 
 chequered scene; still, to use the language of the Eev. 
 Thomas Adam, a pious divine of the last century, it has its 
 enjoyments, and is not the contemptible thing we make it, 
 but heaven upon earth, when it is conducted on right 
 principles, directed to a right end, and devoted to the will 
 of God.” 
 
 It is singular that, at a time when so much attention has 
 
 696156 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 been paid to social questions, so little sliould bave been done 
 in the way of classifying for popular use the conditions 
 of what may be called every-day happiness. ‘‘I wonder,” 
 observes Mr. Greville in his Diary, that the inductive 
 process has not been more applied to the great philosophical 
 question. What is happiness, and in what it consists^ for the 
 purpose of directing the human mind into the right road for 
 reaching the goal of all human wishes. Why are not in- 
 numerable instances collected, examined, analysed, and the 
 results expanded, explained, and reasoned upon for the 
 benefit and instruction of mankind!” Meantime, we shall 
 be glad if our little treatise, elementary and cursory as it has 
 been designedly made, should be found to have contributed 
 its modest quota towards supplying the want just indicated. 
 Still more pleased shall we be, if it leads any reader who has 
 found life an unsatisfying thing, to seek happiness at the 
 loving hands of Him who is the controller of the springs of 
 natural and spiritual pleasure, and whose grace can transform 
 our being from a waste where thorns and briers spring up 
 into a true Pleasure Garden,” in which shall flourish the 
 fir tree and the myrtle, and other plants alike beauteous and 
 useful. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Ifart I. 
 
 SOUK.CES OF PLEASURE. 
 
 CHAP. PAG-!5 
 
 I. THE post-master’s ADVENTURE ... ... 1 
 
 II. THE BELLS OF LIFE .... ... .. 5 
 
 III. THE CHANGED SIGN-POST ... ... ... 8 
 
 IV. SOMETHING TO DO ... ... ... H 
 
 V. TOO MUCH TO DO ... ... ... 15 
 
 VI. AN AIM ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 VII. THE LESSONS OF AN HOSPITAL ... ... 24 
 
 VIII. ^‘PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE ” ... ... 27 
 
 IX. THE LADDER OF LIFE ... ... ... 32 
 
 X. HONOURS ... ... ... ... 37 
 
 XI. THE BUBBLE REPUTATION ... ... ... 41 
 
 XII. A THING OF POWER ... ... ... 46 
 
 XIII. GOODWILL TOWARDS MP:N ... ... ... 52 
 
 XIV. A FAITHFUL FRIEND ... ... ... 58 
 
 XV. A PROPER MATE ... ... ... ... 62 
 
 XVI. A BEAUTIFUL NEST ... ... ... 65 
 
 XVII. DULCE DOMUM ... ... ... ... 71 
 
 XVIII. THE PALATE AND ITS CLAIMS ... ... 75 
 
 XIX. SOMETHING TO WEAR ... ... ... 81 
 
 XX. MY OWN, MY NATIVE LAND ... ... 87 
 
 XXL BY ACCIDENT ... ... ... ... 91 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 Hfart IL 
 
 THE MAH WITHIH. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE PLEASURES OF KNOWLEDGE ... ... 98 
 
 II. CONVERSATION ... ... ... ... 105 
 
 III. THE BEAUTIFUL ... ... ... 109 
 
 IV. THE HARMONIOUS ... ... ... 113 
 
 V. A SOUND MIND ... ... ... ... 117 
 
 VI. SOME MINOR MENTAL POWERS ... ... 125 
 
 VII. THE SNAKES OF THE SOUL ... ... 131 
 
 VIII. DO RIGHT ... ... ... ... 137 
 
 IX. LOOKING AT THE BRIGHT SIDE ... ... 141 
 
 X. CONTENTMENT ... ... ... ... 147 
 
 XI. WRECKERS OF HAPPINESS ... ... ... 151 
 
 m. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF PAIN TO PLEASURE. 
 
 I. THE WARNINGS OF PAIN ... ... ... IGO 
 
 II. THE CHEMISTRY OF PAIN ... ... ... 164 
 
 III. THE CONQUEST OF PAIN ... ... ... 168 
 
 IV. THE PARADOX OF LIFE ... ... ... 172 
 
 V. SELF-SACRIFICE ... ... ... ... 175 
 
 VI. A SCENE AT VENICE ... ... ... 182 
 
 VII. A LARGE HOUSE IN THE CITY ... ... 185 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE HAUNTED HOUSE ... 
 TO THE HAPPY MAN 
 
 
 Frontisjjiece. 
 
 2 
 
 PERPLEXING ... 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 LORD ELDON’s choice ... 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 WILBERFORCE SEAT 
 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 FIVE MINUTES OF WEALTH 
 
 
 
 
 28 
 
 POINTING A MORAL 
 
 
 
 
 47 
 
 SYDNEY smith's DONKEY 
 
 
 
 
 50 
 
 DUMB 1 
 
 
 
 ... 
 
 53 
 
 A FAITHFUL FRIEND 
 
 
 
 
 59 
 
 “ladies WHO LIVED LtVES 
 
 OF flowers" 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL NEST 
 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 garibaldi's supper 
 
 
 
 
 76 
 
 BUFFON IN HIS GARDEN 
 
 
 
 ... 
 
 100 
 
 GOSSIPS 
 
 
 
 
 107 
 
 A PAIR OF POETS 
 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 THE CUNNING SPIDER ... 
 
 
 
 
 122 
 
 SELF-SACRIFICE 
 
 
 
 
 134 
 
X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 CONTENTMENT 
 
 THE PORTLAND VASE 
 
 THE TAWSE ... 
 
 FRANKLIN MONQMENT ... 
 
 ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE SHANNON ” AND 
 
 ‘^Chesapeake’' 
 
 ... 146 
 
 ... 151 
 
 ... 160 
 ... 174 
 
 THE 
 
 ... 177 
 
 ... 182 
 
 VENICE BY NIGHT 
 
PART I. 
 
 SOUECES OF PLEASUEE. 
 

 / 
 
 
IFE S 
 
 THE POST-MASTEE’s ADVENTURE 
 
 In the little town of J , in Germany, a curious 
 
 incident, so runs the story, occurred to its post-master. 
 
 One day, as he was in a very dissatisfied mood, 
 grumbling at the vexations of his lot and the smallness 
 of his salary, he took out of the bag of letters that had 
 just arrived from Berlin an epistle, bearing the very 
 peculiar address — To the happy man in J y 
 
 The post-master turned the letter over attentively. 
 He felt a strong desire to open it and to examine its 
 contents; but the conviction that in his vexed mood 
 he had no title to the character of the happy man, and 
 the strict rules of the office, deterred him. He deter- 
 mined therefore to fall in with the humour of the 
 sender of the letter, and to discover, as he went his 
 day s round, whether any one whom he might meet 
 corresponded with the character of the address. The 
 first house he knocked at with his letters happened to 
 be that of the leading merchant of the place ; but he 
 
 B 
 
 j^LEASUP^ j^AP^DEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
2 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 was in a towering rage at some blunder that his clerk 
 had committed. The letter, it was clear, was not for 
 him. The next house he visited was an elegant villa, 
 but the closed window told a tale of sorrow ; the owner 
 of the beautiful mansion was plunged into the deepest 
 affliction by the death of an only child; the letter 
 could not be left there. An unpretending little cottage 
 seemed the abode of happiness and peace, so sweetly 
 
 clustered the honeysuckle round it, and so brightly 
 sparkled the diamond-shaped panes in its Gothic 
 windows ; but as the postman knocked, he overheard 
 sharp words between the husband and wife, about 
 some item in the latter's weekly accounts. The letter 
 evidently was not for them. A small shopkeeper seemed 
 a more promising candidate for it, but upon inquiry the 
 
THE POSTMASTER'S AD VENTURE. 
 
 3 
 
 postmai^ found him in extremely low spirits, a customer 
 having run off heavily in his debt. At the workhouse, 
 where he had to call, matters were no better, for a 
 bitter altercation was going on between the master and 
 the inmates as to the quality of the gruel. Other 
 disappointments followed in his rounds, so that, in 
 short, disgusted with his want of success, and not sorry 
 
 at heart to see that he was not the only man in J 
 
 who was not easy in his mind, the postman wrote in red 
 ink across the letter, No such person known in this 
 town,’’ and returned it to the dead letter office in 
 Berlin, where its further fate is unknown to us, though 
 probably it contained only a poetical dJ esprit. 
 
 Now whether this story be true, or whether it be 
 only a myth, one thing is clear, that, if common report 
 be correct, happy men are difficult to be found in other 
 places besides J . 
 
 We ask your company, therefore, readers, for a short 
 time, as we seek to know what are the ingredients of 
 happiness, and the marks by which we should know a 
 happy man, if we had a letter to give him. 
 
 The kitten that gambols beside us has its nice 
 morocco slippers, and its glossy fur coat, without having 
 any shoemaker’s or tailor’s bill to- provide for, and 
 without any exertion on its part. But man has to work 
 for his happiness, and to think beforehand and exercise 
 prudence if he would secure it. Happiness, too, is an 
 object worth working for ; when enjoyed, it gives zest 
 to everything in life. Its pursuit, therefore, does not 
 deserve the sneer with which the Philosopher of Chelsea 
 has marked it. “ Every pitifulest whipster,” he writes, 
 that walks within a skin, has his head filled with the 
 notion that, he is, shall be, or by all human and divine 
 
 B 2 
 
 V 
 
4 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 laws ought to be, happy/' A desire for happiness is 
 Nature's instinct implanted in every bosom, and the 
 great writer just named, had he studied its conditions 
 more, might have had a less mournful old age than that 
 which his memoirs show him to have possessed. 
 
 ''Who will show us any good?" is the question that 
 has been rising from the hearts of men through all the 
 ages, and if we can succeed in finding an answer for it 
 to our readers, we shall have accomplished something 
 of value. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BELLS OF LIFE. 
 
 In one of his well-known poems, Edgar Allan Poe 
 has interestingly described the music of different kinds 
 of bells. Notes of the sweetest character are given 
 out by one sort, which seem as if made of gold, so 
 rich is the harmony they yield. A tale of terror and 
 despair, however, seems uttered by another kind, as 
 they jangle, and clash, and roar, in all their hideous 
 dissonance. 
 
 Now in this miniature treatise upon a happy life, 
 we cannot do better than avail ourselves of Poe’s illus- 
 tration. Every man carries with him an apparatus of 
 pleasure and of pain. The golden bells of joy and the 
 brazen bells of sorrow hang by our sides, and happiness 
 is but the art, so to speak, of playing the bells of life 
 harmoniously. Some men from youth to age seem to 
 ring out nothing but sweet melodies. How pleasing 
 it is, for instance, to hear a good man, like Doctor 
 Shirley, the Bishop of the Isle of Man, when lying on 
 his dying couch, exclaim, '' What a blessed life I have 
 had ! ” Other persons, however, through unskilfulness, 
 jangle the sweet bells of life all out of tune. How 
 sadly did the poet Shelley’s bells ring, when he could 
 
6 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 thus from his own experience write, after having drunk 
 from the poisoned chalice of Infidelity — 
 
 Life, they say, is full of pleasure ; 
 
 To me there has been dealt another measure.’’ 
 
 How sadly, too, did Poe’s own life-bells ring, cut off, 
 as he was, in his prime by intemperance. 
 
 Happiness then, to define it in a sentence, is the art, 
 in subjection to conscience, of evoking pleasure and 
 avoiding pain, or, when pain does come (under cir- 
 cumstances which will be hereafter explained), of so 
 changing its character as to raise to ourselves out of it 
 a spring of joy. ^ 
 
 One man’s meat, it is said, is another man’s poison; 
 and so in respect of happiness; what one man likes, 
 another dislikes. While Beckford of Font hill was, 
 during his tour in Portugal, enthusiastic about the 
 architecture of a monastery, his physician was in equal 
 raptures about a curious case of ulcer in its hospital. 
 Few men, again, would relish the witnessing of a sur- 
 gical operation, yet on the receipt of the intelligence of 
 the battle of Waterloo, Sir Charles Bell, the eminent 
 surgeon, rushed off in a sort of professional enthusiasm, 
 not only to minister to the relief of the wounded, but 
 to study with the deepest interest the complicated 
 cases of fractured limbs, which the great victory had 
 left in its train. In America, when two steamers were 
 freighted, one with a company going to a prize-fight or 
 some other sporting entertainment, and the other with 
 a body of Christians proceediug to a religious festival, 
 by an accident one man found himself on the sports- 
 men’s boat instead of the religious one, while another 
 man discovered that he had got into the latter by 
 
THE BELLS OE LIFE, 
 
 7 
 
 mistake for the sporting vessel. Each individual was 
 thoroughly nauseated by the conversation that was 
 giving nothing but delight to his fellow -voyagers. 
 Our idea of what happiness is, changes also with our 
 years. The schoolboy, to whom a slide upon the pave- 
 ment was a thing of joy, finds that object, when he 
 grows old, a thing of dread. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHANGED SIGN-POST. 
 
 A FRIEND who sits bosido us, and has heard our 
 definition of happiness, now breaks in with a remark. 
 
 ''Some years ago,” he says, "when manners were 
 a little more boisterous than at present, a common 
 practical joke of our hot-bloods was to take a sign- 
 post, erected at a junction where several roads met, 
 and to turn it round. The effect of this act of folly, 
 which the law w^ould nowadays very properly punish, 
 was, that many a traveller who wished to journey in 
 one direction, was sent on in another, to his no small 
 discomfort, and often to his serious injury. 
 
 " So when man first appeared on this scene, the road 
 to happiness was as clearly indicated as that to the 
 cities of refuge under the Jewish dispensation. One 
 finger of the sign-post pointed out loving obedience to 
 the Creator s will as the road to felicity, while another 
 arm of it indicated disobedience or sin, as the path to 
 misery. In an evil hour for our race, however, the 
 great enemy turned the sign-post round, so that ever 
 since multitudes have mistaken the true road to happi- 
 ness. You will but lose your labour then, I consider, 
 if in indicating the marks by which we shall know the 
 
THE CHANGED SIGNPOST. 
 
 9 
 
 happy man, you do not point him out as one who is 
 the follower of that Divine Friend of humanity, whose 
 love to our race brought Him down from heaven to 
 earth. All the wells in which men by nature seek to 
 
 quench their thirst for happiness are empty, or filled 
 with brackish contents. His well alone is always flow- 
 ing with living water. Let me be permitted, then, as 
 
lO 
 
 LIFE'S FLEASHFE GARDEN. 
 
 you enumerate the various ingredients of happiness, 
 briefly to point out how our great Friend’s precepts 
 secure them all. My notes will not interfere with your 
 text, and they shall be of the briefest.” 
 
 We willingly give our consent, with the sole con- 
 dition that the promised pledge of brevity shall be 
 observed. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOMETHING TO DO. 
 
 In the workhouse at Amsterdam a curious j)unish- 
 ment for lazy vagrants once existed. The beggar was 
 shown into an apartment, and was allowed snugly to 
 squat himself upon the floor, with the privilege appar- 
 ently of taking an indefinite snooze. The only furni- 
 ture in the room was a pump-handle. Just, however, 
 as he was settling into a state of serene repose, a 
 stream of water poured down from an orifice in the 
 roof, and to prevent himself from being drowned aright, 
 the unlucky wight had to bestir himself and pump 
 with all his might, so as to keep the incoming flood 
 down. 
 
 Such was the ancient Hollanders’ remedy for sloth ; 
 but, unless Dutch beggars are constituted differently 
 from other people, we should have imagined that, even 
 if left at liberty to be idle, they would have petitioned 
 as a favour to get to the pump-handle, to save them 
 from the misery of vacuity of mind, and to get them 
 something to do. 
 
 Something to do ! This is an important ingredient 
 in the composition of happiness, for without it life is a 
 state of dreary ennui, brooded over by imaginary horrors 
 
12 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 ^ and disease. We were struck, on visiting an exhibition 
 of ancient needlework, by a motto which a young lady 
 had long ago embroidered on her school sampler : 
 Indolence has a thousand pains unknown to industry, 
 and industry has a thousand pleasures unknown to 
 indolence.’’ Well and truly wrote Robert Burns to the 
 same effect : 
 
 country fellow at his pleugh, 
 
 His acres tilled, is right eneuch. 
 
 A country girl at her wheel 
 
 Her dizzens done, she’s unco’ weel; ,. 
 
 But gentlemen and ladies warst, 
 
 Wi’ even down want of wark are curst. 
 
 They loiter lounging, lank and lazy, 
 
 Though nothing ail them, yet uneasy; 
 
 Their days insipid, dull and tasteless, 
 
 Their nights unquiet, lang and restless.” 
 
 Work is the remedy for many a disturbing emotion. 
 Lord Palmerston fought off attacks of the gout by de- 
 votion to business, which bystanders described as being 
 physic to his pain. Rossel, the condemned Communist 
 General, of Paris, after his sentence was passed, rightly 
 or wrongly fought off the thought of death, by pre- 
 paring for the press his treatise on the art of war. To 
 be happy, then, you must get something to do. There 
 is plenty of work close to your elbow, if you will look 
 for it. If you have a calling, do not grumble because 
 your occupation is compulsory. Sir Walter Scott said, 
 that he wrote the better when he was forced to keep to 
 his desk by the printer clamouring for copy. If your 
 calling is a congenial one, happy are you. If it is 
 otherwise, and you cannot prudently change it, let duty 
 sweeten it. Study its nature thoroughly ; concentrate 
 the mind upon it, like General Hoche, whose motto was 
 
SOMETHING TO DO. 
 
 13 
 
 “Quod ago, ago'' (What I do, I do) or like Francis de 
 Sales, who so gave to the work he was at his whole 
 attention, that it seemed as if there had been nothing 
 else going before it, and nothing else was to come after 
 it. Then what was grim duty will begin to smile 
 lovingly upon you, till, as acquired tastes are strongest, 
 you may joy in your work with professional enthu- 
 siasm. Captain Cook, the circumnavigator of the 
 globe, and the glory of our marine service, was at first 
 thought to have made a mistake in choosing the sea as 
 his calling; and Sir James Simpson, the inventor of 
 chloroform, wanted at the outset to quit the medical 
 profession, which eventually brought him a statue and 
 his title. 
 
 Then it is always a pleasure to meet honest work 
 again. Thomas Carlyle tells us that his father, a 
 common stonemason, was deeply moved when, after 
 fifty years, he saw a bridge which he had helped as a 
 lad to build, still standing and useful to the world. 
 Common work, too, done devotedly, may minister to 
 the worker the same kind of pleasure that an artist 
 or a sculptor experiences in finishing a picture or a 
 statue. Mr. Carlyle’s wife, we are told, when, after 
 watching the oven, she drew out the first attempt she 
 had made at baking bread, and found the experiment 
 issue successfully in the shape of a beautiful brown 
 loaf, felt a joy akin to that experienced by Benvenuto 
 Cellini, the Italian sculptor, on his seeing the cast 
 of his statue of Perseus come successfully out of the 
 furnace. 
 
 Christianity does the best for a man here, for it 
 sweetens occupation by enabling it all to be done out 
 of love to God, thus supplying a motive which dignifies 
 
14 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 labour and reconciles the worker to it under all cir- 
 cumstances. Where the worker, too, has perplexities, 
 he can cast them upon a loving although unseen 
 Lord. 
 
 Christianity, moreover, as a rule promotes successful 
 work, for its followers have this promise — '' They shall 
 not build, and another inhabit : they shall not plant, 
 and another eat. For aS the days of a tree are the days 
 of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work 
 of their hands.” 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 TOO MUCH TO DO. 
 
 Lord Eldon, in his interesting anecdote-book, pre- 
 served by his biographer Horace Twiss, tells us, that 
 on one occasion, when he was Lord Chancellor, he had 
 a fit of the gout. Most men would have nursed that 
 troublesome companion at home ; but no such comfort 
 was allowed his Lordship. He was carried down to the 
 Court of Chancery, and there till the afternoon had 
 patiently to listen to the speech of some barrister. 
 Chancery over, his Lordship w^as carried off to the 
 House of Lords, not to sit upon a back bench, where 
 he could comfortably sleep if he wished, but to the 
 woolsack, where, if a man wants a nap, he must take 
 it with his eyes and ears open. An unusually long 
 debate connected with the Peace of Amiens took place, 
 so that his Lordship did not get home to his bed till 
 six o’clock in the morning. Just, however, when he 
 had got one leg into his couch, he remembered that the 
 Recorder’s report (on which hung the life of many a 
 poor creature) had to be studied carefully by him 
 before being presented to the King that day, so that he 
 was forced to forego his rest. The report attended to, 
 it was time to go to Chancery or the Council; that 
 
1 6 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 being done with, it was time to go once more to the 
 House of Lords, so that it was the midnight of the 
 second day before his Lordship could taste that sweet 
 restorer of nature which the humblest of his Majesty’s 
 subjects had had in their power to take abundantly, 
 while it had been denied to one of the highest peers of 
 the realm, oppressed with too much to do. 
 
 LORD ELDON’S CHOICE. 
 
 Too MUCH TO DO ! Although a thing much given 
 way to by many influential persons, it is sometimes as 
 great an enemy to happiness as nothing to do. It not 
 only sows the seeds of paralysis, consumption, and 
 nervous affections, but it deadens all the amenities of 
 life. For those oppressed with this evil, green fields 
 shine, sweet birds warble, and clear brooks purl in vain, 
 while Nature’s voice, with a thousand delicious tones, 
 appeals to them inaudibly. Let us seek then, by 
 
TOO MUCH TO DO. 
 
 17 
 
 season of recreation, to guard against '' too much to do/’ 
 taking care, however, that our recreations are such as 
 will bear the morning’s reflection. The officer of the 
 American man-of-war, mentioned by Mr. Spurgeon, 
 who availed himself of his ship being in the Mediter- 
 ranean^ to visit some of the gambling-houses of the 
 Riviera, must have had very pungent thoughts after he 
 had lost there all his hard-earned savings. The seeker 
 of recreation at the race-course may also wisely ponder 
 the remorseful entries which Mr. Grenville, a fre- 
 quenter of the Turf, has made in his journal. '' I have 
 been all week at Epsom,” he writes. '' The demoralis- 
 ing drudgery, I am conscious, reduces me to the level 
 of all that is most disrespectable and despicable, for 
 my thoughts are eternally absorbed by it. Jockeys, 
 trainers, and blacklegs are my companions; and it is 
 like dram-drinking, having once entered upon it, I 
 cannot leave it off.” 
 
 And if we are not Lord Chancellors, let us resolve 
 to have our proper quantity of rest and do our sleep- 
 ing w^ell. Let exercise make our slumbers sound and 
 dreamless, if possible ; but if we do have dreams, let 
 w^ell-doing and good digestion make them pleasant. If 
 guilt troubled the couch of Richard the Third, indi- 
 gestible suppers bring also their attendant horrors. The 
 lady who told Abernethy, the surgeon, that she had 
 seen the ghost of her grandmother, after eating half a 
 pigeon-pie, was assured by him that she might also see 
 the ghost of her grandfather if she would eat the other 
 half. 
 
 Christianity does the best for a man here. By a 
 Sabbath well spent she gives a week of content, and a 
 frame recruited for business. Nor does she, while taking 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN,. 
 
 a very earnest view of life, frown down relaxation, 
 like the editor of a Christian newspaper, who replied 
 to a correspondent’s inquiry, as to what recreation he 
 should take : '' Do as we do ; take none at all.” On 
 the contrary, she tells us, in the language of Gowper : 
 
 “ Keligion does not censure or exclude 
 Unnumbered pleasures, harmlessly pursued ; ” 
 
 while, being innocent and preceded by labour, her 
 relaxations 
 
 L 
 
 “ Are all pursued without a crime, 
 
 And leave no stain upon the wing of Time.” 
 
 In doing good to others, Christianity opens to its 
 followers a fund of recreation without a limit and 
 without an alloy. 
 
CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 AN AIM. 
 
 One bright day towards the close of a genial summer, 
 we had, in company with a friend, a right-down Cockney 
 ramble among the green fields of Kent. 
 
 Leaving the pleasant town of Bromley behind us, we 
 traversed Hayes Common, rich in heathery beauty, and 
 left in our rear the mansion rendered illustrious by 
 having been the residence in his palmy days of the 
 crreat Earl of Chatham. A still richer historical treat 
 
 O 
 
 awaited us, however. Amidst a range] of exquisite 
 landscapes, where Birkett Foster would have found a 
 fitting material for his pencil, we plunged out of the 
 main road ihto the solitude of Holmwood Park, through 
 ferny glades, and under the shadow of ancient oaks, 
 until, coming to the brow of a pleasant hill, our atten- 
 tion was fastened on a seat, which was erected to 
 commemorate the birth that had taken place there, 
 of a great Aim. 
 
 On that spot, some hundred years ago, William Pitt 
 and William Wilberforce were seated; when, under 
 the branches of an overshadowing tree, the latter con- 
 ceived the high and heroic design, of devoting his life 
 to the emancipation of the slave. How well and how 
 
20 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 strenuously the aim thus selected was carried out, we 
 need hardly tell our readers. It was the grand idea of 
 
 
 Wilberforce’s life, and 
 through years of 
 struggle he manfully battled in 
 defence of it, until victory 
 crowned his efforts, and he 
 saw his name enrolled on the 
 list of eminent philanthropists. He was a man who 
 lived for an aim. 
 
AAT AIM, 
 
 21 
 
 Having an aim in life ; this is our next step on the 
 ladder of happiness. Occupation is itself not enough, 
 for, strange as it may sound, it is possible, as we one 
 day saw, for men to be occupied, and yet to have no 
 object. Some years ago, we paid a visit to the tread- 
 mill of one of our large prisons, not (as we should, 
 perhaps, explain) as performer, but spectator. Never, 
 surely, was there a better illustration of the wheel — not 
 of Fortune — but Misfortune. Upon an immense iron 
 cylinder perforated with steps, something in the shape 
 of a gigantic garden roller, such as they might use in 
 Brobdingnag, were clustered like bees the pick-pocket, 
 the vagrant and the pe tty-larceny man, working out 
 their respective sentences. Bound and round by force 
 of their weight went the cylinder, compelling them to 
 hold on by a pole, as they climbed on, for ever ascend- 
 ing, but never getting a foot beyond their original 
 altitude. It was an embodiment of the old heathen 
 punishment of Ixion and his wheel; occupation, it is 
 true, but occupation aimless, purposeless, objectless to 
 those engaged in it, and communicating no more pro- 
 gress than was made by the party of Arctic voyagers, 
 who on taking their observation found to their surprise, 
 that after a day’s journey, they were no farther forward 
 in the evening than they had been in the morning ; 
 the surface on which they walked having proved to be 
 only a portion of an island of ice, which, while they 
 travelled in one direction, had been floating as fast in an 
 opposite one. 
 
 Yes ! an aim is necessary to render occupation agree- 
 able ; and the more wisely it is selected and the more 
 enduringly it is pursued, the better it is for our 
 prospect of happiness. Especially is this advice to be 
 
22 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 pondered, when fixing our aim on a calling in life. 
 There is danger, on one hand, of getting fixed in a 
 wrong groove, when by a timely change we might 
 achieve success, like the eloquent Lord Erskine, who 
 changed from the Army to the highest honours of the 
 Bar; or Mr. Gibson, the eminent sculptor, who was 
 thrice indentured before he found his right calling ; or 
 Sir Henry Holland, a leading physician, who having 
 been sent to a counting-house in Liverpool, left it to 
 study medicine, and that so successfully, that when in 
 after-life he found himself again in the street where his 
 mercantile career began and ended, it produced, we are 
 told, an emotion in him similar to that with which we 
 revisit a spot where some great physical risk has been 
 avoided. 
 
 There is a danger, on the other hand (and that 
 probably the much greater of the two), of our becoming 
 by a rash change through lack of perseverance, jacks of 
 all trades, and masters of none ; like the character 
 sketched by Doctor Johnson in one of his papers for the 
 Idler or Bambler, in the last century. The individual 
 in question, falling accidentally into the company of 
 some physicians, was so interested in their conversation 
 that he determined to adopt medicine as his profession. 
 On his way one day, however, to the Botanical Gardens, 
 a sight of the Lord Chancellor in his coach changed 
 his views, and made him resolve to study law. Weary- 
 ing, however, of legal drudgery, the company of some 
 military officers induced him to select the profession of 
 arms. When he got his commission, fresh difficulties 
 awaited him, and he resigned his new occupation in 
 disgust, in order to become a literary man, where, at the 
 time of the sketch, he was roving from one gay flower 
 
AN Am. 
 
 23 
 
 to another, without giving proper application to any- 
 thing, wasting life and its opportunities, from want of 
 pursuing an aim perseveringly. 
 
 When the father of Frederick the Great was dying, 
 and he saw the room filled with attendants in their 
 new state liveries, he exclaimed with Solomon, '' All 
 is vanity/’ Let us, in conclusion, then, see that our 
 leading aims in life are such as will bear looking back 
 upon when '' Brief, brawling day, with its tinsel-gilt 
 paper crowns, is gone, when the night cometh, when no 
 man can work, and when the cry shall be, what has 
 been thy life work ? Out with thy work. Let us see 
 thy work.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It gives a 
 mail Divine guidance in the adjustment of his aims and 
 the choice of a profession. It gives him, too, the aim 
 of doing all he does to the glory of God, a motive 
 which will stand the test of even a dying hour. This 
 motive turns everything that it touches into gold. Mr. 
 Hervey, in the last century, when dedicating his work 
 to a lady, modestly stated that it was but a cypher, 
 which received its value from her name being prefixed 
 to it, as the denominating figure. In like manner, all 
 labour is ennobled by being done to the glory of God. 
 
 servant with this clause, 
 
 Makes drudgery divine ; . 
 
 Who sweeps a room as for this cause, 
 
 Makes that and the action fine.’’ 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LESSONS OF AN HOSPITAL. 
 
 What an impressive spectacle it is to go through an 
 hospital and mark the various forms in which disease 
 and pain have attacked the human frame ! Here — to 
 abridge the language of Dr. George Wilson, when 
 describing what he saw in the Royal Infirmary of 
 Edinburgh — is one patient propped up with pillows and 
 panting for breath. Pie has not lain down for weeks, 
 from dread of suffocation. Here is a second, trembling 
 lest you touch his bedclothes, and quivering from time 
 to time with scarcely endurable agony. ' Here is a 
 third, haggard and wan, beseeching the doctor for more 
 opium, as he has no rest night nor day. Here is one 
 far gone in consumption; he has not many days to live. 
 On every side are pictures of sorrow and distress. 
 
 What a contrast to the objects who lie there is a 
 benevolent gentleman who accompanies us round the 
 wards of the hospital, dropping a cheering word as 
 he goes 1 He carries the burden of eighty years, yet 
 his form is erect, his step strong, his eye clear, his 
 countenance ruddy, while his hair, though white, but 
 sets off an appearance which temperance has made 
 most beautiful. Having inherited a good constitution, 
 
25 
 
 THE LESSONS OF AN HOSPITAL. 
 
 he has observed the laws of health, and Nature now, 
 as it were, decks his breast with her jewels and orders 
 of nobility. Ask him how it is that as he drains the 
 cup of life there are no lees at the bottom, and he will 
 tell you, that, like the Spaniard who lived till he was 
 one hundred and ten years of age, when young he 
 conducted himself as if he were - old, and now that he 
 is old he can live as if he were young. 
 
 Let us then in our quest of happiness secure health, 
 and we shall find, that, like a ring, it keeps many of the 
 best forms of pleasure together, not, however, in pursuit 
 of this boon poring over medical books till we fancy 
 ourselves diseased, or swallowing boxes of patent pills, 
 but wooing it by temperance and reasonable care. It 
 will give sauce to food, as piquant as Lazenby’s. It 
 will make pure water as pleasant as champagne, and 
 cause brown bread to taste more delicious than game- 
 pie. It will make the mere act of existence enjoyable, 
 and give strength for every duty. Then good health, 
 if by caution and forethought and self-possession we 
 escape accident, will carry with it a painless old age, 
 leaving us with a body not a ruin, but, as was said of 
 Humboldt at ninety, ‘'A human temple perfect as the 
 Parthenon.’' It will give life, too, a zest to the last, 
 such as Cornaro had, when at eighty-three years of age 
 he wrote thus : The life I live at this age is not a 
 
 dead, lumpish and sour life, but cheerful, lively and 
 pleasant. I am in health, merry and well-contented; 
 free from all trouble and troublesome thoughts, in 
 whose place joy and peace have taken up their 
 residence in my heart." When death itself comes, it 
 may be, so far as regards physical pain, so easy, that we 
 may say as Brillat Savarin tells us his grandmother 
 
26 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 said when dying at an advanced age : My son, if you 
 
 come to my years, you will find that death becomes a 
 want, just like sleep/' Before leaving the stage of life, 
 however, if we cherish good health, it may enable us, 
 as a Mr. Morgan did recently at the Star and Garter, 
 Richmond, to receive on our One hundred-and-seventh 
 birthday, congratulations and wishes for many happy 
 returns of it from our sixty-seven children, grand- 
 children, and great-grandchildren ! 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. In the lan- 
 guage of the late Mr. Binney, “A Christian contracts no 
 bad physical habits, indulges in no debilitating excess ; 
 he is sober, prudent, chaste, hating impure thoughts, 
 frowning on improper conversation and shunning im- 
 modest acts. He is not a drunkard nor a glutton. 
 He sows in his fiesh the seeds of no disease by any 
 sort of luxury or intemperance.” In short, he secures 
 health, by making, in the words of Addison, the pre- 
 servation of life his secondary concern, and the direction 
 of it his principal one, so that, unless duty calls on him 
 to sacrifice this blessing to still higher considerations, 
 the Christian is the most likely of men to live out 
 all his days, and to have a bright old age. 
 
 Where health, too, has been lost by disease, Chris- 
 tianity can change the affliction into a positive boon, 
 by supporting the sufferer with Divine consolations, 
 leading him to the Saviour, and making the claims 
 of eternity to be felt superior to those of time. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PUT MONEY IN THY PUPSE/' 
 
 During the period when lotteries were unhappily 
 allowed to flourish in this country, a gentleman, looking 
 into the window of a lottery-office in St. Paul’s Church- 
 yard, discovered to his joy that his ticket had turned 
 up a 10,000/. prize. Intoxicated with this sudden 
 accession of wealth, he walked round the churchyard, 
 to consider calmly how he should dispose of his fortune. 
 On again, in his circuit, passing the lottery office, he 
 resolved to take another glance at the charming an- 
 nouncement in the window, when, .to his dismay, he 
 saw that a new number had been substituted. On 
 inquiry, he found that a wrong number had at first 
 been posted by mistake, and that after all he was 
 not the holder of the prize. His chagrin was now as 
 great as had been his previous pleasure ; but he ever 
 after maintained that for five minutes he had had the 
 happiness of being in imagination the possessor of 
 10 , 000 /. 
 
 We ourselves were once for a brief period million- 
 naires. Having paid a visit to the Bank of England, 
 and seen its various monetary wonders, we were, as a 
 culminating feat, permitted to hold in our hand, for a 
 
28 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 short season, a small bundle of notes, value in amount 
 one million sterling. For thirty seconds, we were the 
 depositaries of that enormous sum ; but alas ! for the 
 short-lived character of human possessions, at the expiry 
 
 FIVE MIIfUTES OE WEALTH. 
 
 of the brief period named, the bank clerk resumed his 
 treasure, and we descended to our former condition of 
 financial insignificance. 
 
 Put money in thy purse is, it must be admitted, an 
 
PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE: 
 
 29 
 
 advice that common-sense gives to those who are in 
 search of rational happiness. Money, in spite of all 
 that can be said against it, is a powerful instrument 
 of procuring multiplied enjoyments, and, got honestly, 
 invested wisely, and used beneficently, will shed a 
 whole cornucopia of comfort on one's path ; just as, 
 when wrongly acquired, miserably hoarded, or spent 
 foolishly, it will embitter life. Happily, it is not 
 necessary for enjoyment to have a note for a million in 
 our purse, nor, like the proprietor of a silver mine in 
 California, to have an income computed at a thousand 
 a day. Large revenues have generally large anxieties 
 attached to them ; and much happiness can be reaped 
 on a small income, where thrift is practised and persons 
 live within their means. ' 
 
 It is a great thing, too, to know when we have 
 enough, like Macaulay, who, when he had secured a 
 competency, returned from India to pursue his literary 
 career in England, instead of remaining out to acquire 
 a large fortune and a diseased liver. Those individuals, 
 however, are entitled to praise, who, possessing the 
 talent of money-making, continue in business as a 
 means of occupation after their own wants are provided 
 for, and devote their gains to the promotion of the 
 welfare of others. Thus did the late generous Mr. 
 Peabody, and many Americans have acted in the same 
 way. We were once told, too, by a physician who 
 attended him, of an English gentleman, who having 
 fixed the limit beyond which he did not wish to grow 
 rich, and having attained it, used at Christmas to gather 
 round him a circle of friends and meritorious objects, 
 and place under each of their plates a cheque for a 
 portion of his surplus profits for the year. 
 
30 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 It is hardly possible, however, to applaud too strongly 
 the honest efforts at money-saving that have for their 
 object the avoidance of debt. Debt will embitter a 
 palace. What a scene the residence of the Duke of 
 York must have presented, when a visitor could write : 
 ‘'The house is nearly in ruins. We had an immense 
 party. The Duchess wished it to be prolonged, but 
 there were no funds. The distress they are in is 
 inconceivable.’’ Debt, we are told, interrupted the 
 serenity with which Humboldt should have investigated 
 nature ; and he had, at ninety years of age, to ask the 
 King of Prussia to help him from its meshes. Who, 
 however, can read without a pang, the agonies which 
 debt inflicted on the artist Haydon, a man, notwith- 
 standing his sad career, possessed of so many fine 
 qualities ? “ Let any man of feeling,’' he writes, “reflect 
 that on. the loss of a beautiful infant, we were obliged 
 to pawn our winter things to bury her, and that when 
 our dear Mary was in labour, I rushed into the parlour, 
 took down the drawings of my children, and raised two 
 pounds upon them ; also that on the night of my most 
 brilliant success, I took my coat out of pawn, and had 
 the torture of returning it the next day, with the 
 thunder of public applause ringing in my ears.” In the 
 light of such a confession as this, a savings-bank receipt 
 or a life policy seem documents invested with a sort of 
 sacred lustre. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here also. It 
 guards against debt by its precept, “ Owe no man any- 
 thing, but to love another.” It prohibits the acquisition 
 of money by means that it gives torture to reflect on in 
 the retrospect. When money is acquired, it orders it to 
 be laid out generously and unselfishly, while its promise 
 
PUT MONEY IN THY PURSE T 3 1 
 
 remains sure, that the blessing of the Lord maketh 
 rich, and He addeth no sorrow therewith. 
 
 A Christian regulating his acquisitions on the faith 
 of those words, should never have to write, like Mr. 
 Boulton in the last century : '' I can get no sleep, and 
 yet I have been obliged to wear a cheerful face. I am 
 groaning under a load of debt and annuities that would 
 sink me in the grave, if my exertions for my children 
 did not sustain me. . . . Solomon said, that in the 
 increase of knowledge there is increase of sorrow. If 
 he had substituted 'business' for 'knowledge,' he 
 would have been right." A divinely implanted spirit 
 of moderation preserves the Christian from the sorrows 
 that attend undue haste in making money, and leads 
 him to seek to be rich in good works, and not to trust 
 in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth 
 us richly all things to enjoy. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE LADDER OF LIFE. 
 
 A CATERPILLAR was 
 one day noticed to be 
 painfully crawling up a 
 pole which it had mis- 
 taken for a tree. It 
 paused from time to time 
 in its upward course, to 
 feel for the leaves upon 
 which it washed to feed, 
 and then, disappointed in 
 the search for them, again 
 pursued its ascent, only to 
 meet with fresh failure in 
 the object it had in view. 
 The observer of the in- 
 sect’s movements could 
 not help pitying it, and 
 reflecting on the culmin- 
 ating disappointment it must experience, when, on at 
 last reaching the summit of the pole, it would find that 
 all its toil had been in vain. The little incident formed 
 afterwards an illustration in an address to which Sir 
 
THE LADDER OF LIFE. 
 
 33 
 
 Titus Salt of Saltaire, that eminent benefactor of the 
 working classes, listened; and it seemed to him such 
 a true emblem of the soul’s want of rest in the pursuit 
 of earthly objects, that from that hour, it is said, 
 his ambition centred upon unseen, instead of earthl}’’ 
 things. 
 
 The above anecdote may suitably introduce to us 
 the subject of rank, or our right place in life, with its 
 bearings on happiness. 
 
 Society is a ladder with many rounds, having the 
 king at the top and the beggar at the bottom. To 
 climb to a high position in this ladder, is considered 
 by some a great ingredient of happiness. The art of 
 climbing it, too, may be said to form the subject of 
 some of our most interesting biographies : such as that 
 of the Corsican lieutenant of artillery who became 
 Emperor of France; that of Eldon, the son of a New- 
 castle coal-merchant, who became Lord Chancellor ; or 
 that of George Moore, who, from his eminence in the 
 lace trade, was called the Grand Napoleon of Watling 
 Street. Now we cannot condemn, but must, on the 
 contrary, commend, the spirit and the perseverance 
 which lead men to make the best of their powers, so 
 long as they do so fairly and honourably. Mr. Eoscoe, 
 at the opening of the first French revolution, and 
 before its excesses developed themselves, spoke of the 
 day-star of liberty advancing, amidst the applause of 
 Europe, to its proper place in the skies. In human life, 
 too, whether in ordinary or extraordinary cases, there 
 is the same sort of satisfaction felt by society, when 
 a man, by the fair exercise of his talent and right use 
 of opportunity, rises to some elevation of life for which 
 he is qualified. To climb the ladder of rank, however. 
 
34 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 by doubtful methods, is but making an assignation with 
 vanity and vexation of spirit, to meet us when we have 
 got to the summit of it. 
 
 High positions, in truth, generally carry with them 
 anxious responsibility, and if they have the greatest 
 honour, they have the least comfort. Oliver Cromwell 
 spoke the experience of many men elevated to great 
 eminence, when he said to his Parliament : “ I would 
 have been glad to have lived by my own woodside, 
 and to have kept a flock of sheep.” To a similar effect 
 was the confession of a lady who lived in the full 
 splendour of the First Napoleon’s court : ‘‘ I had,” she 
 says, “ a beautiful house ; I had fine diamonds ; every 
 day I might vary my elegant dress; a chosen circle 
 of friends dined at my table ; every theatre was open 
 to me; there was no fUe given in Paris to which I was 
 not invited, and yet an inexplicable cloud hung over 
 me — a secret anxiety as to the future oppressed me.” 
 All these illustrations, however, of the burdens of high 
 place are dwarfed by the tragic end of Alexander II. 
 the Emperor of All the Russias. 
 
 The truth seems to be that the best men who have 
 had high rank, have valued it chiefly for the greater 
 good it enabled them to do. “ My ambition,” said the 
 present Lord Chancellor (Selborne) at an entertainment 
 given to him when he was first elevated to his great 
 office — '' my ambition is not high place ; it is, if it be 
 possible, to do some good in the position to which I 
 am called ; and if I cannot do good in that position, I 
 would rather leave it, and try some other.” 
 
 To pine for admission to a higher circle of society 
 than that to which we have access, merely because it 
 is a fashionable one, is, although a common vanity, a 
 
THE LADDER OF LIFE. 
 
 35 
 
 very contemptible one. Sydney Smith rebuked such 
 a spirit, when, in answer to an inquiry about his family 
 coat-of-arms, made by some vainglorious individual, he 
 replied, '' Oh, the Smiths always signed their letters 
 with their thumbs.” If any physic be wanted for 
 pride in these matters, it may be found in the monitory 
 career of Miss Patterson of Baltimore, the wife, accord- 
 ing to American law, of Jerome Buonaparte, who con- 
 sumed a long life in the chase of high rank, and saw 
 her vain aspirations successively blasted, Napoleon I. 
 refusing to acknowledge her union with his brother, 
 her son making a what to her ambitious eyes seemed 
 a plebeian alliance, and the poor lady consoling her 
 cheerless old age by devotion to avarice. ‘"When I 
 was young,” she said, '' I had everything but money. 
 Now, when I am old, I have nothing but money.” 
 
 The highest place in life, then, which a wise man 
 should desire, is that one best suited to his natural 
 powers, and in which he can be most useful. To gain 
 such a place, even if it be a lowly one, and fill it aright, 
 is to be a member of nature’s peerage, whether or not 
 the patent of our nobility be registered in the Heralds’ 
 College. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It gives its 
 followers a true humility of mind which dries up a false 
 ambition. It gives them, at the same time, that diligent 
 use of every talent which eventually, under the guidance 
 of God, leads them to their right places in life, and 
 makes them fill them in the best manner. If the 
 Christian occupies a lowly place, he has no envy at 
 those who have a higher one ; if his rank be elevated, 
 he humbles himself under the mighty and gracious 
 Hand which has conducted him to it, and carries himself 
 
 D 2 
 
30 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 with condescension and lowliness of mind to all beneath 
 him. Thus he will not be, as was said of Lord Thurlow, 
 in reference to his obsequiousness at court and haughti- 
 ness in other circles, ''a willow at St. James’s, and an 
 oak elsewhere.” 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 HONOUES. 
 
 A STEIKING scene was presented in the House of 
 Lords, one day after the close of the Peninsular War. 
 The Duke of Wellington was introduced, and took his 
 seat for the first time as a peer. He had left England 
 a Baronet, but in the interval between his departure 
 and return, the cornucopia of honours had been 
 emptied upon him. Each successive victory he had 
 won had called forth some new gift from his grateful 
 country, so that now when he entered the Upper House, 
 he produced at one and the same time, as the titles 
 under which he took his seat, the patents of a Baron, a 
 Marquis and a Duke. His last battle brought him 
 from a foreign power the crowning title of Prince of 
 Waterloo. Never before, perhaps, did a mortal hold in 
 his hand and at one time so large a growth of laurel. 
 The Duke realised what to Charles Lamb was only a 
 whimsical dream, when the latter sketched his ascend- 
 ing scale of honours: 1. As plain Mr. C. Lamb; 
 2. C. Lamb, Esq. ; 3. Sir C. Lamb ; 4. Baron Lamb ; 
 5. Viscount Lamb; 6. Earl Lamb; 7. Marquis Lamb; 
 8. Duke Lamb; 9. King Lamb; 10. Emperor Lamb; 
 and then 11. as Pope Innocent. 
 
38 
 
 LIFES PLEASURE GARDEN. > 
 
 So much for titles. Sometimes honours come in a 
 humbler form. You may read in your suburban journal, 
 how Mr. A. was presented with a silver salver for his 
 faithful discharge of the duties of Honorary Treasurer 
 of a dispensary, or how Mr. B., on fulfilling his trust as 
 churchwarden, had a vote of thanks from the vestry 
 inscribed on vellum, and given to him. Sometimes, 
 again, a promising son gladdens his parent’s heart by 
 getting the gold or silver medal for excellence in his 
 class. Thus, honours are of all sizes and degrees ; and 
 the pleasures of those who receive them are probably 
 more equal than might at first be thought. George 
 Hudson, after his fall from his eminence as Railway 
 King, greatly enjoyed the honour of being elected 
 chairman of the Carlton Club smoking-room. Thor- 
 waldsen, too, the eminent Danish sculptor, confessed 
 that none of the honours he received in after-life, 
 surpassed, in the pleasure which they communicated, 
 the gratification he experienced as a boy, when at his 
 school examination the clergyman who presided ad- 
 dressed him as ''Herr” Thorwaldsen, on account of the 
 excellence of a piece of carving he had executed. 
 
 Honours have been called empty things. Humboldt 
 esteemed them so little, that he kept neglected in a 
 drawer, bundles of insignia, some of which even kings 
 had presented to him. Macaulay tells us, that when at^ 
 the time of the Indian Mutiny he received the offer of 
 his peerage, the fate of the poor ladies just massacred 
 at Cawnpore was much more in his thoughts than his 
 coronet. "It has come too late,” said Lord Clyde, 
 when his peerage was bestowed on him ; " there is no 
 one living to whom I care to tell the news.” " As for 
 the satisfaction of the thing,” wrote Mr. Denison, M.P., 
 
HONOURS. 
 
 39 
 
 on his election for Newark ; vanitas vanitatum. I did 
 feel a good deal of pleasure for two days after my first 
 speech. Now it has all come down to a dead level.” 
 Still, honours have their place among the constituents 
 of happiness. If they puff up an individual, they 
 justly make him the butt of the satirist ; but when won 
 deservedly, they are a source of just satisfaction to the 
 recipient; stimulating him to further well-doing, and 
 increasing his. influence for usefulness to others ; the 
 latter circumstance being their chief recommendation, 
 perhaps, to a benevolent mind. 
 
 To conclude, we may, even when in the lowest walks 
 of life, wear on our breast the cheap decorations of a 
 true nobility. The jewel of temperance may blaze 
 upon us; the star of truth may sparkle on our breasts; 
 and the crown of integrity may shine on us, as it did or. 
 the old private soldier, to whose custody Frederick the 
 Great entrusted the last key of his treasure vaults. 
 Even a youth may have his honours. I would stand 
 with my hat in my hand before Spencer Thornton,” 
 said the great Dr. Arnold, in whose school he had been 
 an exemplary pupil. Norman McLeod, when preaching 
 to a congregation of the poorest class in Glasgow, well 
 told them that ''character” was the great glory of 
 Prince Albert, about whom he had been speaking to 
 them, and that this was a possession as much within 
 the reach of the lowest as of the highest man in the 
 realm. 
 
 Christianity will do the best for us here. The Chris- 
 tian has the promise of God : " Them that honour Me, 
 I will honour.” When needful, he will receive his fair 
 share of external honours. Wilberforce had a public 
 funeral; Lord Barham was made High Admiral of 
 
40 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 England ; Lord Gambler, when undeservedly brought to 
 a court-martial for the conduct of his fleet, was not 
 only acquitted, but declared to be most honouraUy 
 acquitted; Faraday was loaded with titles by learned 
 societies. In private life true godliness will always 
 command respect in the long run. An ofScer, when 
 asked by the Prince Regent what favour he could show 
 him, asked for the honour of his Royal Highness 
 walking arm in arm with him in a public promenade. 
 The Christian, too, whatever be the measure of earthly 
 honour he obtains, knows that he has that which dwarfs 
 all human distinctions — the privilege of walking humbly 
 with '' the King of kingsJ' 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE BUBBLE EEPUTATION. 
 
 The ancients com- 
 pared life to a garden, 
 at whose entrance 
 stood a figure called 
 '' Madame Bubble,’’ 
 because she held in 
 her hand a number 
 of glittering and 
 iridescent bubbles, 
 which she offered 
 for the acceptance 
 of all who passed 
 by. Amongst the 
 most attractive of 
 these bubbles was 
 one called “fame,” or ''reputation,” very pleasing to the 
 recipient, from the tickling of his vanity or love of praise 
 which it produced, but often leading only to empty and 
 unsatisfactory results. When Charles Dickens visited 
 America for the first time, he must almost have been of 
 the ancient philosophers’ opinion, as to the worthlessness 
 of this commodity of reputation, for we find him thus 
 
42 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 writing of the inconveniences to which it subjected 
 him. I can do nothing/' he says, “ that I want to do ; 
 go nowhere that I want to go, and see nothing that I 
 want to see. If I turn into a street, I am followed by 
 a multitude. If I stay at home, the house with callers 
 becomes like a fair. If I visit a public institution, the 
 directors waylay me in the yard, and address me in a 
 long speech. I go to a party in the evening, and am so 
 enclosed and hemmed in by people, that I am exhausted 
 for want of air. I dine out, and have to talk of every- 
 thing to everybody. I go to church for quiet, and there 
 is a violent rush to the neighbouring pew. I sit on, 
 and the clergyman preaches to me. I take a seat in 
 the railway car, and the very conductor will not leave 
 me alone. I get out qt a station, and can't drink a 
 cup of water without having a hundred people looking 
 down my throat, when I open my mouth to swallow. 
 Then by every post letters arrive all about nothing, 
 demanding an immediate answer. I have no rest or 
 peace, and live in a perpetual worry." 
 
 Reputation, however, deservedly earned and well 
 used, is more than a bubble. The eminent soldier, the 
 eminent lawyer, the eminent statesman, the eminent 
 physician, and even the eminent tradesman and eminent 
 workman, have all their capabilities of advancement in 
 their respective professions or callings, augmented by 
 reputation. Even direct influence for good may be 
 increased by the possession of it. Dr. Fawcett's repu- 
 tation, as the author of an essay on Anger, gave him an 
 influence with George III., which enabled him to pro- 
 cure from that monarch the pardon of a young man 
 condemned to be hanged for forgery. Nor is reputation 
 after death such a vain thing as it at first sight appears 
 
THE BUBBLE REPUTATION. 
 
 43 
 
 to be. Men who have achieved excellence in any 
 walk of life, when their names live after them, stir np 
 posterity to worthy achievements. Lord Shaftesbury, in 
 a high circle, and John Pounds, the cobbler and founder 
 of ragged schools, in a low one, have each a reputa- 
 tion connected with their respective names, which will 
 minister to perpetual usefulness. 
 
 Still, reputation must not be retained at the expense 
 of principle. More than a century ago. Lord Mansfield, 
 when deciding a case against the Crown, and in which 
 the King was greatly interested, thus grandly expressed 
 himself : I wish^^^e-saidf^ popularity ; but it is that 
 
 popularity which follows, and not that which is run 
 after. It is that popularity which sooner or later never 
 fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble 
 means. I will not do that which my conscience tells 
 me is wrong, to gain the huzzas of thousands. I will 
 not avoid doing right, though it should draw on me all 
 that falsehood or malice can invent.’’ . 
 
 If nature, again, has denied us shining qualities or 
 such as bring us a great name, we may have, at least 
 in a quieter and smaller circle, a name loved and 
 respected for its worth, and leaving pleasing associ- 
 ations behind it. Thomas Campbell the poet was 
 asked at some village in Scotland whether he was '' the 
 great Mr. Campbell,” but found that the person for 
 whom that honourable designation was intended was 
 not himself, but a useful missionary of the same name, 
 quite unknown to poetic fame. He never told a lie,” 
 was the epitaph which an African mother spoke for her 
 dead child, as Mungo Park met her following his corpse, 
 after he had been killed by the Moors. The father of 
 George Fox (one of the founders of the Society of 
 
44 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 Friends), a simple weaver, was called, on account of his 
 integrity, ''Righteous Christie/’ "Nothing,” says Mr. 
 Carlyle, summing up the character of his deceased 
 father, a humble but godly stonemason, " nothing that 
 he undertook but he did it as a true man. I look on 
 the houses he built with a sort of proud interest. They 
 stand firm and sound to the heart all over. No one 
 can say. Here was the finger of a hollow eye-servant.” 
 In conclusion, it will not be a small reputation for any 
 of us to have gained, if when the clods rattle over 
 our coffin, the bystanders, as they wipe away a tear 
 from the eye, can repeat over us the words which Sir 
 Henry Lawrence, the defender of Lucknow, wished 
 put upon his tomb, "Here lies one who tried to do 
 his duty.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It deadens 
 vanity, and commands us rather to be anxious to do the 
 right thing than to look for fame to |follow it ; but it 
 assures us that if we seek the approbation of God first, 
 and value human reputation merely as a means of 
 increased influence for good, the share of the latter that 
 is best for us, will surely in the long run follow us and 
 stir up others to well-doing. Such a reputation may 
 extend to our children’s children. 
 
 Beautifully did the late Bishop Wilberforce express 
 himself, in reference to the reputation which he re- 
 ceived from his connection with his illustrious Christian 
 parent. " I deem it,” he said, " my greatest boast to 
 be sprung from one who, gifted with the vastest 
 opportunities, with the friendship, the closest friend- 
 ship, of England’s greatest minister, the highest powers, 
 the most commanding social position, used them all for 
 no personal aggrandisement, and died a poor commoner. 
 
THE BUBBLE REPUTATION. 
 
 45 
 
 a poorer man than when he entered public life, seeing 
 every one of his cotemporaries raised to wealth and 
 hereditary honours, leaving to his children no high 
 rank or dignity, but bequeathing to them the perilous 
 inheritance of a name which the Christian world 
 venerates.” 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A THING OF POWER. 
 
 What an impressive agency of modern times is the 
 steam engine 1 Now we meet it on the mountain side 
 or in the still valley, pumping up the subterranean 
 stream or the deep-lying ore. Now we see it on the 
 deep, forcing the vessel against wind and tide, or on the 
 rail, propelling the locomotive with the swiftness of the 
 wind. In the manufactory, again, we see it ‘Hearing 
 steel into ribands,’’ or pulling out a thread fine as a 
 gossamer, and then, as if to show its humility, taking its 
 place in a grocer’s window, and meekly grinding a 
 pound of coffee. Viewed in all its aspects, it is indeed 
 an emblem oi power. 
 
 Power — that is the next thing which has been 
 prized by some as an ingredient of happiness. What 
 a price has been paid to obtain it, and what oceans of 
 blood have been shed to preserve it 1 “ Tyrant, you 
 
 might drink from your eminence without stooping, were 
 this place filled with the blood you have caused to 
 flow,” was the inscription, it is said, once found 
 attached to the base of the statue of Napoleon. A 
 thing of power 1 It must be acknowledged that there 
 is something exciting to the imagination in the sight 
 
A THING OF POWER. 
 
 47 
 
 of men who have possessed great power. When 
 Nicholas I. visited this country some forty years ago, 
 all gazed with interest on the Autocrat of Russia, on 
 whose lips the mandate for peace or war hung. And 
 
 POIIfTIJSfGr A MORAL. 
 
 yet the poorest peasant is in his way, too, a thing of 
 power. The happiness of his wife and his child, his 
 dog and his cat, are bound up in his hand. 
 
48 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 Influence, either direct or unconscious, is a subtler 
 and never-ending kind of power, of which all have a 
 share-; even a boy possesses it. Charles Fox, when a 
 youth, was allowed by his father to take a bag of gold 
 to the gaming-table, and on returning to Eton cor- 
 rupted by Continental vices, influenced, it is said, for 
 evil that school for many a year after he left it. Very 
 different was the influence of the boy who on going to 
 the ragged school had his face washed. This act of 
 cleanliness led to the boy’s father and mother washing 
 their faces; the astonished next-door neighbours then 
 washed theirs, till the influence of the boy’s example 
 proved contagious to the whole street, and eventually 
 led them to the Mission Hall, and the washing of the 
 heart and life, as there taught. No man can calculate 
 where the influence of his good or evil actions 
 terminates. In the language of Tennyson : 
 
 “ Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
 
 And grow for ever and ever.” 
 
 This influence, too, may be unconscious. Mr. Lockhart 
 tells us that when Sir Walter Scott was at work in his 
 study, his diligence, as seen from the window of a room 
 where some young men were dining, smote one of them 
 with a feeling of remorse at his own idleness. 
 
 To selfish minds power and influence are a source of 
 enjoyment, from the gratification they yield to pride 
 and self-importance ; making unfeeling despots, tyran- 
 nical commanders, brow-beating judges, hard employers, 
 savage schoolmasters, and churlish heads of families. 
 When power and influence, however, are regulated by 
 love, and exercised firmly but gently, they make such 
 characters as the late Prince Consort or Titus Salt of 
 
A THING OF POWER, 
 
 49 
 
 Saltaire : the former seeming to count days lost that 
 did not confer good on others ; the latter ruling 
 beneficently thousands of grateful working men. Such 
 was the influence, indeed, of an authority used in 
 kindness, and not under the influence of the blind 
 propensities, by General Macquarrie over the most 
 abandoned of convicts in Norfolk Island, that when 
 he left that place, his departure was mourned by the 
 prisoners, and strips of his black silk handkerchief 
 were carefully preserved by them as relics. A similar 
 beneficent influence appears to have been exercised by 
 Sir James Brooke over the degraded Dyaks of Borneo. 
 
 There is one form of power committed to man, and 
 often sorely abused, that over the lower creation. When 
 properly used, however, it makes a not insignificant 
 addition to happiness, from the friendship of animals 
 which it draws back in return. The vicious horse 
 Cruiser was tamed through kindness by Mr. Rarey, 
 and followed him like a dog. Sydney Smith’s horses 
 came running to him when he entered the field, and 
 his favourite young donkey, when he saw him or any 
 member of his family, would set off with ears down and 
 tail erect, in full bray to meet them. When Sir .Walter 
 Scott visited his daughter, Mrs. Lockhart, the two 
 donkeys which she kept' to draw her pony-chaise would 
 run to the park enclosure to ' be stroked by him, and 
 ''to have a crack with the laird.’’ The Honourable 
 Miss Eden, the sister of Lord Auckland, Governor- 
 general of India, has archly told us of their friendship 
 with a flying squirrel, which would sit on her brother’s 
 shoulder and apparently whisper in his ear. George,” 
 she wrote, says he is only biting his ear ; but I am 
 convinced he has more to do with public affairs than 
 
50 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 is generally supposed/’ Mortimer Collins, a pleasing 
 writer of lively verse, has told us of his attachment to a 
 young robin, which welcomed him the first thing in the 
 
 SYDJiJiY smith’s DOlfKJiY. 
 
 morning, and would perch on bis knee and cheer him 
 with his song. The late Mr. Fox of Cornwall, in his 
 
A THING OF POWER. 
 
 51 
 
 beautiful grounds with their thousands of rose-trees, 
 lived among coveys of birds, which were like personal 
 friends; so did Mr. Waterton, on his estate in York- 
 shire, where no report of a gun was ever heard, and 
 where all told the tale of the willingness of the lower 
 creation to enter into friendship with man, if he would 
 but exercise his power over them with gentleness. 
 
 Christianity does the best for man here. It reminds 
 us that we have a Master in heaven, and orders us to 
 take Him as an example, of using authority in a kindly 
 spirit, and of ruling all men entrusted to us in love. 
 The tenderness it inspires for the dumb creation is well 
 represented in the saying of the costermonger, that 
 even his donkey must surely know that he had become 
 a Christian, from his having ceased to beat it in the 
 way he did before he was converted. 
 
 Influence, too, is seen by a Christian to be a very 
 solemn thing, having consciously or unconsciously never- 
 ending effects on all around him. This consideration 
 stirs him up, therefore, to make his influence operate in 
 the best manner. The Rev. James Sherman, the suc- 
 cessor of Rowland Hill, remembered through life a 
 prayer which he heard from a fellow-student, though 
 the utterer of it was unaware that his devotions were 
 overheard, in consequence of the wind having blown 
 open the door of his apartment. The impression,'’ 
 Mr. Sherman said in after-life, which that prayer 
 produced of the privilege and power of communion 
 with God has never left me.” 
 
 E 2 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 GOODWILL TOWAKDS MEN. 
 
 Sometimes in a picturesque part of the country we 
 meet with remains of hermitages, where in the olden 
 time men retired from the strifes and vanities of life, 
 to cultivate, as they thought, more easily communion 
 with an unseen world. In looking at such places, the 
 man fevered with the worries of business, the merchant 
 sick ^of telegrams and telephonic messages, as he sees 
 the cool solitary chamber where the anchorite’s moss 
 couch was spread, and the little fountain from which 
 his thirst was quenched, and hears, on a warm summer’s 
 morning, the chorus of birds which alone breaks the 
 silence, is apt to say, ‘'Not such a bad life, after all, 
 Mr. Hermit.” But this would be a mistake. Enoch 
 Arden, in his lonely island home, though he had his 
 “mighty nuts,” his gorgeous vegetation, his birds of 
 tropical plumage, and skies lighted up with sunsets 
 unknown to colder climes, sighed for the fellowship of 
 men. And he was right. 
 
 Society is necessary to a healthy form of happiness. 
 It is the great sphere for the development of man’s 
 intellect. It is something to be able to contribute even 
 a pebble of honest labour to the great structure of 
 
GOODWILL TO WALDS MEN, 
 
 53 
 
 social progress, and, if we cannot invent a steam engine, 
 to manufacture an honest pin. Chalk on my coffin 
 when I die,'’ said a workman to us, '' that I wished to 
 leave the world better than when I found it.” Then, 
 social life is the school of affection. A little child 
 threw away her doll, because after having repeatedly 
 
 said that she loved it, it would not reply that it loved 
 her again. Old Charles Simeon of Cambridge, bachelor 
 though he was, was right when he said that he would 
 not listen to reports of people’s faults, because he was 
 determined no more to be robbed of his love than of his 
 money. To carry this love into active operation in the 
 
54 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 various walks of practical benevolence, gives a sweet 
 gratification unknown to men of selfish mould. Sister 
 Dora tending the sick at home, Florence Nightingale 
 nursing the soldiers abroad, Dr. Andrew Reed forming 
 hospitals and schools. Sir William Brown giving a free 
 library to Liverpool, Mr. Crossley, as he felt the 
 invigorating effect of fresh air, determining that the 
 poor should have it also, and giving Bradford a park, 
 George Moore relieving by colossal efforts starving 
 multitudes after the siege of Paris, Sir Hugh Mason 
 giving unostentatiously some half a million of money to 
 orphans, Mr. Gurney opening free fountains where man 
 and beast might quench their thirst, and Thomas 
 Carlyle leaving the estate of Craigenputtock for bur- 
 saries, or foundations, to poor students, a thread of 
 pure water from the Scottish rocks,” as he expresses it 
 — all these are specimens of kindness that draw after 
 them pleasures of the purest order. Those, too, who in 
 a quieter way minister to and soothe the sorrows of 
 others by little acts of benevolence, receive their 
 reward, finding their own comforts enhanced by contact 
 with misery which they relieve. 
 
 “ The den they enter glows a shrine ; 
 
 The grimy sash an oriel burns ; 
 
 Their cup of water turns to wine ; 
 
 Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.” 
 
 Such was the experience of Catherine Tait, the noble 
 wife of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, who, chas- 
 tened by deep suffering, utilised high position and large 
 resources, by devoting them liberally to the service of 
 the poor, her beautiful garden being chiefly prized as 
 the means of sending them vegetable, fruit and flower. 
 
 “ The maid/’ says her biographer, who was her 
 
GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN. 
 
 55 
 
 personal attendant for upwards of fifteen years, has 
 said since her death, that she could not help remon- 
 strating with her sometimes, for never thinking of 
 herself. ... It seemed as if it would have made her 
 positively unhappy, that God should have bestowed on 
 her so many common worldly blessings, unless she had 
 been able to share them with those who were brought 
 within her influence.’’ Enjoying the command and 
 distribution of large revenues, she never grudged that 
 bestowed on others, but was most abstemious in all 
 that concerned herself. Selfishness, on the other hand, 
 defeats itself in the long run. Madame Remusat, after 
 close examination of Napoleon, whom for many years 
 she constantly met, doubted whether if his anatomical 
 organisation had been studied, he would not have been 
 found to have been born without a heart — but what 
 was the end of a career in which selfishness seemed 
 reduced to a science ? As he chafed, like another 
 Prometheus, while the vulture of - remorse gnawed him 
 on the rock of St. Helena, he might have applied to 
 himself the poet’s lines : 
 
 ‘‘ My days are in their yellow leaf, 
 
 The flowers and fruit of love are gone ; 
 
 The worm, the canker and the grief, 
 
 Are mine alone.” 
 
 Nor must we, in conclusion, omit a word in favour of 
 courtesy, that cheap and easy form of goodwill. The 
 late Mr. Roebuck, accustomed perhaps to rough man- 
 ners among the operatives of Sheffield, longed that 
 the lower orders might be trained to act as ladies and 
 gentlemen in their intercourse with each other. Miss 
 Bird, the lady traveller, sighs at the contrast between 
 Japanese and other forms of politeness, the very boys in 
 
56 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 Japan bowing to each other at the close of their sports. 
 Baron Hiibner, that high-bred Viennese tourist, tells 
 ns of a haughty young lady in a New York omnibus, 
 having to be called back as she stepped out of it, and be 
 told she had forgotten something, the thing forgotten 
 being to thank an old gentleman who had given up to 
 her his seat. Courtesy refines those who give and 
 those who receive it, while it can tell on advancement 
 in life in the present day, much as it did in the times of 
 Rstleigh, gaining court favour by throwing down his 
 mantle before Queen Elizabeth in her muddy path. 
 An old tradesman, in his memoirs, tells us that at some 
 place of public entertainment, he paid the trilling sum 
 that was necessary for the admission of a lady and 
 gentleman who had lost their purse, and was rewarded 
 by their calling at his establishment next day, and 
 purchasing a service of plate. ''Off with your hat,’’ 
 says Sydney Smith, in the tract which he wrote for his 
 country parishioners. " Off with your hat when you 
 meet a gentleman ! what does it cost ? Gentlemen 
 notice these things, are offended if the civility is not 
 paid, and pleased if it is, and what harm does it do to 
 you ? When I first came to this parish. Squire 
 Tempest wanted a postilion. John Barton was a good 
 civil fellow; and in thinking over the names in the 
 village, the squire thought of Barton, remembered his 
 constant civility, sent for one of his sons, made him 
 postilion, then coachman, then bailiff, and he now 
 holds a farm under the squire of 500Z. per annum. 
 Such things are constantly occurring.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. Its whole 
 character is that of practical goodwill to the children 
 of men, making its presence known by a thousand acts 
 
GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN. 
 
 57 
 
 of kindness to body and soul, and by the extirpation 
 of selfishness in its followers. “Jesus of Nazareth, who 
 went about doing good,’’ is the pattern it holds up to 
 us. “ Be courteous,” “ Honour all men,” are also two 
 of its clear commands. Of a late Bishop of Norwich, 
 it is mentioned that he illustrated these truths, by 
 returning the salutation of the poorest person who 
 passed him. The saintly Fletcher of Madeley was also 
 an eminent illustration both of Christian benevolence 
 and Christian courtesy. “ His love,” says a friend, who 
 knew him well, “ was larger than his largest professions, 
 and appeared in a vast variety of forms, in conde- 
 scension, in compassion, in hospitality, in forbearance, 
 in kindness, and in liberality.” When he heard that 
 some parishioner was hurt or likely to die, no consider- 
 ation of the darkness or coldness of the winter night 
 would prevent him from at once attending to a sum- 
 mons to visit him. “His courtesy, too,” said John 
 Wesley, “ was pure and genuine, and sweetly constrained 
 him to behave to every one (particularly to inferiors) in 
 a manner not to be described, with an inexpressible 
 mixture of humility, love, and respect.” This directed 
 his words, the tone of his voice, his looks, his whole 
 attitude, his every motion. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A FAITHFUL FEIEND. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN attached to the suite of the King 
 of Greece had a dog of which he was very fond. On 
 voyaging in a steamer one day, the animal, who was 
 with him, fell overboard. The captain, on being asked 
 to stop the vessel, declined to do so, being under a 
 penalty to complete the voyage by a certain time, and 
 not at liberty to arrest its progress for any casualty 
 short of that of a man overboard. ‘"You will stop 
 then for me, of course,’’ said the gentleman, and at once 
 plunged into the sea. A boat was immediately lowered, 
 and the dog and its adventurous owner were both rescued. 
 We presume the sea was tolerably smooth, and the 
 heroic gentleman a good swimmer, as otherwise the risk- 
 ing of human life under such circumstances was not justi- 
 fiable. Doubtless, however^ the poor dog was not troubled 
 with these reasonings^ but recognized in its master, as 
 it smothered him with caresses, a faithful friend. 
 
 A FAITHFUL FEIEND; this is another ingredient in 
 happiness. The genuine article is, however, if report 
 speaks true, a difficult thing to be found, for many so- 
 called friends are like London omnibuses, hailing you 
 in fine weather and shunning you when it rains. Old 
 
A FAITHFUL FRIEND. 
 
 59 
 
 Humphrey said that although his acquaintances would 
 fill a church, his real friends could be packed into a 
 pulpit. An eccentric old gentleman, too, according to 
 a German story, was so sceptical on the subject of true 
 
 A FAITHFUL FfilEHD. 
 
 friendship, that he left a legacy to the first of his so-called 
 friends who should shed a tear after hearing his will read. 
 But, notwithstanding this and similar sayings, the world 
 is in this respect not so bad as it is called. As artillery 
 in battle draws down artillery, so friendliness generally 
 draws friendliness back. Sir Walter Scott found that 
 
6o 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 his neighbours so esteemed him, that when they were 
 planting their grounds near his house, they consulted 
 him as to the way of doing it that would give his eye 
 most pleasure. This conduct was a suitable return for 
 Sir Walter’s habitual friendliness; just as the inhibition 
 in Chancery which was served on the eccentric gentle- 
 man in Chelsea who, a few years ago, kept snakes in 
 his garden, to the terror of his neighbours, was the 
 natural result of his self-willed procedure. No ! '‘friendly 
 is who friendly does ; ’’ and he who acts on this rule will 
 not want friends to sympathize with him in sorrow, and 
 hold sw^eet converse with him in life’s brighter hours. 
 
 Though the days of Damon and Pythias be over, yet 
 even nowadays, for a friend another friend will sometimes 
 be found ready to brave the fear of dying. We knew a 
 gentleman who left his own family to nurse a friend 
 during a dangerous attack of typhus fever. Friendship, 
 too, can still animate friends to actions delicate and 
 high-minded. Sydney Smith tells us of a gentleman, 
 alive in his time, who having been desired in a very 
 casual manner, by a friend, to purchase in the days of 
 lotteries — now happily gone by — a ticket for 20,000/., 
 when he should happen to buy one for himself, dis- 
 tinguished, after he had made the double purchase, 
 his friend’s ticket by a mark known only to himself. 
 The ticket thus marked turned out a 20,000/. prize, 
 and the enormous sum was handed over to his friend, 
 the loser cheerfully accepting his blank, and not con- 
 sidering that a loss which a friend had gained. It is 
 only to be hoped that the winner profited in the end 
 by this friendly action, as success in lotteries so often 
 sowed the seeds of gambling, that an Act of Parliament 
 had eventually to suppress them. 
 
A FAITHFUL FRIEND, 
 
 6i 
 
 True friends, moreover, should, when found, be, in 
 the language of Shakespeare, ‘'grappled to the soul 
 with hooks of steel,’’ in the shape of thoughtful atten- 
 tions. One of these hooks is the letter duly despatched 
 to the absent one. A well-known print has shown the 
 joy experienced by a settler in Australia on his receiving 
 a letter from friends in England ; and the Honourable 
 Miss Eden, herself one of the most charming of corre- 
 spondents, has thus shown how much pleasure she had 
 in India, on hearing from distant absentees. “ I never 
 shall forget,” she says, “my absolute ecstasy on the 
 arrival of what they call in their lingo, the Dawk (or 
 despatch) boat, and when ten fat letters came out of 
 the packet for me. I locked my cabin door, plumped 
 myself down on the bed, and absolutely wallowed in my 
 letters.” By attentions of this and a kindred character 
 the chain of friendship is kept bright. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It leads us to 
 form friendships with those of a virtuous character, and 
 gives the command, “ He that hath friends' must show 
 himself friendly,” a command which will draw in its 
 train not only the kindly letter, but every act of true 
 esteem. It introduces us also to the Saviour of the 
 world, calling those who love Him His “ friends,” bearing 
 their burdens, enhancing their joys, soothing their 
 sorrows, satisfying their wants, and after death con- 
 tinuing through eternity the friendship begun on 
 earth. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A PROPER MATE. 
 
 When we come to marriage as an element of happi- 
 ness, we arrive at what some consider as the proper 
 object of life’s journey. '' Married and not happy ! ” an 
 American lady said to a complaining wedded sister. 
 
 Impossible ; coach stops there ; does not go any 
 further.” 
 
 In looking at the window of a jeweller, the reader 
 may have seen a figure of Cupid with a bunch of 
 wedding-rings, and as he looked, he may have specu- 
 lated on the future lot of those who were to wear them. 
 Were the loving bonds they typified to be dissolved 
 prematurely by death, broken in a court of law, or were 
 they to issue in a golden wedding, after fifty years of a 
 happy life ? The answer is given to such an enquiry in 
 the following story. 
 
 A lady, on the eve of, her wedding day, had a curious 
 dream. She saw on a table some bunches of wedding- 
 rings. Various persons made their selections from 
 these bunches. One bunch represented rings taken by 
 those who married from thoughtfulness ; another, rings 
 selected by those who married from pride; a third, 
 
A PROPER MATE. 
 
 63 
 
 rings by those who married for money ; a fourth, rings 
 picked out by those who married from principle and 
 true affection. Then the figure of Time appeared on 
 the scene : as he touched one bunch of rings they were 
 found only to be copper. Another bunch changed into 
 curling vipers ; and it was only the rings which had been 
 selected from esteem and affection that stood the test, 
 and proved to be pure gold. 
 
 At a wedding at which we were present, when the 
 health of the bride and bridegroom was proposed, and 
 they were about to start on the hymeneal tour, the 
 young couple were compared by a speaker to persons 
 embarking in a shallop with gay streamers, impatient to 
 be liberated from its moorings and sail onwards on the 
 mystical voyage of life. Examine carefully,’’ so spoke 
 in effect our friend, '‘examine carefully the company 
 you are going to take with you in your boat. Here 
 comes Beauty ; a place for her smiling face by all 
 means. A place for Love ? Yes, and one of the best. 
 Another and a good one for Health. Make room, too, 
 for Thrift and Prudence. Let Culture, also, that lady 
 with the stately step, be admitted if she wish. Above 
 all, keep a good place for Sweet Temper, and the best 
 in the boat for Piety and Principle. That haughty 
 dame, Self-will, with the last word in her mouth, we 
 cannot admit, on any consideration. We do not object 
 to Dame Money. Her parcel is not a large one, but it 
 can be added to on the voyage. Nor will we exclude 
 these two good-natured animals Bear and Forbear. 
 With these companions in the boat, and God’s blessing 
 and His sacred word to direct you, we do not doubt that 
 your voyage will be a pleasant one.” We cordially 
 endorse our friend’s words, and recommend them as our 
 
64 
 
 LIFE>S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 advice to those about to marry/’ instead of the well- 
 known monosyllabic counsel, '' Don’t.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. With Christ 
 in the boat, all is sure to go well. He calls on the 
 husband to love his wife as he loves himself; and as 
 Christ loved the Church, laying down his life for her if 
 needful. To the wife He enjoins that obedience which 
 is the fruit of true affection, and cuts the root of all 
 bitterness and dissension. A beautiful instance of a 
 holy, loving Christian union, is presented in the life of 
 Augustus Hare and his amiable wife, whose parting 
 scene, after a long illness, is thus touchingly described 
 in the well-known volume. Memorials of a Quiet Life, 
 After Mr. Burgess was gone,” says Mrs. Hare, speaking 
 of her husband, ''he said, 'There is only one thing left 
 now, that is, to take leave of you. When shall it be ? ’ 
 Fearful every hour might be his last, I said, 'It had 
 better be now.’ ' Then shut the door, and give me the 
 orangeade, that I may have strength for it.’ Having 
 drunk it, he raised himself up with astonishing strength 
 and embracing me said, ‘ I must press you once more to 
 my heart. You have been the dearest, tenderest, the 
 most affectionate of wives.’ Then he prayed that I 
 might be strengthened and comforted.” " The truest of 
 wives,” he added some time after. And thus he passed 
 away, leaving his memory a precious legacy to the 
 survivor. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL NEST. 
 
 ‘'The very house was faery: 
 
 In lawny ease, down by a garden and its fountains, 
 
 In the ken of mild blue mountains, 
 
 Kose, as if exempt from death. 
 
 Its many-centuried, household breath. 
 
 Here a door opening breathed of bowers ; 
 
 Of ladies who lived lives of flowers. 
 
 The walls were books, and the sweet witch, 
 
 Painting, had there the room made rich, 
 
 With knights, and dames, and loving eyes, 
 
 Of heaven-gone kindred, sweet and wise.” 
 
 In these beautiful lines, Leigh Hunt has described 
 another ingredient of happiness, a fair home with fair 
 surroundings. Such a dwelling-house is indeed no 
 small boon, whether it be a peasant’s white-washed 
 cottage, clustering with honeysuckle, an artisan s dwell- 
 ing, neat without and comfortable within, a middle-class 
 home in some tasteful modification of the Queen Anne 
 style, with quaint porch, and a little garden before it, 
 over whose rails the traveller may lean and say : Oh 
 
 that for me some home like this would smile ; ” or some, 
 lordly ancestral pile, nestling in its park, with its 
 venerable oaks, the growth of centuries. It is indeed, 
 we repeat, no small boon to have a fair home refining 
 
66 
 
 LIFE'S FEE A SC/EE GARDEN. 
 
 the eye, and gratifying innocently a love for the beau- 
 tiful. Our architects have much in their power to 
 adorn life with their art, and they should dread the 
 
 LADIES WHO LIVED LIVES OF FLOWERS.” 
 
 epitapli inscribed on one of their fraternity, who lacked 
 good taste in his structures, 
 
 “ Lie heavy on him, earth ; for he 
 Living, laid many a heavy load on thee.” 
 
A BEAUTIFUL NEST. 
 
 67 
 
 Nor may we undervalue the upholsterer’s art in 
 contributing to the attractions of a fair home. Some- 
 times, it is true, it has erred in luxury and over- 
 ^oro*eousness ; sometimes it has ministered to pride and 
 extravagance ; sometimes it has soothed vice, to make 
 it forget its deviation from virtue. John Evelyn, in 
 Charles the Second’s reign, visited the Duchess of 
 Portsmouth’s apartments, and found the royal mistress 
 rewarded for her evil doing with a home filled with 
 splendid furniture, French tapestry, fine paintings and 
 plate of massive silver. Still, the upholsterer’s and 
 the decorator’s art, though occasionally abused, can, and 
 that without necessarily being expensive, so furnish a 
 home in modest and sweet taste, that it may become a 
 bath of serene pleasure to the mind, producing cheerful 
 effects, akin to those which the beauty of external 
 nature supplies. 
 
 Nor may we forget our obligations to the gardener’s 
 art, brightening as it does the face of nature, and 
 causing the floral loveliness of all climes to glow in the 
 rich man’s garden or conservatory, or blossom in their 
 measure in the poor man’s floAver-pot. Thanks to the 
 peace that has so long blessed our country, there are in 
 it many beautiful specimens of horticultural skill. It 
 was our good fortune,” says a writer, speaking of a visit 
 to a garden filled with American plants, ''to behold 
 this extraordinary shrubbery at the season of its greatest 
 beauty. Its winding paths led us through groves of the 
 loftiest rhododendrons, whose deep pink flowers shed an 
 universal glow oA^er an extensive declivity; here and 
 there the beautiful magnolia displayed the exquisite 
 whiteness of its large blossoms ; while clusters of 
 azaleas mingled with these loftier exotics, in the richest 
 
68 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 harmony of colour and fragrance. The Carolina rose 
 profusely studded the walks with its gorgeous blossoms ; 
 the all-spice of the same region shed its exquisite 
 perfume, and the arbutus luxuriated in groups as lofty 
 and branching as the Portugal laurel.’’ Scarcely less 
 wonderful are the triumphs of the gardener’s art in the 
 interior of the dwelling. ''The visitor,” says another 
 writer, speaking of a nobleman’s mansion, " was shown 
 into a handsomely furnished sitting-room, one wall of 
 which was formed of a single pane of glass, so clear and 
 spacious that unless he were warned of its existence, he 
 would be likely to walk through it. On the other side 
 of this glass wall, the rarest plants and flowers were 
 ranged round a central fountain, by the side of which, 
 and reflected in the water, was placed the original in 
 purest marble of Bayley’s celebrated statue of Eve 
 bending over the flood.” These, of course, are triumphs 
 of skid reserved for wealth, but, through the gardening 
 art, the cottager, too, may have his plot beaming with 
 beautiful flowers, and the artisan, through his Liliputian 
 window garden, may be transported in imagination to 
 scenes far away from the smoky town. 
 
 A beautiful home — and we should add a comfortable, 
 and, above all, a healthy home — is, it is clear, no small 
 ingredient of a pure enjoyment of life. It needs no 
 argument, it has been well said, to prove that if one’s 
 abode be subject to smoky chimneys, damp walls, 
 neighbouring bogs, incurable draughts, rattling win- 
 dows, unfolding doors, and, it may be added, gloomy 
 furniture and sad-coloured paper, the result upon the 
 temper and views of the man thus affected will not be 
 a pleasing one. 
 
 The late Mr. Dennison, M.P., in order to assist in 
 
A BEAUTIFUL NEST. 
 
 69 
 
 elevating the working-classes of London, went down to 
 the East-end to reside among their squalid habitations, 
 and thus records his experience : '' My mind,” he says, 
 “ is getting blunted by the ugliness and monotony of 
 
 Jl beautiful jtest. 
 
 the place. I can imagine the awful effect upon a 
 human mind of never seeing anything but the vilest of 
 men and men s works.” 
 
 On the other hand, it is not difficult to realize how 
 much a well-known modern writer must have had his 
 
70 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 natural cheerfulness promoted by writing as he did, 
 under surroundiugs so totally different from those of Mr. 
 Dennison : I have put/’ says the writer in question, 
 
 '' five mirrors in the chalet where I write, and they 
 reflect, and reflect in all kinds of ways, the leaves that 
 are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of 
 corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up among 
 the branches of the trees, and the birds and butterflies 
 fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in at the 
 open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds 
 go and come with the rest of the company. The scent 
 of the flowers, and indeed of everything that is growing 
 for miles and miles, is most delicious.” 
 
 Christianity will do the best for a man in this re- 
 spect; not the best, perhaps, in magnificence or luxury 
 (for a Christian cannot forget that he is a steward of his 
 money for higher objects even than elegance), but the 
 best as inspiring him with a grateful recognition of 
 God as the bestower and preserver of his home mercies. 
 As John Newton said, he will inscribe on all : 
 
 Beus nobis haec otia fecitP 
 “God is the author of all these comforts.” 
 
 If he has a humble home, piety will bring with it that 
 order and neatness which often gives a simple charm 
 denied to the laborious efforts of a false taste. If he 
 has a mansion and grounds, he will reply to a visitor, 
 should he say to him, as was said to Lord Bexley, on 
 going over his beautiful home and surroundings : 
 “What, all this, and God’s grace too?” “Yes; and 
 take the other away, the last is still a sufficient 
 portion.” 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 DULCE DOMUM. 
 
 Who has not seen, in the outskirts of some village, 
 a house of ancient days, in ruins, perhaps, and ac- 
 credited with the mystery of being haunted ? At night 
 how the boys hurry past it ! How eerie it looks in the 
 straggling beams of the moon, and in winter, as the 
 winds blow through it, how fancy might convert their 
 melancholy wailing notes into the groans of some of 
 its old inhabitants, doing penance for their former mis- 
 deeds, by renewing their discord upon earth. 
 
 Alas ! some modern homes do not require the aid of 
 superstition to deepen their gloom. They are miserable 
 enough, from human and easily understood causes. 
 Vinegar Hall, for instance, is a handsome enough man- 
 sion externally, but who would willingly live in it ? 
 The husband and wife lead a cat-and-dog life, and their 
 wrangles are loud enough to be heard at times by their 
 neighbours. Their servants never stop long enough to 
 be familiar to the place, and seem no sooner to arrive 
 than they take their boxes and depart. The children 
 dread their parents presence, and only know happiness 
 when they are out visiting, welcoming their departure 
 and fearing their return. To complete this picture. 
 
72 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 the style of their housekeeping is poor and stingy; 
 slatternliness and discomfort reign in their household 
 arrangements. No guests break the monotony of the 
 home by their cheerful arrival ; while, as regards their 
 neighbours, they are at loggerheads with the one on 
 their left hand, and have had a law-suit with the other 
 on their right. 
 
 How different is all this from Edensville, a plain 
 substantial villa (but not without a touch of elegance), 
 with bright windows, indicative of neatness within. We 
 lately accompanied its owner home after his return 
 from a journey. The door seemed to fly open at his 
 knock, and we were welcomed by an old domestic, 
 whose face mantled with pleasure at the sight of 
 Master.’' ''She has been with me twenty years,” 
 said the latter. "I do not call her a servant, but a 
 friend, and she does not speak of her place as a situa- 
 tion, but a home.” A host of little feet and arms had 
 now clustered round my friend, and bore him in triumph 
 to the dining-room, where the wife’s eye brightened 
 with pleasure to see her "lord” return. Then came 
 the dog with his gambols ; the cat purred against his 
 legs, and the cockatoo screamed, all ea.ger to show their 
 consciousness that one they loved had come back and 
 was welcome. 
 
 Coziness beamed from every corner of the room. The 
 hearth was swept and clean. The Are burned bright, 
 and a lamp gave a mellow glow. A volume of history 
 in the wife’s hand showed that she had intellectual 
 tastes ; but these had not interfered with her household 
 duties, for a repast, simple but elegant, and cooked to 
 perfection, awaited us. The wife knew her husband’s 
 predilections, and had studied them. A friendly neigh- 
 
DULCE nOMUM. 
 
 73 
 
 bour or two looked in, in the course of the evening. 
 Then came a piece of music from the daughters, who 
 dropping, one a plain, and the other a fancy piece of 
 needlework, sang and played with feeling and good 
 taste. The hoys, after their lessons had been studied, 
 showed us their rabbits and other domestic pets ; then 
 begged for a game, which was granted. Retiring after 
 evening prayers to my friend’s handsome library, hung 
 with a few good paintings and some choice engravings, 
 upon my congratulations on his happiness: ''Yes,” he 
 replied ; " I have much to be thankful for. My wife is 
 devoted to me. I live well within my income, and have 
 no debt to torment me. Our house is very healthy. 
 It was carefully examined as to its sanitary condition 
 before we occupied it. We trouble the doctor there- 
 fore very little. My dear girls are thoroughly useful, 
 as well as ornamental, and my boys are carefully edu- 
 cated, so as to prepare and fit them for their future 
 business. We have been most particular in not petting 
 or spoiling them by over-indulgence, and in requiring 
 obedience ; yet, as Sydney Smith recommends, vre have 
 shown them that we are always sorry to have to re- 
 strain them, and never so happy as when we can please 
 them. I have always admired Sir Walter Scott’s mode 
 of getting the love of his children, and when at home 
 have made it my own model. ' They had at all times,’ 
 Mr. Lockhart tells us, 'free access to his study; he 
 never considered their little tattle as any disturbance ; 
 and when they, unconscious how he was engaged, en- 
 treated him to lay down his pen and tell them a story, 
 he would, after taking them on his knee, do so, kiss 
 them and set them down again to their play, as if 
 refreshed by the interruption. He considered it the 
 
74 
 
 LIFERS FLEASUFE GARDEN. 
 
 highest duty, as well as the sweetest pleasure, to be the 
 companion of his children, while they never thought 
 that any sport could go on in the right way unless papa 
 were of the party, or that the rainiest day could be dull 
 if he were at home/ 
 
 “ With our domestics we have had very little trouble, 
 for my wife has always cultivated forbearance, has paid 
 them good wages, and, knowing that sentimental griev- 
 ances are harder sometimes to bear than material ones, 
 has given them more liberty than is usually conceded 
 in some minor points as to dress, etc. We have been 
 well repaid, however, for our indulgence, by their long 
 service and real attachment ; and when we quit home 
 for our annual holiday, we leave the house in their 
 charge. We have no anxiety while we are away, and 
 find the door on our return fly open to receive us, 
 before the cabman has well had time to draw up in 
 front of it. My principle, in short, has been to manage 
 firmly, but in love ; and my plan has succeeded, for I 
 have secured that great ingredient of happiness, JDulce 
 Domum!' 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It bases all 
 the arrangements of a household on the love and fear 
 of God, and this principle cements everything in har- 
 mony. It commands children to honour their parents, 
 and parents, while maintaining authority, not to pro- 
 voke their children to anger, masters to deal with their 
 servants, as having themselves a Master in heaven, and 
 servants to serve their masters, not as eye-servants, but 
 as pleasing Christ. Thus, holy love and concord flow 
 like a stream through the family where these principles 
 govern, and where the things that are seen and temporal 
 are subordinated to those that are unseen and eternal. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE PALATE AND ITS CLAIMS. 
 
 It would be a curious spectacle to visit in succession 
 the meat, game, poultry, fish, fruit, vegetable, tea, 
 coffee, spice, cheese, butter, and other markets of 
 London ; then to survey the vaults of the London 
 Docks, with their miles of pipes of wine ; our great 
 breweries, with their vatted stores of homelier liquors ; 
 our manufactories of non-alcoholic beverages ; and 
 afterwards, to pass on to the Egyptian Hall of the Man- 
 sion House, and to see it ablaze with light, its tables 
 garlanded with flowers, and its walls resonant with 
 music, whilst five hundred guests partook of a banquet. 
 We should then have a vivid impression of the impor- 
 tant part which, rightly or wrongly, eating and drinking 
 take in the enjoyment of life. We gather, indeed, the 
 momentous part which the palate plays among the 
 lowest sections of society, when we hear a Liverpool 
 magistrate saying, that most of the domestic quarrels 
 that came before him originated either in want of food, 
 or in want of skill to cook it. 
 
 Nature has indulgently given us the sense of taste, 
 and has endowed food with pleasant flavours, instead of 
 making us eat from mere necessity. What would have 
 
;6 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 been tbe case had the palate been, as an epicure wished 
 it, a mile long, we can hardly say, for even now devo- 
 tion to its gratification has produced an army of 
 worshippers, whose god is their belly. Stories are on 
 record of a gourmand ordering four turkeys for his 
 own dinner, that he might have a certain titbit out of 
 each. Mr. Rogerson, of the last century, wasted a large 
 fortune in culinary excesses, having messengers con- 
 
 GAKlBALDl’S SUPPEK. 
 
 tinually travelling to bring him rare delicacies, and 
 employing three cooks to dress one particular dish. 
 Other anecdotes of a similar kind abound, till we are 
 reconciled by the narratives of such waste and epicurean- 
 ism, to the story attributed to Garibaldi, who, when 
 staying at a grand mansion, declined supper, as he had 
 previously supped off' a part of a crust of bread, and 
 when asked next morning to a sumptuous breakfast. 
 
THE PALATE AND ITS CLAIMS. 77 
 
 declined also to partake of it, as he had already break- 
 fasted off the remainder of the crust. 
 
 With some individuals, eating forms the season 
 when, in the exercise of hospitality, the interchange of 
 pleasant social feelings takes place ; it is then refined 
 from a coarse to a delicate enjoyment. Such entertain- 
 ments differ, however, widely in character. A friend of 
 Francis De Sales has described a dinner given by the 
 great Carlo Borromeo, at wdiich he was present, and 
 which the latter, who was jealous of any expenditure 
 that did not benefit the poor, considered an unusually 
 splendid festivity. A half-hour’s reading of Scripture 
 preceded the dinner, and prepared the guests for higher 
 thoughts than mere appetite. Then came five spoon- 
 fuls of vermicelli soup to each guest. The second course 
 was preceded by a small boiled chicken, and consisted 
 of three balls of mincemeat and herbs about as big as a 
 poached egg. Then a thrush, served up with an ora,nge. 
 After that each guest had a small uncooked pear, and 
 a tiny scrap of cheese. The plates and dishes were of 
 ordinary white earthenware. ‘'This great festival,” 
 adds the narrator, “ did not make us heavy or unfit for 
 work afterwards.” The whole of this simple scene 
 contrasts strongly with “ the family dinner,” as the host 
 called it, given by the late Emile Girardin in Paris to 
 Charles Dickens, “the most Avonderful feast,” the latter 
 says, “ever tasted by mortal,” with its ten thousand 
 wax lights, its expensive truffles, its delicate cookery, 
 the finest growths of champagne in ice, brandy that 
 had been buried a hundred years, port wine worth two 
 guineas a bottle, oriental flowers in vases of gold cob- 
 web, cigarettes from the Sultans palace, and cool 
 drinks, in which the flavour of the lemon^ arrived 
 
7§ LIFWS PLEASURE GARDEJV. 
 
 yesterday from Algeria, struggled voluptuously with 
 the delicate orange brought that morning from Lisbon. 
 Without coveting such displays of luxury, the man who 
 is content with the rational enjoyment of his food, 
 though, like the late Dr. Leifchild, he may not object on 
 some rare and proper festive occasion to ''astonish his 
 stomach,’’ will be satisfied with simple nutritious fare. 
 While shunning gluttony and epicureanism, however, 
 he will be desirous that his food should be well and 
 pleasantly cooked, for though the stomach ought not to 
 be pampered, neither ought it to be regarded, as it is 
 sometimes in this country, as a mere patent machine 
 for breaking up all sorts of hard, indigestible substances. 
 
 Sir William Temple’s caution also is still, after two 
 centuries, worth remembering — that when we are asked 
 to indulge in eating what nature does not. require, it is 
 as it were being solicited to partake of gout, paralysis, 
 or apoplexy. No better sauce has, in truth, during the 
 ages, been found out than hunger, and no better com- 
 panion to a dinner-table than temperance. On every 
 dish and on every cup, a writer has well said, let the 
 word " Moderation ” be engraved. 
 
 These cautions are even more necessary when we 
 come to speak of stimulants. If gluttony has slain its 
 thousands, strong drink has slain its tens of thousands. 
 A writer has represented Satan in Pandemonium as 
 asking his fallen spirits whom he should send to 
 complete the ruin of our race, and one of them, named 
 Alcohol, replying, " Send me.” With awful effect has 
 this emissary fulfilled his mission, as broken hearts, 
 ruined families and blighted hopes can testify. Amidst 
 ten thousand examples of the curse of intemperance, 
 few are more powerful than one supplied from real life. 
 
THE PALATE AND ITS CLAIMS. 79 
 
 and not from fiction, by the writer named above as the 
 guest of Emile Girardin. A family had an income of 
 5000Z. a year, but was cursed with drunkenness ; brandy 
 and champagne formed the beverages at breakfast, 
 luncheon and dinner; one of the guests rose up at 
 night to drain the wine decanters, and so quench his 
 unnatural thirst; the unhappy mother and her more 
 unhappy daughter went about the country intoxicated, 
 and falling out of their carriage ; the former at last 
 dying, having drunk, as she expressed it, her heart 
 away, while the guest expired from delirium tremens. 
 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. The 
 man who wishes happiness must govern his appetites, 
 and practise temperance. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. While not 
 encouraging asceticism, and while noting that Holy 
 Writ has recorded many feasts on which God’s smile 
 rested, it yet tells us that man must eat to live, and 
 not live to eat. It doubles, too, all true appetitive 
 pleasure, by not only enjoining holy moderation in the 
 gratification of it, but by giving strength to practise this 
 command, for one of the fruits of the blessed Spirit is 
 ‘‘ Temperance.” The Christian, viewing his body as a 
 living temple, learns, whether he eats or drinks, to do 
 all to the glory of God, and will not by intemperance 
 wilfully and wickedly burn away health in mad waste. 
 
 An incident recorded by the Rev. Thomas Scott, 
 the commentator, in his biography will appropriately 
 conclude this chapter. Having been invited to meet 
 some brother ministers for purposes of mutual edifica- 
 tion at the house of a wealthy Christian tradesman, 
 their host served up, in the fulness of his heart, a 
 dinner so luxurious that one of the company jocularly 
 
8o 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 remarked, that if they often sat down to such a repast, 
 gout would soon become one of the privileges of the 
 Gospel. After the cloth Avas removed, the subject 
 selected for conversation was the danger of conformity 
 to the world. When it came to the turn of Mr. Scott 
 to speak, the expensive dinner did not escape his notice, 
 and he frankly stated that he thought that, how- 
 ev^er proper such entertainments might be on certain 
 occasions, they were out of place when Christians met, 
 as they were doing, to edify one another ; that then 
 the provision should be simple, that there might be 
 the means of more abundantly feeding the poor. When 
 he next dined at the gentleman’s house, he found there 
 was no occasion to repeat his strictures, as his host had 
 gone to the opposite extreme, a piece of plain boiled 
 beef forming the sole dish on the table. When this 
 gentleman subsequently died, however, he left Mr. 
 Scott a legacy of a hundred pounds, as a practical proof 
 that his sturdy fidelity of character had not offended 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 SOMETHING TO WEAR. 
 
 N walking round 
 zoological gard€ 
 the most commc 
 spectator must be struck with the extent to whi( 
 I^ature has provided for the gratification of the ey 
 
82 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 by the beauty of the clothing which she has given 
 to animals in the shape of feathers and furs. Some of 
 the birds of paradise eclipse the efforts of art to imitate 
 their elegance of adornment. Even the common raven, 
 with its coat of jet black, is a comely object when 
 closely examined. The beautiful pelisses of furred 
 skin which some of our dogs and cats wear are familiar 
 objects to us. The microscope reveals a similar condition 
 of things among insects. The diamond beetle is more 
 gorgeously arrayed than was Prince Esterhazy in his 
 celebrated pearl-embroidered suit, which, as used to be 
 said, cost him lOOL per day, from the valuable stones 
 that were dropped from it each time that he wore it. 
 
 Clothing is not an unimportant item in the enjoyment 
 of life. We may smile with pity at the figure of the 
 Indian lady in the South Kensington Museum, dressed 
 in gold cloth, with jewels in her ears, jewels in her nose, 
 jewels on her ankles, and jewels on her toes. We may 
 pity the man-millinery that made George IV. keep all 
 the suits he had worn for years, and call for them 
 occasionally, as if he had been a tailor instead of a 
 monarch ; but there is a medium between such ex- 
 amples, and the indifference to dress exhibited by 
 Frederick the Great, who went about with lack-lustre 
 boots, a waistcoat pocket full of snuff, and a cocked 
 hat of the shabbiest sort ; having, we believe, only one 
 pair of silk stockings used for state occasions. However 
 much dress has been abused by vanity, it communi- 
 cates both to the wearer and observer a certain pleasure; 
 while even in Addison s time, his banker, he tells us, 
 addressed him or ''Esquire,’' according as he 
 
 had on good or shabby attire. We have not all that 
 natural grace of figure possessed by an American 
 
SOMETHING TO WEAR. 
 
 83 
 
 divine, who, when he put on a plain brown suit, to 
 please some brethren who thought he dressed too 
 fashionably, still looked so well that his objectors were 
 compelled to say that he would appear a gentleman, 
 however simply he attired himself. 
 
 The first point in dress is that it should promote 
 health and cover a clean body. When these points 
 have been attended to, the quality of the material, the 
 nature of its colour and good taste in the make of it 
 may without impropriety be studied. Vanity in dress 
 is a principle sure to mislead ; whereas, to dress our- 
 selves simply, unostentatiously, but with proper taste, . 
 communicating satisfaction to our neighbours’ eye, may 
 be termed one of the small kindnesses of life. Care 
 in the management of clothing is also a principle as 
 commendable as slovenliness is objectionable. When 
 Vambery, the traveller, was going through Turkistan, 
 he disguised himself in rags, as a beggar, and joined 
 in this costume a group of other beggars, who were to 
 accompany the caravan. Next day, however, he found 
 that the rags in which his companions had been dressed 
 were their hesb rags, and that in a spirit of a careful 
 economy these had been exchanged for their every-day 
 rags, while their owners were surprised at the disguised 
 traveller’s extravagance in continuing to wear rags of 
 so good a quality. The beggars of Turkistan had learned 
 the valuable habit of taking care of their clothes. 
 
 The tendency of modem dress among the male 
 portion of our population has been, as our artists 
 complain, to run into an inelegant plainness of colour, 
 almost everything having been sacrificed to utility. 
 Among the female portion of the community, variety 
 of colour is, however, stilly preserved ; but a tendency to 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 dress gaudily and extravagantly is noticed by satirists 
 as characterising some ladies. A witty American writer 
 has given a dialogue between a husband and his wife, 
 when the latter is asked to accompany the former 
 somewhere : 
 
 “ She looked up with a pitiful air, 
 
 And answered quite promptly, ^Why, Harry, mon cher, 
 
 I should like above all things to go with you there, 
 
 But really and truly I've nothing to wear.” 
 
 The husband suggests timidly, ''Wear your crimson 
 brocade,” but gets the reply : 
 
 "That’s too dark by a shade.” 
 
 " Your blue silk.” 
 
 " That’s too heavy.” 
 
 "Your pink.” 
 
 "That’s too light.” 
 
 After running over a catalogue of other dresses, 
 to which similar objections are made, the perplexed 
 husband at last names one in which the lady has 
 appeared at the Parisian court. But, alas ! 
 
 Both the bright eyes shot forth indignation. 
 
 As she burst upon me with the fierce explanation, 
 have worn it three times, at the least calculation.’” 
 
 Sportive as these lines are, they ingeniously rebuke 
 a habit of extravagance which, when indulged in, leads 
 to much domestic sorrow. 
 
 A great authority on ladies’ dress, speaking of his 
 ideal dresser, says: "You see her turn a cold eye to 
 the assurance of shopmen and the recommendation of 
 milliners. She wears many a cheap dress, but it is 
 always pretty; many an old one, but it is always good. 
 She deals in no gaudy confusion of colours, nor does 
 
SOMETHING TO WEAR. 
 
 85 
 
 she aflfect a studied sobriety. Not a scrap of tinsel or 
 trumpery appears upon her.” What natural good taste, 
 indeed, may accomplish in dress without extravagance, 
 appears from the anecdote told of Mrs. Carlyle’s mother, 
 who as a surgeon s wife, not having much money to 
 spend on her attire, got her daughter to sew on to 
 it some moss and ivy leaves, which excited universal 
 admiration, and were taken to be a French trimming of 
 the latest fashion. The celebrated Duchess of Gordon 
 is said to have made the conquest which secured her 
 ducal position, by wearing some wooden shavings round 
 her bonnet in lieu of expensive ribbons she was unable 
 to purchase. 
 
 The true principle of dress, we repeat, is to shun 
 vanity, ostentation and extravagance, and substitute 
 for these good taste and modesty. Those who violate 
 these rules, and are wedded to extravagant expenditure, 
 may wisely ponder the caution of the American satirist, 
 already quoted : 
 
 Raise the rich dainty dress and the fine broidered skirt, 
 Pick your delicate way through the dampness and dirt, 
 Grope through the dark den, climb the rickety stair. 
 
 To the garret, where wretches, the young and the old, 
 
 Half starved and half naked, lie crouched from the cold. 
 Then home to your wardrobes, and say if you dare, 
 
 Spoiled children of fashion, you’ve nothing to wear.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It looks 
 through the hollow tawdriness with which, under the 
 mark of pompous dress, men have endeavoured to 
 disguise the vanities of life. ''I was in the King’s 
 robing chamber,” writes John Wesley, under date of 
 December, 1756, when the King, George II., put on 
 his robes. His 'brow was much furrowed with age, and 
 
86 
 
 liff:s pleasure garden. 
 
 quite clouded with care. And is this all the world can 
 afford ? A blanket of ermine round his shoulders, so 
 heavy and cumbersome he can scarce move under it, a 
 huge mass of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold 
 and glittering stones upon his head.'’ 
 
 By cutting up vanity from the root, Christianity 
 destroys that ostentation which is the secret both of 
 vulgarity and extravagance in dress. It then can safely 
 leave its followers free to attire themselves according to 
 the reasonable requirements of their station in life — 
 reminding, as it does, the female sex, that the ornament 
 of a meek and quiet spirit is more precious than any 
 external adornment. 
 
CHAPTEK XX. 
 
 MY OWN, MY NATIVE LAND. 
 
 Mr. Charles Rollingstone has been a great tra- 
 veller. He has been, indeed, in almost all quarters 
 of the world, and is qualified for admission to the 
 Travellers’ Club. 
 
 Possessed of an independent fortune, and dissatisfied 
 with fogs and some other things in his native England, 
 he determined to try for himself the effects of foreign 
 travel before finally settling. He tried France, but had 
 hardly begun to fix himself there, before the Franco- 
 German War broke out, and made the place too hot to 
 hold him. He had been in America previously, but 
 the great internecine struggle between North and 
 South had sickened him of a Republic. He now re- 
 paired to South America, but a new revolution in those 
 days seemed to come almost with every departure of 
 the mail. Taking the steamer, he arrived at one of 
 the Sandwich Islands. He appeared, from the beauty 
 of the verdure, and the mildness of the air, to have 
 reached Paradise, till one morning a vast tidal wave 
 coming into the place and sweeping off some hundred 
 of the inhabitants, sickened him of his quarters. At 
 another island, he was more fortunate, till one evening 
 
88 
 
 LTFKS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 he was awoke by the volcano behind his house over- 
 flowing in a stream some twelve miles long, and threat- 
 ening to make the spot another Pompeii. Taking to 
 his voyaging again, he seemed to reach a second Para- 
 dise, till an earthquake shook everything to pieces, and a 
 tornado following nearly blew the house about his ears. 
 In one country he found the ground like a flower- 
 garden ; but his raptures were cooled, when he dis- 
 covered that he could not walk abroad without danger 
 of treading on a serpent. In another place there was 
 such drought, that a tumbler of water was handed 
 about as a luxury, like a glass of champagne elsewhere. 
 Not liking this state of things, he moved on, and 
 arrived at a region where the fortune of an umbrella- 
 maker would perhaps have been made, for it rained 
 without intermission for two or three months. In one 
 country he was thirty miles from his nearest neighbour. 
 In another, where there was more society, he could not 
 express his opinions freely without fear of being tarred 
 and feathered, wounded with a bowie-knife or shot by 
 a revolver. In one place, where he thought of taking 
 a tract of very fertile country, he found that the 
 government by oppressive taxation swept away nearly 
 all his profits, and that so little protection was there 
 for property, that robbers threatened, unless he paid 
 them a heavy black-mail, to carry him off prisoner and 
 cut off his ears. Then there were famines in one land, 
 and the dreaded plague in another. 
 
 The upshot of all Mr. Eollingstone’s travels has been 
 that he has returned to England, a much more wise 
 and contented man than he was when he left it. The 
 fogs he used to grumble at he can now bear, and even 
 thinks, as an eccentric old gentleman did, that they 
 
MV OWN, MV NATIVE LAND. 89 
 
 solidify the national character. At all events, Mr. 
 Rollingstone is quite satisfied that though happiness 
 depends much on the country in which a man resides, 
 yet that every place has its advantages as well as its 
 drawbacks ; that peace, law, and order are the essentials 
 of national prosperity, and that it is the duty of every 
 man to strive to promote these qualities, and thus show 
 himself a good citizen, advancing the welfare of the 
 community in which he lives. 
 
 Mr. Rollingstone in his adventures, as above narrated, 
 has enjoyed one pleasure of life to which a passing 
 reference may be made ; we mean that of travel. It is 
 a very healthy recreation to see foreign scenes, with 
 their varied objects of interest. The whole mental 
 constitution is refreshed by such a change. When Miss 
 Havergal visited Switzerland, she thus enthusiastically 
 expressed herself : I feel as if I got quite a fresh start 
 
 with that month’s rest. It seems as if Nature had 
 then walked into my brain, and taken possession, turn- 
 ing me out meantime, and given it a kind of spring 
 cleaning ; rubbing up the furniture, fresh-papering 
 some of the rooms, and cleaning the windows.” It is 
 necessary, however, to have eyes to appreciate Nature, 
 to get those advantages. “She never looks,” writes 
 Lady Malmesbury of her companion in a travelling 
 carriage, “she never looks at anything, but works in 
 the carriage all day long. She will not even go to 
 Chauiouni, like that other lady, who, passing through 
 the sublimest mountain scenery, kept her eyes shut, 
 declaring it too beautiful to look upon.” This pleasure 
 of travel may in a greater or less degree be enjoyed 
 nowadays by all classes, while those who are denied it 
 may, at all events, journey to every part of the world. 
 
90 
 
 LIFES PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 througli the medium of the panorama, not annoyed by 
 fatigue, passports, weather or expense. The stay-at- 
 home individuals have also the satisfaction of knowing 
 that the pleasantest place which the traveller sees is 
 home, on his return to it. ‘"We get,"’ wrote Mr. 
 Dickens, when returning from his first visit to America, 
 we get fevered with anxiety for home. Oh ! Home, 
 home, home, home, home, home. Home ! ! ! ! ! ! ” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. A Christian 
 cannot dwell anywhere where God is not present, and 
 this is a consideration which reconciles him to all 
 localities. In the words of Madam Guyon, he can say, 
 
 “To me remains nor place nor time, 
 
 My country is in every clime. 
 
 I can be calm and free from care 
 On any shore, since God is there.” 
 
 In all countries where he may be settled, he has 
 principles that make him a law-abiding citizen, and 
 constitute him one of that class out of which strong, 
 enduring and self-governed communities are formed. 
 
 His occasional changes of scene in travel, too, will be 
 sweetened by having been preceded by labour that has 
 honestly earned relaxation, while they will be made 
 pleasant in the retrospect, by the attempts at useful- 
 ness, with which, if wise, he will endeavour to season 
 them. 
 
CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 BY ACCIDENT. 
 
 On visiting on one occasion the beautiful coast of 
 Aberdour, opposite Edinburgh, we wandered with great 
 satisfaction through the exquisitely lovely grounds, 
 which a nobleman has there with true generosity 
 thrown open to the public. They wound along the 
 margin of the Firth of Forth, studded with its opal- 
 looking islands, while across, softened by distance, rose 
 Arthur s Seat and '' mine own romantic town,” in all its 
 radiant beauty. The scene was paradisiacal. A neat 
 mansion indicated the abode of the nobleman’s agent, 
 who was practically the owner of this lovely spot, while 
 a pleasant yacht, anchored in the vicinity, showed what 
 charming marine excursions he might have, when he 
 chose to leave the lovely shore for the equally lovely 
 deep. The picture of the gentleman s felicity seemed 
 complete ; but, alas ! two days afterwards, the news- 
 papers announced that he had been killed by a railway 
 accident. 
 
 An accident ! This is as fatal to the enjoyment of 
 life as any violation of the laws of health. Our recent 
 reference to travel too naturally introduces us to the 
 subject. But where may it not creep in? A little 
 
92 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 regiment of innocent pleasure-seekers go for a holiday 
 down the Thames, and just as some of them are in the 
 act of saying, what a delightful day they have spent, 
 five hundred find a watery grave by the sinking of the 
 vessel, the Princess Alice. The secretary of a great 
 religious society refreshes himself after his labours, by a 
 bath in the cool waters of one of our Cumberland lakes, 
 and cramp terminates his life. A tourist climbs the 
 airy Matterhorn, and tumbles a corpse down its preci- 
 pice. A Duke of an ancient family has a magnificent 
 fete, to celebrate the christening of his long-expected 
 heir, and the infant is found suffocated in the costly 
 mantle wrapped round it to protect it from the 
 cold. A family party is enjoying itself at table, but 
 there is “ death in the pot,'' a poisonous plant 
 having been mistaken for horse-radish. A blast of foul 
 air streams through a mine, and hundreds of blackened 
 corpses tell the result. A jovial hunting party dismount, 
 and take boat with their horses to cross the river Ouse, 
 which had interrupted their sport, but a heathen poet 
 would have said that Charon had entered the boat also, 
 for it upsets, and, instead of renewing their pursuit of 
 the fox, they are ferried over to the unknown continent 
 of death. A gay company at Nice repair to the Opera 
 House, there to be entertained by a concert, but, alas 1 
 a fire breaks out, and the sweet notes of music are 
 replaced by the agonizing screams of pain and wail 
 of death. 
 
 Marriage is the chartered season of festivity, and yet 
 how even here has accident intruded ! At Windermere 
 they point to the spot where a boat with a bridal party 
 was upset and all drowned. Mr. Kingsley tells us of a 
 woman in the West Indies, trampling on a venomous 
 
BV ACCIDENT, 
 
 93 
 
 snake, just after she had left the church a happy bride, 
 and dying from the reptile’s bite. In Essex, at a 
 gentleman’s country seat, a fire follows a wedding fes- 
 tivity, and consumes in its unrelenting blaze the newly- 
 married bride and bridegroom. In a humbler circle, 
 one girl that we knew, a servant, goes out in the 
 evening to buy her wedding bonnet, and dies before 
 the next morning. Instances, however, need not be 
 multiplied. Death is a mansion with a thousand gates, 
 and its gloomy dance, as painted by Holbein, still goes 
 on, a danger of its unexpected intrusion lurking in 
 every scene. Care and foresight can, it is true, do 
 something to avert accident, though what the Ancients 
 called Destiny, and we more correctly name Providence, 
 has also much to do with it. One individual is called 
 away by accident and another spared, in a manner that 
 arrests the attention of the most thoughtless. An 
 admiral who lived till he was ninety, was at the battle 
 of Trafalgar as a midshipman. While he was watching 
 from a porthole, with boyish bravado, the mode in 
 which the shots were flying about, a brother midship- 
 man exclaimed^ '' It is my turn to look now,” and 
 pulling him back, took his place, when a cannon ball 
 immediately carried off his head ! Though reasonable 
 care and prudence will do something, as we have said, 
 to prevent accident, and ought to be carefully practised, 
 yet the saying is evidently not without its truth in the 
 battle of life, that “ every bullet has its billet.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. While guard- 
 ing us from careless presumption, it teaches us depend- 
 ence on Divine Providence, which watches over the 
 minutest events of life, and especially cares for those 
 who seek to love God and obey Him. Cecil, the pious 
 
94 
 
 LIFE'^S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 biographer of Newton, when he fell under a waggon, 
 found that his imperilled head had escaped injury- 
 through the wheel of the vehicle having been lifted over 
 it by an inequality in the paving of the street. “ I was 
 sitting one day,’' Mr. Wilberforce says, by the river- 
 side, with my back to the water, on a portable seat, 
 when it suddenly struck me it was not quite safe. I 
 moved therefore a few yards, and placed my stool on 
 the grass, when in four or five minutes it suddenly 
 broke, and I fell flat on my back as if shot. Had it 
 happened five minutes sooner, as I cannot swim, I must 
 have been drowned. A most providential escape. Let 
 me praise God for it.” Similar cases are found in many 
 religious biographies, such as Mr. Vanderkiste, rescued 
 when seemingly hopelessly lost in the wilds of Australia, 
 — Mr. Dallas, saved from a precipice by an opportune 
 flash of lightning, — and Doctor Guthrie prevented from 
 sliding down a rock into the sea, by having on that 
 morning a new pair of shoes, which clung to the 
 crevices. In the writers own family, the fall of one 
 broad drop of rain, announcing apparently a coming 
 storm, prevented the embarkation of a relative in a 
 steamer, which perished with the loss of a hundred 
 lives. 
 
PART II, 
 
 THE MAN WITHIN. 
 
THE MAN WITHIN. 
 
 When James Boswell conducted Dr. Johnson about 
 Scotland a hundred years ago, he led him to what he 
 considered, no doubt, as not the least interesting part of 
 the journey, his father s ancestral house of Auchinleck. 
 There Boswell swelled with all the elation peculiar to 
 his oddly-formed character, at the thought that he was 
 able to show his '' guide, philosopher and friend the 
 mansion of a real Scottish laird, the lineal descendant 
 of what h(3 so dearly prized, an old aristocratic family. 
 Over the lintel of that house was a Latin inscription, 
 which Dr. Johnson read, and which, when rightty 
 studied, rebuked all Boswell’s petty fuss about trifles. 
 
 It was a sentence of Horatian philosophy, which 
 intimated that a wise man was independent of external 
 circumstances, and that not only in that mansion, but 
 even in the desert itself, he might command everything 
 that was necessary to happiness, provided only his mind 
 was properly regulated. 
 
 'W^e come now in our little treatise to speak of 
 happiness, as residing in the mind, and dependent on 
 our management of that mysterious portion of our 
 nature. It is a great and important division of our 
 subject, and is therefore well deserving of this little 
 introduction. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE PLEASURES OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 When Sir Walter Scott visited the Bodleian Library 
 at Oxford for the first time, and examined the various 
 stores of learning treasured up there in manuscript and 
 printed volumes, he said that he felt like the Persian 
 magician, who entered an enchanted library in the 
 bowels of a mountain, and willingly suffered himself to 
 be enclosed in its recesses, while less eager students 
 retired in alarm. Sir Walter but echoed the experience 
 of King James I., who, when he visited the same 
 library nearly two centuries before, exclaimed, ‘'If I 
 were to be a prisoner, I would desire no other prison 
 but this library, and would wish to be chained together 
 with so many good authors.” Such feelings would now- 
 a-days be intensified by the visitor, after leaving the 
 Bodleian, repairing to the adjoining Museum, and 
 deriving from a personal examination of the objects 
 there, that knowledge which in the other place he had 
 gathered from books. 
 
\jBRMW 
 
 Of 
 
 
■«-/3 
 
 BUl-rOIf Ilf HIS GAKBBJf. 
 
THE PLEASURES OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 These remarks bring us to the first great source of 
 mental pleasure, the acquisition of knowledge. It is a 
 sad thing to wander through this wonderful world, and 
 to have no desire to commune with the million of 
 objects which everywhere invite us to study and explore 
 them. Thomas Carlyle said that he felt in a countiy 
 walk as if the very insects that hummed past him 
 wished to make his acquaintance. And so it is with 
 everything in Nature’s great encyclopaedia, from the 
 letter A to Z. The sun begs us to examine him 
 through the spectroscope. The twinkling stars, the 
 sounding ocean, are equally impatient of our acquaint- 
 ance, and, with countless other objects, offer to enrich 
 us with pleasing and useful knowledge. 
 
 Of the pleasures that the observation of nature brings ‘ 
 with it, we have many illustrations from the days of 
 Newton — so interested in his great discoveries as to be 
 compelled from agitation to entrust his pen to another, 
 in order to complete the final calculations that proved 
 their correctness — down to Edwardes, the naturalist of 
 our own times, saved from committing suicide by his 
 eager pursuit of a rare bird, which providentially flew 
 past him, and roused him from his dangerous de- 
 pression. 
 
 Next to the pleasures of collecting knowledge seems 
 the gratification of imparting it. Few pictures are 
 more enjoyable than that which has been preserved of 
 Bufifon, composing his work on natural history amidst 
 the groves and gardens of his rural retreat, now listening 
 in the calm of the early morning to 'the carolling birds, 
 now committing a thought to paper, and then declaim- 
 ing to himself the beautiful and musical sentences he 
 had framed. And when a great book has been given 
 
102 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 to the world, what a pleasure it communicates to an 
 appreciative reader ! One who came across a book of 
 this description has likened his feelings to the raptures 
 of an astronomer discovering a new star, or to the 
 surprise of Pizarro’s followers, on first from the moun- 
 tain-top discovering the Pacific Ocean. 
 
 “ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, 
 
 When a new planet comes within his ken; 
 
 Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eye 
 He stared at the Pacific ; and all the men 
 Looked at each other with a wild surprise. 
 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” 
 
 Lord Brougham wished that every cottager might 
 read Bacon; Cobbett, on the contrary, that he might 
 eat bacon. Both wishes are good, and not necessarily 
 incompatible. Books know no distinction of society. 
 The rich man in ancient Rome had a living library, in 
 the shape of slaves, each of whom was trained to repeat 
 to him from memory a particular book of the Iliad. 
 But the library in this case might be sulky, or suffer- 
 ing from a cold, and might therefore not perform its 
 functions. The poorest cottager in modern times, how- 
 ever, may have in his little book-case great authors, 
 who will come to him when called, with their choicest 
 thoughts, remain with him a long or a short time, as 
 he pleases, and never be displeased when he lays them 
 down. Of good books, indeed, it may be said, as was 
 beautifully said of Macaulay’s books, ''They fill the 
 mind with noble and graceful images ; stand by us in 
 all vicissftudes ; are comforters in sorrow ; nurses in 
 sickness; companions in solitude; old friends never 
 seen with new faces; the same in wealth, in poverty, 
 in glory and obscurity/’ 
 
THE FLEAS [ZEES OF KNOWLEDGE. IO3 
 
 There is a great pleasure, we may add, in collecting 
 even a small library, and occasionally clothing a favour- 
 ite author in a dress of beauty becoming his merits ; 
 though we may not be able to rival the collection made 
 by Longfellow's Student, of whom it is said, 
 
 “Books were his passion and delight, 
 
 And on his upper room at home 
 Stood many a rare and sumptuous tome, 
 
 In vellum bound, with gold bedight. 
 
 Great volumes garmented in white, 
 
 Kecalling Florence, Pisa, Eome.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It prohibits 
 intercourse with corrupting, foolish and frivolous know- 
 ledge, but, with this limitation, throws open the whole 
 circle of literature and science to us, while it makes all 
 that is thus learned strengthen the mind and lead to 
 the study of the sacred Scriptures, which still prove 
 to those who read them aright, to be, as Augustine 
 expressed it, Sweeter than all honey ; pleasanter than 
 all bread ; more cheering than all wine." 
 
 Christianity throws open, too, all the pleasures of 
 literary composition to its followers, with this proviso, 
 that they pen no line they would not like to meet at 
 the judgment-seat of God. Bufifon's morning pleasures, 
 to which we have alluded, may be put alongside of 
 those of Albert Barnes (without equalling them), as 
 he rose each morning at four o'clock to write his 
 well-known commentary on the Scriptures ; writing 
 his allotted portion till the clock struck nine, and 
 finishing it then, even in the midst of a paragraph 
 or sentence. He was permitted, he says, to prevent 
 the dawning of the morning, while the inhabitants 
 of a great city were slumbering around, and considered 
 
104 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 these seasons the happiest of his life. It could not 
 be said of his literary pursuits, as it can be of some 
 others, 
 
 Study, when to no useful end designed, 
 
 Is but a specious trifling of the mind.” 
 
 Nor could he reproach himself when dying, as the great 
 Dr. Johnson did, that amidst all his reading of other 
 books, he had not studied his Bible more. 
 
/ 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CONVERSATION. 
 
 An interesting exhibition of automata, on one 
 occasion, contained a curiosity in the shape of a figure, 
 that, by a complicated adjustment of mechanism, was 
 able to utter a few sounds in imitation of the human 
 voice. The attempt, however, only revealed the immense 
 distance between the highest attainments of mechanical 
 skill and the easiest performances of man’s tongue. 
 Though the parrot, the starling, and a few other 
 animals, have been able to give out a simple word or 
 two, yet to man alone belongs the gift of speech, 
 enabling him to hold converse with others, and ex- 
 change in social intercourse the smart dialogue, the 
 brilliant repartee, the lively sally, or the solid argument. 
 
 So essential is the interchange of speech to happiness, 
 that even in prisons their inmates have learned by a 
 series of knocks against walls to hold a laborious series 
 of communications with their fellow captives. Observ- 
 ation and reading are the great springs by which 
 conversation is fed, and some minds, when thus stored, 
 are like musical instruments which have but to be 
 touched to emit beautiful notes. A visitor at Sir 
 Walter Scott’s country-seat had a treat when Sir 
 
I 06 LIFERS PLEASURE CAREEN. 
 
 Humphry Davy, conversing with the host, the two 
 great minds blended in a conversation that kept the 
 circle up listening to it long beyond the usual hour 
 for retiring, and forced Willie Laidlaw to wonder 
 whether Bacon and Shakespeare ever met in a similar 
 manner, to polish up each other’s understandings. 
 James Watt’s mind was so filled with useful ideas, 
 that Jeffrey compared him to an encyclopaedia, which 
 could be turned up at any letter. Macaulay’s con- 
 versation was a marvel to listen to. These men had 
 memories which were '' wax to receive, marble to 
 retain.” 
 
 Conversation should be profitable, for words are 
 winged seeds, and no one can tell where they may 
 alight, and what fruit they may bring forth. So 
 conscious was Mr. Wilberforce of this truth, that, 
 when invited to dinner-parties, he always furnished 
 himself with what he called '' launchers,” or topics 
 fitted to lead the way to pleasant but useful converse. 
 
 Conversation should not be conducted under the 
 dominion of selfishness. It was a beautiful trait of 
 Sir Walter Scott, that, in a company where all were 
 eager to listen to him, he sat close to the ear-trumpet 
 of a deaf man, and gave him a liberal share of the talk. 
 It is also an act of true courtesy to permit others to 
 take a fair portion of the conversation. Lord Brougham, 
 one evening in Edinburgh, talked so much, that Lord 
 Campbell says, you could only get in a word when he 
 was out of breath. '' I spent an hour one evening with 
 a person,^’ says Mr. Spurgeon, '' who did me the honour 
 to say that he found me a very charming companion, 
 and most instructive in conversation, yet I do not 
 hesitate to say, that I scarcely said anything at all. 
 
CONVERSATIOJ^, 
 
 107 
 
 but allowed him to have all the talk to himself. By 
 exercising patience I gained his good opinion, and an 
 oppoii-unity to address him on other occasions. A man 
 at table has no more right to talk all than to eat 
 all.” Coleridge was a great offender in this respect. I 
 have heard him,” says Carlyle, '' talk with eager musical 
 energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and moist, 
 and communicate no meaning] whatever to any indi- 
 
 vidual of his hearers.” Carlyle admits, however, that 
 in these monologues there arose at times out of the 
 mist and maze, ‘'glorious islets, balmy sunny islets, 
 islets of the blest and intelligible.” 
 
 Then conversation should be free from bitterness, 
 malice, impurity and evil speaking. It was a just but 
 dignified rebuke which Doctor Johnson gave to a 
 
io8 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 member of his talented social circle, who delighted to 
 say unkind things, “ Sir ! you seldom open your lips but 
 to inflict pain upon the feelings of others.” 
 
 When friends meet, they should, without being 
 artificial, stiff, or formal, by a little preparation en- 
 deavour to set before one another the best products of 
 their minds. When conversation is thus lifted above 
 the commonplace, when each in the company give and 
 get their proper slice of it, and all is natural, and there 
 is no desire to speak for effect, it becomes a cheap but 
 very important ingredient in human enjoyment. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It banishes 
 from the tongue all conversation that is corrupting, 
 unkind or injurious, while it by no means excludes 
 vivacity or any topic that is worth having, or which 
 admits of being seasoned with salt.” Of Mr. Wilber- 
 force, as a converser, it was said, even in his old age, 
 “ If he was lighted up, and in a small circle where he 
 was entirely at his ease, his powers of conversation 
 were prodigious ; a natural eloquence was poured out, 
 strokes of gentle playfulness and satire fell on all sides, 
 and the company was soon absorbed in admiration.” 
 Christianity gives, too, its followers, at proper times, 
 the important grace of silence, and a pleasure unknown 
 to the world — in heavenly topics of conversation, such 
 as the love of God, the compassion of the Saviour, the 
 grace of the Spirit, and the glories of heaven — subjects 
 not dull or distasteful, but, in the language of Milton, 
 
 “Musical as is Apollo’s lute; 
 
 And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, 
 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns.” 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 Once when on a visit to the English Lakes, as we 
 rested in the comfortable inn at charming Lowood, 
 beside the serene shores of Windermere, we were struck 
 towards midday with the splendid effects which nature 
 was producing for the gratification of our eye. As the 
 sun stole gradually up a high-peaked hill in the fore- 
 ground, the mountain was lighted up with beauty, till 
 at last, when the monarch of day had fully gained the 
 ascendency, crag and sunbeam were so fused together 
 in a flood of splendour that the whole mountain mass 
 was transfigured into a thing of glory. At evening, 
 again, when the moon rose, gleaming like a silver lamp, 
 with an attendant star in the background, and all was 
 reflected in the lake below, another scene of beauty, 
 stiller, but scarce less fair than the preceding one, was 
 introduced to the wondering eye. 
 
 These and a thousand other effects in nature bring 
 us to another mental pleasure, the perception of the 
 beautiful. The sea in repose or agitation, the river 
 rolling rapidly or peacefully gliding, the mountains dark 
 with fir or clothed with velvet, the plain waving with 
 corn or besprinkled with flowers, the clouds floating 
 
no 
 
 LIFE’S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 in fantastic forms — these and many similar objects 
 give, from their beauty of shape and colour, an endless 
 feast to an eye trained to observe them. Then there 
 are the grander phenomena of nature, that elevate or 
 awe while they please. '' The dream of all my life,’’ 
 says a gifted writer, '' is realized, and I have seen snow 
 mountains ! And I am not disappointed, not in the 
 very least— they are just as pure and bright and peace- 
 suggestive as ever I dreamt them.” At the Cincinnati 
 Observatory, Sir Henry Holland tells us, that under a 
 sky of intense blue, he had a view of the nebulae and 
 double stars, before which all earthly landscapes became 
 insignificant. When Miss Bird stood at the volcano at 
 Hili, she and her party wept and were speechless, for 
 there had been added to the earth, as it seemed to them, 
 a new glory and a new terror, which for grandeur, 
 majesty, mystery and beauty were indescribable. 
 
 Few qualities add more to the quiet enjoyment of 
 life than the perception of the beautiful in nature. 
 When we are exhilarated, it increases our hilarity; 
 when we are depressed, it soothes us. In the language 
 of a poet, 
 
 ^‘With tender ministrations thou, 0 Nature, 
 
 Healest thy wandering and distracted child. 
 
 Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, 
 
 Thy sunny hues, fair forms and breathing sweets, 
 
 The melody of woods, and winds and waters, 
 
 Till he relent, and can no more endure 
 To be a jarring and dissonant thing 
 Amidst the general dance and minstrelsy.” 
 
 These refreshing influences must be still more 
 intensely felt in countries where nature has been excep- 
 tionally bountiful in physical enjoyment. The atmo- 
 sphere and scenery,” says Miss Bird, speaking of her 
 
THE BEAUTIFUL, HI 
 
 residence in a certain part of Hawaii, among the 
 Sandwich Islands, ''were so glorious that it was pos- 
 sible to think of nothing all day, but just allow oneself 
 passively to drink in sensations of exquisite pleasure. I 
 wish all the hard- worked people at home, who lead 
 joyless lives in sunless alleys, could just have one such 
 day, that they might know how fair God’s earth is.” 
 
 By means of art, also, this perception of the beautiful 
 is repeated to us in the form of painting, poetry, archi- 
 tecture, and other kindred accomplishments. These 
 are so well known that it is sufficient to name them 
 here as sources, v/hen properly used, of innocent 
 pleasure. What enjoyment to the educated eye even a 
 piece of stained glass may give, the following passage 
 will show. It is extracted from a description given by 
 Mr. Beckford of his visit to a Portuguese monastery. 
 "No tapestry,” he says, "however rich, no painting, 
 however vivid, could equal the gorgeousness of tint and 
 the splendours of gold and ruby light which streamed 
 from the long series of stained windows. It played 
 flickering about in all directions on pavement and roof, 
 casting over every object millions of glowing mellow 
 shadows, ever in undulating motion, like the reflection 
 of branches, swayed to and fro by the breeze. We all 
 partook of these tints. The white monastic garments 
 of my conductors seemed as it were embroidered with 
 flowers of Paradise, and our whole procession kept 
 advancing, invested with celestial colours.” Such a 
 passage may well make us reflect on God’s goodness, in 
 the gift of vision. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It refines the 
 mind, and gives it a higher perception of nature and art, 
 by associating them with the God of beauty as the 
 
II2 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 author of all. When the soul is reconciled to God, 
 through faith in the blood of Christ, and has the 
 purifying indwelling of the Holy Spirit, it feels a filial 
 relation to the Most High, which enables it to enjoy 
 God’s works in a new manner. 
 
 My eyes,” said Richard Heber, when ascending the 
 Himalayas, filled with tears ; everything around was 
 so wild and magnificent, that man appeared as nothing, 
 and I felt myself as if climbing the steps of God’s great 
 Temple.” Such, too, were Miss Havergal’s feelings 
 when she visited the Swiss mountains, and thus wrote : 
 
 “ Sunshine and silence on the Col de Balm I 
 I stood above the mists, above the rush 
 Of all the torrents, when one marvellous hush 
 Filled God’s great mountain temple, vast and calm, 
 With hallelujah light, a seen but silent psalm.” 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HARMONIOUS. 
 
 In a scientific department of the Kensington Museum 
 there was once to be seen the tiny telescope through 
 which Galileo got his first glimpse of the magnitude of 
 the heavenly bodies. The spectator, as he looked upon 
 it, could not forget that a new continent of knowledge 
 had been opened up by this little tube. Scarcely less 
 interesting is it for an admirer of music to see in the 
 same building a small harpsichord, and to learn that it 
 is the instrument on which Handel first played those 
 grand melodies, which to the artistic ear have opened 
 up a fresh world of music. 
 
 He who spread nature’s banquet, not content with 
 endowing sound with useful properties, has filled the 
 air with harmony ; and to evoke this is no small 
 addition to enjoyment. Let us not pass through life 
 like some who are said to see little difference between 
 the notes of a saw and a fiddle, or like the African 
 chief who, when taken to a concert, admired chiefly the 
 tuniqg of the instruments. 
 
 If, as the poet says, the music of the spheres cannot 
 now be heard through the grossness of our senses, the 
 attentive listener can detect soft harmonies in nature 
 
 I 
 
1 14 LIFKS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 which escape the careless auditor. The murmuring o 
 the wind/’ says an American writer, '' the rustling of 
 foliage, the gurgling of streams, the bubbling of foun- 
 tains, come upon the ear like the music of early days.” 
 Then there are louder melodies : the wind peals in the 
 storm like a trumpet, or in gentler mood plays with the 
 trees as on the keys of some soft-sounding instrument. 
 Old Ocean’s roar falls upon the soul like a voice from 
 eternity. Echo and reverberation play also grand parts 
 in nature’s orchestra, when in a thunderstorm the dumb 
 Alps open their adamantine lips, and like giants speak 
 one to another, or when, at other times, among the 
 everlasting hills, a sound so soft as a lady’s laugh may 
 produce such a scene as Wordsworth describes : 
 
 ‘^The Rock, like something starting from a sleep, 
 
 Took up the lady’s voice and laughed again. 
 
 * ^ Jjc 5}c 
 
 Fairfield answered with a mountain tone; 
 
 Helvehyn far into the clear blue sky 
 Carried the lady’s voice, and old Skiddaw blew 
 His speaking-trumpet.” 
 
 Then almost every living thing, save the mute fish, 
 contributes a share to nature’s melody. The cricket 
 chirps on our hearth, and in Italy is musical. The lark 
 sings at heaven’s gate ; the wood-pigeon coos from the 
 green woods ; the cuckoo sings of spring’s return ; the 
 ..blithe canary trills in its cage as if it had forgot the 
 freedom of the fields ; the blackbird and thrush chant 
 their jocund song, while the nightingale, dear to the 
 poet, pours its midnight lay. Of all delights in the 
 month of May,” writes William Howitt, ''listening to 
 the nightingale is the greatest, when heard at still 
 midnight, the moon and the stars above you filling with 
 
THE HARMONIOUS. 
 
 IIS 
 
 lustre the clear sky, the trees lifting up their young and 
 varied foliage to the silvery light, the deer quietly 
 resting in the thicket shadows, and the night breeze 
 ever and anon wafting through the air Sabsean odours/’ 
 Then what contributions art makes to melody I 
 
 “ The deep-mouthed hautboys breathe, 
 
 Bassoons pour thunder, cornets mellowing speak; 
 Clarions ring sweetness, silver cymbals clash. 
 
 High over all with lordly voice, that tells 
 Of power and doom, the solemn trumpet swells.” 
 
 And these are but a tithe of the instruments of music 
 which give pleasure to the listener, from the perform- 
 ance of a simple violin enchanting a street crowd, up to 
 the grand effects of a sublime organ thrilling the soul 
 with melody. As Miss Havergal in a Swiss church 
 listened to a simple organ — she tells us that it described 
 a thunderstorm almost as if it had been real ; first the 
 far-off growl among the mountains, then the gradual 
 approach, the moaning gusts of wind, the nearer rumble, 
 the distant echoes, then the sudden awTul crash over- 
 head, and the burst of rain — all ending with voices that 
 seemed to say : “ My soul, praise the Lord/’ 
 
 But surpassing all is the music of the human voice 
 in colloquy or song. Monsieur Lesseps, the cutter of 
 the Suez Canal, has a tongue, it is said, so musical that 
 it would be a treat to hear him say even the twenty- 
 four letters of che alphabet. “I have heard to-night,” 
 
 writes a gentleman, “in a private company, sing, 
 
 ‘ I know that my Kedeemer liveth,’ in strains such as 
 the heavenly host might employ.” Then David’s cure 
 of Saul’s melancholy by means of music finds a close 
 parallel in modern Spanish history. “King Philip of 
 Spain was seized with a violent depression of spirits. 
 
Il6 ' LIFERS PLEASURE CAREEN, 
 
 which made him refuse to be shaved, and incapable of 
 appearing in council or of attending to business. The 
 queen, after all o-ther methods had been tried, thought 
 of essaying what might be effected by music. Farinelli, 
 a celebrated singer, was invited to Spain, and placed in 
 a room adjoining the king^s apartment, where he sang 
 one of his most captivating songs. The king appeared 
 surprised at first, then greatly moved, and at the end 
 of the second air summoned the musician, and loading 
 him with compliments and caresses, asked how he could 
 reward such talents. Farinelli, previously tutored, 
 asked him to be dressed and shaved, which he agreed 
 to, and from that time the disease gave way.’’ Such 
 is the charm of the human voice in song ! 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It saves us 
 from what Carlyle, adverting to Frederick the Great’s 
 musical tastes, calls ''the nonsenses of the thing,” such 
 an addiction to secular music as swallows up too much 
 precious time, and leads its votaries to scenes of frivol- 
 ity or of dissipation and revelry. While, however, not 
 demanding the exclusive devotion of music to sacred 
 themes, it points to the consecration of it to God’s 
 praise as its highest and noblest end, an antepast of the 
 enjoyments of the blessed above. Its language is as of 
 old : "Praise the Lord with the sound of the trumpet ; 
 praise Him with the psaltery and harp; praise Him 
 with the timbrel and dance ; praise Him with stringed 
 instruments and organs. Praise Him upon the loud 
 cymbals ; praise Him upon the high-sounding cymbals. 
 Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.” 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 A SOUND MIND. 
 
 The following curious scene was described to us by 
 one who was present at it. 
 
 An assistant in a lunatic asylum had been tried for a 
 furious assault upon one of the patients, and the judge 
 was so struck with the clear manner in which another 
 of the lunatics, w^ho was called as a witness, gave his 
 evidence, that he wondered that a man who seemingly 
 was perfectly com^pos mentis should be still detained 
 in keeping. The dialogue given below accordingly 
 followed. 
 
 Judge, You seem in a good state of health ? ” 
 
 Lunatic, ''Yes, my lord. Some days I feel better 
 than others, and to-day I am particularly well.'’ 
 
 Judge, "What were you before you were placed in 
 the asylum ? ” 
 
 Lunatic, "A coachman, my lord." 
 
 Judge, "And what was the name of your employer?" 
 
 Lunatic, " The devil, my lord ! " 
 
 Judge {perceiving that he had toicched the weak string 
 in the lunatics mind), " Oh ! I have heard of him. I 
 would advise you when you come out, not to go back 
 
Il8 V LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 into his service, for I am told that he pays very bad 
 wages/’ 
 
 This little incident brings before us the great question 
 of mental health, so important in all that pertains to 
 happiness_, and especially in a fevered age like the 
 present. We shall do well to use our minds’ powers 
 gently, not overstraining them by too much work, 
 giving them ample seasons of rest, and not allowing 
 them to be thrown off their equilibrium by any over- 
 mastering passion, such as money-making. It is of 
 importance, indeed, that we should know a little, of the 
 nature of the leading mental powers, and the part they 
 play in life, so as to use and enjoy them aright. We 
 mention here a few of them. 
 
 The Imagination is a faculty that creates a world of 
 its own, and gives unreal things the semblance of real. 
 Some persons have this power much more strongly 
 developed than others. It is said that when Words- 
 worth and Crabbe met in the shop of John Murray, the 
 publisher, Crabbe put the extinguisher on a smoking 
 taper, while Wordsworth removed it, that he might in 
 the curling wreaths of vapour see emblems of clouds 
 and other beautiful things. Where the one saw merely 
 offensive smoke, the other saw loveliness. So it is in 
 real life. Without imagination, we have only prose ; 
 with it, we have poetry with all its charms, to say 
 nothing of the pleasures of fiction in its improving 
 forms. It requires, how’^ever, a wise restraint. 
 
 The Judgment arranges ideas, weighs things in the 
 balance, and then gives its decisions. Its scales ought 
 to be kept carefully free from prejudice and passion. 
 In the business of life a sound judgment plays an 
 important part in happiness, as was realised by Lord 
 
A PAIR OF POETS. 
 
UBRAflV 
 OF THE 
 
 UM1VERS\TY OF ILUMOIS 
 
A SOUND MIND, 
 
 I2I 
 
 Stowell, when his brother Lord Eldon, giving him a 
 caution as to the danger of putting all his eggs into one 
 basket, saved him from lodging, as he had intended to 
 do, 60,000/. in a bank which shortly afterwards failed. 
 
 The Will is an imperial faculty that governs all the 
 others. A strong will, when directed by the judgment, 
 is an important element in happiness, but becomes a 
 great enemy to it when it is under the control of 
 prejudice or passion : of Henry VIII. Cardinal Wolsey 
 is reported to have said, that, rather than miss any part 
 of his will or appetite, he would put the loss of one half 
 of his kino'dom in danger.’’ 
 
 Wit and Humour are faculties that, temperately and 
 purely used, exhilarate life. If judgment arranges ideas, 
 these faculties may be said to disaiTange them, and 
 present them in attitudes so grotesque and inverted, 
 that the mind is amused and the risible faculty excited. 
 Thus we smile involuntarily, as we read of the fat 
 spider, who explained to one that was lean, that the 
 cause of his plumpness was his good fortune in finding 
 out a place in the church where his web could be fixed 
 without disturbance from any persons coming near it, 
 namely the charity-box ! 
 
 Hojpe is a pleasing faculty, which, seated at the prow 
 of the ship of life, notices through its sheets of iridescent 
 glass, glorious prospects to be reached ere long, but 
 lying in the distance. It is well to keep Hope in order, 
 by making it draw its conclusions from experience, and 
 not from fancy, as Dr. Johnson told a lady, who had 
 hoped that he would ask the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 whom neither she nor he were acquainted with, to give 
 a favour to her son, of whom the doctor and the arch- 
 bishop knew nothing at all. What a pitiable thing life 
 
122 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 becomes to those who shatter the lamp of hope, we may 
 judge by what the Hon. Miss Auckland tells us of the 
 convicts in an Indian prison, sentenced to remain there 
 for life, who petitioned that the punishment might be 
 commuted to a limited term, even if it vrere a hundred 
 years, that they might at least hope it would one day 
 come to an end. 
 
 Memory sits, to continue the simile, at the stern of 
 the ship of life, and keeps the log-book. Happy are 
 they who so store the pages of the book with useful 
 information, and pleasing passages of conduct, that the 
 leaves can bear to be turned over and read. What 
 memory may become, when it, is filled only with records 
 of wasted opportunities, may be judged by the following 
 
A SOUND MIND. 
 
 123 
 
 extract from Mr. Grenville’s diary, after he attained his 
 fortieth year. “Yesterday,” he writes, “I was forty 
 years old. When I reflect how intolerably these forty 
 years have been wasted, how unprofitably spent, how 
 little store laid up for the future, how few the pleasur- 
 able recollections of the past, a feeling of pain and 
 humiliation comes across me, that makes my cheek burn 
 and tingle as I write.” 
 
 Association gives us delight when we come in contact 
 with scenes or objects that have pleasant memories 
 connected with them. Take as a specimen, William 
 Cobbett’s description of his visit, when a man, to the 
 scenes of childhood. “Now,” he said, “came rushing 
 into my mind all at once, my pretty little garden, my 
 little blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes, my pretty 
 pigeons, that I used to feed out of my hands, the last 
 kind words and tears of my gentle, tender-hearted and 
 affectionate mother.” All came back again like a vision, 
 by the spell of association, just as by the same mental 
 law, the memory of a departed friend returned to Mr. 
 Tennyson, when he revisited a river, along the banks of 
 which he had walked with that friend some thirty years 
 before. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It is em- 
 phatically described as giving to us, when we trust 
 Christ, and receive the Holy Spirit, the gift of a sound 
 mind, freeing us from that caldron of tumultuous passions 
 which so often throw the soul of the natural man off 
 its balance. It is also said expressly to “cast down 
 imaginations',^ and to bring them into captivity to 
 Christ, cleansing and purifying and rightly directing 
 the imagining faculty, and making it not a source of 
 wayward dreaming or secret corruption, but, as has 
 
124 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEET. 
 
 been well said, a '' wing to the soul, snow-white and 
 stainless as the lily/’ Judgment it calms and en- 
 lightens, freeing it from prepossessions. In the memoir 
 of a Christian gentleman, an employe in a government 
 office, it is stated, that he could not account for the 
 weight that was paid to his opinion on business, except 
 from the fact that he continually asked in prayer the 
 blessing and direction of God upon it. The Will it 
 renews, strengthening it when feeble, and when obstinate 
 making it yield its stubbornness to the gentle influences 
 of the blessed Spirit. Hope^ too, becomes under Chris- 
 tianity not a delusive mine, in which, as Dr. Johnson 
 said in his fine lines on the death of Robert Levett, we 
 delve from day to day, but a faculty which tells the 
 believer, and tells him truly, that it is better farther on. 
 Memory, too, does not contain a record of disappoint- 
 ments, or speak only of “ fair occasion gone for ever by,’’ 
 but recalls many an hour of work usefully laid out for 
 God ; while, as regards Association, it becomes a pleasing 
 companion with which to retrace the paths of life. Wit 
 and Humour Christianity strips of all that is objection- 
 able. If one wishes, indeed, to see those giddy faculties 
 utilized, without losing any of their vigour, let him read 
 Mr. Spurgeon’s Lectures to his Students, in which there 
 are passages equal to the flashes of a Sydney Smith, 
 but far superior in usefulness. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOME MINOK MENTAL POWERS. 
 
 For the symmetrical treatment of our subject, some 
 other mental powers, illustrating the bounty of our 
 Creator, require to be briefly noticed. 
 
 The story is well-known to many of our readers, of 
 the young artist who carved a statue which charmed 
 all who beheld it, so life-like did it appear. When a 
 celebrated sculptor came, however, after examining the 
 work attentively, he said, '' It wants one thing,’’ and 
 went away. The young artist, afraid that his produc- 
 tion had some unknown fault, pined under the adverse 
 criticism, till his friends learned from the critic, that 
 the one want which the statue had, was its inability 
 to speak ! 
 
 The pleasure which the artist gave and received 
 arose from the imitative faculty. A walk through 
 Kensington Museum, with its sculptures, paintings, and 
 works of art, shows the abundant provision of innocent 
 delight which the Creator, in the pure use of this 
 faculty, gives to us. 
 
 The mimetic faculty (a branch of the imitative one) 
 is also a gratuitous enjoyment, thrown in as a seasoning 
 of life’s pleasures, and is not without its utility. Some 
 
126 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 persons possess in a rare degree the power of repro- 
 ducing the voice and manner of other individuals. 
 Thomas Carlyle greatly admired the way in which 
 Lord Jeffrey exercised this faculty, when on a visit to 
 Carlyle’s moorland home of Craigenputtock. '' He fell,” 
 he says, ‘'into imitating public speakers, and did it 
 with such felicity, such readiness, such ingenuity and 
 perfection of imitation, as I never saw equalled. Our 
 little drawing-room, bright, shining, hidden in a little 
 wilderness, how beautiful it looked to us, became 
 suddenly as if it were a temple of the Muses.” The 
 mimetic faculty requires, however, temperance in its 
 use, from its liability to give offence and pain. Dr. 
 Johnson brought an oaken stick to apply to Foote’s 
 shoulders, when he threatened to mimic him in public ; 
 and Wilberforce, even before his conversion to God, 
 dropped, at the advice of Lord Camden, the use of 
 this dangerous power, which he largely possessed. 
 
 The dramatic faculty imitates not an individual, 
 but the general phases of human nature. It is to be 
 regretted that a power which ought to have been used 
 to give pleasure and profit, should, from the corruption 
 of man’s nature, have so largely ministered to levity, 
 to frivolity, to the dissipation of serious thought, and 
 occasionally even to positive immorality, as to have 
 alienated from it the sympathies of the graver-minded 
 portion of the community. 
 
 The faculty that constructs was beneficently intended 
 by God to enhance the creature’s comforts. It has 
 wonders to show in its subjugation or adorning of nature 
 in the tunnels, bridges, or aqueducts of the engineer, 
 and in the cathedrals, temples, and villas of the archi- 
 tect. As illustrated, too, in our exhibitions of working 
 
SOME MINOR MENTAL TOWERS. I2y 
 
 men’s leisure products, the faculty of construction 
 ingeniously amuses the spare hours of some people. 
 Viewed as a specimen of man’s skill, how wonderful is 
 the following account of a miniature dwelling, seen at 
 a Parisian exhibition, after occupying twenty-five years 
 in its construction. '' Every specimen of wood,” says a 
 writer in the Edinburgh BevievL “ was employed in it. 
 The balustrades and candelabra were of brass and steel 
 — a carpet in the saloon was a rich bit of minute art- 
 work. There were thirteen rooms, each of which was 
 a separate study. The roof which covered the whole 
 was composed of 6000 separate tiles, carved in wood.” 
 Admiration at such a piece of skill, and at the bounte- 
 ous stores of recreation which the lavish goodness of 
 the Creator opens to His creatures, is of course, how- 
 ever, tempered by the inquiry, whether, as in the 
 analogous case of writing the Iliad on a manuscript 
 that could go into a walnut shell, the results attained 
 by such ingenuity justified the consumption of time 
 employed on them. 
 
 The mechanical faculty displays equal wonders in the 
 amazing products of modern machinery, by which God 
 has enabled human toil to be alleviated. A visit to 
 Manchester, as Lord Beaconsfield said, is more sug- 
 gestive of wonders than one to Athens. 
 
 The aesthetic faculty, or taste, has also its pleasures, 
 when not carried to excess. Even of the frivolous 
 butterfly. Beau Brummell, it can be said, that he con- 
 tributed to the public good, for he had a skill in the 
 choice of garments that fitted like a glove, instead of 
 uncouthly hanging on the person like a sack ; taste, 
 too, made the intellectual Sybarite, William Beckford, 
 furnish a room at Lansdowne so harmoniously, that on 
 
128 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 entering it, the visitor paused, as if the next step would 
 dissipate a vision of loveliness; and the like faculty 
 made Macaulay construct sentences which had the flow 
 of stately music. The same principle of taste enables 
 us to enjoy the rich pleasure which the Greater has 
 given to the eye, in grounds laid out picturesquely, as 
 in our own familiar Eegent’s Park, with its water, wood, 
 and bosky recesses, fit for the fauns and hamydryads 
 of classic antiquity to disport themselves in. In China 
 it would appear that beauty alone is not conferred by 
 such places, but moral instruction is promoted also, or 
 at least sought to be. “ The Chinese garden,’’ says a 
 writer, '' allegorizes peonies and chrysanthemums ; con- 
 veys lessons in the shape of borders and parterres, and 
 lectures by moralizing citrons and olives. The visitor 
 saunters carelessly on till a terrific precipice, six feet 
 high, reminds him of his moral danger. He recovers 
 himself, pleased to find he is not yet a lapsed and 
 ruined creature. He follows the guidance of the path 
 till he comes to his next lesson, conveyed at a sudden 
 turn by means of a perfect artificial wilderness, twenty 
 yards square. He pauses, and imbibes the lesson, that 
 the paths of pleasure lead to a barren end.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here, even though it 
 abridges some of the pleasures named in this section. 
 The mimetic faculty it strips of malice and utilizes. A 
 late Secretary of the Religious Tract Society, Mr. Jones, 
 possessed the power in a high degree, but in his hands 
 it only gave zest to his skill in telling some profitable 
 anecdote or incident. Even the dramatic faculty Chris- 
 tianity can employ. Some years ago a Mr. W. H. 
 Miller, a self-taught house-painter in Lambeth, under 
 the patronage of a Christian nobleman, introduced an 
 
SOME MINOR MENTAL POWERS. 
 
 129 
 
 entertainment in which, by means of a lively monologue, 
 innocent music, moral songs, and scenery, he, under the 
 title of Honesty the Best Policy,’’ taught useful lessons 
 to ragged school children, and counteracted the vicious 
 attractions of the penny gaff. In some rare and obvi- 
 ously exceptional cases, the dramatic power has been 
 pressed into the service of the pulpit. Mr. Spurgeon, 
 for instance, with his usual gifted force, has told in 
 his interesting volume on JEccentric Preachers, how 
 William Dawson, after some other preliminary illus- 
 trations, so painted the terrors of the Deluge^ by 
 stepping into his pulpit and shutting the door, that 
 the words, "‘and the Lord shut him in,” came with such 
 awful force upon his hearers, that it seemed as if they 
 felt the floor of the chapel burst up, and the water 
 begin bubbling below, while the great water-floods 
 poured down from above in mighty torrents, and every- 
 thing warned them of the wisdom of fleeing to the 
 arms of the Saviour, before it was, alas 1 too late, and 
 the awful reality which the preacher so vivified had 
 arrived. 
 
 All the other talents to which we have adverted 
 Christianity will sanctify. The artistic faculty it will 
 purify, by making the artist work for Christ. In the 
 language of Miss Havergal to a painter who was 
 sketching in Switzerland : 
 
 “ Paint for His praise, oh, paint for love of Him, 
 
 He is thy Master, let Him hold thy hand ; 
 
 So thy pure heart no cloud of self shall dim, 
 
 At His dear feet lay down thy laurel store. 
 
 As regards good taste, Christianity is the natural 
 ally of this faculty, refining as it does wherever it 
 goes. In the beautifying of the earth with gardens 
 
 K 
 
130 LIFE\S PLEASURE CAREEN. 
 
 and grounds, the Christian will only follow up the 
 pleasure which he already enjoys, in making the moral 
 wilderness to smile, and will see in fair spaces redeemed 
 from the dominion of the thorn and the thistle, emblems 
 of a soul beautified and ornamented by the graces of 
 the Holy Spirit, and transformed from an arid desert 
 to a watered garden. 
 
CHAPTER VII. " 
 
 THE SNAKES OF THE SOUL. 
 
 Some settlers abroad on one occasion built tbeir 
 log huts during the period of winter. Unfortunately 
 they had not made their excavations with suflScient 
 care, for their fire, dreadful to relate, was kindled on 
 a spot where in their winter sleep was a nest of 
 rattlesnakes. Roused out of their torpor by the more 
 than summer heat, the hideous reptiles reared their 
 horrid crests in the habitation, otherwise so comfortable, 
 and, until they were killed, changed the scene from 
 that of peace into one of terror and dismay. 
 
 In dwelling for a little longer on the mental con- 
 ditions necessary to happiness, we may state that it is 
 essential that the heart should be swept clean from 
 the passions of pride, malice, hatred, envy, anger, evil 
 temper, and such like serpents of the soul, which can 
 infuse their venom into the sweetest cup of life, and 
 change nectar into gall. A man like the proud Duke 
 of Somerset, who intimated his commands to servants 
 by signs, because he would not condescend to speak to 
 them, and who would not suffer his children to sit 
 down in his presence, must have lost in affection what 
 he gained in importance. The envious Kenrick, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 the ''savage’’ Wolcot, the "asp” George Stevens, the 
 "polecat” Williams, are the dreadful epithets with 
 which Lord Macaulay has branded some literary men 
 of the last century, from the bitterness which they 
 infused into their writings. The same writer, when 
 speaking of a nobleman whose distinguished intel- 
 lectual power had decayed, but whose hate remained, 
 said, "his spite is immortal ; he is a dead nettle.” Of 
 another eminent political writer, who had been soured 
 by an unjust imprisonment. Miss Mitford wrote : " He 
 was always a very pretty hater, but since his imprison- 
 ment, he has been hatred itself.” "We want men that 
 are good haters,” was an expression used by a German 
 Socialist, after the funeral of a deceased comrade. 
 These instances, however, of the unamiable quality 
 under consideration, are surpassed by what St. Simon 
 has recorded of his malignant satisfaction, when he 
 obtained judgment in a court of law against an 
 opponent, who was present to see his exultation. " I 
 swam,” he says, " in my vengeance. I enjoyed the full 
 accomplishment of the most vehement desires of my 
 life. Insult, disdain, contempt, triumph darted from 
 my eye. I revelled in my rage, and found pleasure in 
 making him feel that 1 did so.” These individuals 
 must necessarily, while such passions were in the 
 ascendant, have been strangers to the pleasures that 
 the qualities of meekness, kindness, and gentleness, 
 like sweet-smelling flowers, diffuse over the soul. 
 They also must have been ignorant of the pure satis- 
 faction of returning good for evil, so well illustrated by 
 the late Dr. Guthrie, when, after being three times 
 rudely cut in the street by a Scottish Lord of Session, 
 he took the opportunity afterwards of finding a good 
 

THE SNAKES OF THE SOUL. 
 
 135 
 
 seat in his church for his Lordship’s housekeeper, 
 accompanying the little act of kindness with some 
 words of good will towards the offender; a piece of 
 courtesy which so disarmed Lord Medwyn of his 
 hostility, that he came immediately with a hearty 
 avowal of regret for his former rudeness, and a cordial 
 renewal of his friendship. 
 
 A writer of the Augustan age of English literature 
 has told us that he considered himself the possessor 
 of various parks, villas, libraries, galleries of paintings, 
 and cabinets of curiosities, because, though not the 
 real owner, he had access to them. But the man with 
 a loving, unselfish disposition can say more than this ; 
 by rejoicing in the good of his neighbour, and feeling 
 unfeignedly thankful for what that neighbour possesses, 
 even though he does not himself share it, he can with 
 such a spirit be said, like the great Apostle of the 
 Gentiles w^alking through the sumptuous streets of 
 Corinth, though having nothing,” yet '' to possess all 
 things.” How even in modern times disinterested love 
 to our neighbour may exist and sweeten life, is shown 
 by an incident narrated in the anecdote books of our 
 youth (and reproduced by Mr. Smiles in his work on 
 Duty), of the old German farmer, who, when asked 
 in the time of war by a foraging party, to conduct 
 them to a field where they might cut down the crop 
 for their use (without any remuneration to the owner), 
 led them past his neighbours field, though it was 
 equally suitable for the purpose, and guided them, 
 with sublime self-sacrifice, to his own. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It washes 
 away, where the Spirit of God dwells in the heart, 
 all the unloving qualities which have been above 
 
136 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDE E, 
 
 enumerated, and replaces them with humility un- 
 feigned, forbearance, long-suffering, and the peaceful 
 graces of the Holy Spirit, making the soul, in proportion 
 as it enjoys them, to have a foretaste of the harmony 
 of heaven. The late Rev. Mr. Ellis, the well-known 
 missionary to the South Seas, says his biographer, 
 ‘'was constitutionally warm in temper. So completely, 
 however, was every word and feeling subdued by his 
 religion to gentleness of bearing, thoughtfulness of 
 meaning and kindly considering for others, that he 
 seemed incapable of provocation or resentment.’’ 
 
 The late Rev. Mr. Dallas exhibited the same practical 
 mode of forgiving injuries which Dr. Guthrie adopted, 
 for he laboured to extinguish a fire which had broken 
 out on the property of a farmer who had much opposed 
 him in his parish. 
 
 Of the true Christian, it is indeed no mere fanciful 
 assertion to make that he walks in love. 
 
CHAPTER VII r. 
 
 DO EIGHT. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN who in the last century was entrusted 
 with the education of some children of the English 
 nobility, took a singular mode of impressing upon them 
 the importance of the virtue of truth. He sought 
 among the workhouses of London for a boy who was a 
 great liar. Unhappily the object of his search was not 
 difficult to find. The liar was then placed among the 
 aristocratic circle, and commenced his practice of telling 
 untruths, till the anticipated result followed. He was 
 found so habitually to lie, that nobody believed him 
 even when he spoke the truth. For the sake of his 
 own interest, therefore, the lad at last found it neces- 
 sary to give over lying, thus indicating to the gentle- 
 man s pupils the utility of truth as a social virtue, and 
 indeed its necessity for the coherence of society. 
 
 It is hardly needful, therefore, that as the next 
 ingredient of happiness we should mention the practice 
 of all the social virtues, such as temperance, diligence, 
 chastity, honesty, justice, generosity, and prudence. 
 These qualities are obviously so necessary for the keep- 
 ing together of the framework of the community, that 
 if duty did not command them, it would be necessary 
 
I3B LIFES PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 to invent them. Honour, respect, and other advan- 
 tages, so closely, as a general rule, follow in their train, 
 and shame and inconvenience so track the footsteps of 
 those who neglect them, that even on what some con- 
 sider the low ground of self-interest, the practice of the 
 social virtues is desirable, though, as we shall see at a 
 later stage of our work, they may at times call for 
 sacrifices of our advantage and ease ; sacrifices which 
 are, however, much lighter to those who are of a loving 
 disposition than to those who are selfish. 
 
 Then, again, in the practice of these qualities we 
 escape the reproaches of conscience, that awful embit- 
 terer of evil-doing. Even a heathen poet could write : 
 
 The vexed mind, its own tormentor, plies 
 A scorpion scourge, unmarked by human eyes. 
 
 Ah ! me, no torture which the poets feign 
 Can match the fierce unutterable pain 
 He feels, who, night and day devoid of rest, 
 
 Carries his own accuser in his breast.” 
 
 This is no overcharged picture. Mr. Froude in his 
 Life of Bunyan, records an incident illustrative of the 
 power of conscience which took place in Bunyan’s time, 
 and which his biographer thinks must have produced a 
 powerful effect on the mind of the Great Dreamer. A 
 malefactor who had spent his life in crime came into 
 an English Court of Assize while it was sitting, and 
 there and then, urged by the upbraiding monitor 
 within, accused himself voluntarily to the judge of a 
 series of robberies which he had committed, and that so 
 effectually, that an indictment being at once prepared, 
 he was forthwith tried, condemned, and executed. 
 
 The robber in Shakespeare is made to say, that 
 conscience compelled him once to restore a purse of 
 
DO RIGHT, 
 
 139 
 
 gold that he found, and that it beggars any one who 
 keeps it. An enlightened conscience is a safe com- 
 panion, however ; and it is well to begin respecting it 
 in our earliest years, if we would avoid embittering our 
 later ones. When the great Dr. Johnson was in the 
 plenitude of his fame, he stood with his hat in his hand 
 for an hour in the market-place of Uttoxeter, as a 
 sincere though eccentric expression of regret for an act 
 of disobedience to his father given way to on that spot, 
 fifty years before, and for which conscience still smote 
 him. It is a terrible thing when a man, after gaining 
 power or wealth by wrong means, is met in his re- 
 tirement to anticipated ease by the inward monitor 
 awaking from its seeming sleep, and clamouring for 
 restitution, and when the soul has to look back on a 
 long life spent in violation of conscience’s commands. 
 Henr;^ Havard, in the course of his picturesque tour in 
 Holland, visited the little village of Oost Sonburg, 
 where, some three centuries before, Charles V. had 
 stayed, after his resignation of imperial power, and 
 previous to his departure for his living grave in the 
 monastery of St. Juste. ''Who shall tell,” Havard says, 
 “ what were the bitter thoughts of this scourge of the 
 Low Countries, as he walked in the shade of the cool 
 and leafy trees I” Remorse, he conjectures, must have 
 been there with its gloomy shadow, as memory recalled 
 many a deed of oppression and persecution wrought by 
 him. And wrong-doing, bears equally bitter fruits in a 
 lower stratum of society. With awful photographic 
 power does Crabbe, "nature’s sternest painter, but its 
 best,” sketch the closing days of the wicked grandsire 
 of a gipsy tribe, and with this picture do we close these 
 calls to a virtuous life. 
 
140 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARBEAT. 
 
 “ Last in the group, the worn-out grandsire sits 
 Neglected, lost, and living but by fits, 
 
 Useless, despised, his worthless labours done, 
 
 And half protected by the vicious son, 
 
 Who half supports him. He, with heavy glance. 
 
 Views the young ruffians who around him dance, 
 
 And, by the sadness in his face, appears 
 To trace the progress of their future years, 
 
 Ere they, like him, approach their latter end. 
 
 Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend.” 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. The soul 
 pardoned by Christ and renewed by Divine grace, prac- 
 tises, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, every social 
 duty that is lovely and of good report, not out of selfish 
 motives, but from the generous desire to please the 
 Saviour and adorn His Gospel in all things. It gets a 
 peaceful conscience, too, by having it purged by faith 
 in the blood of Christ : it keeps conscience afterwards 
 as a friend enlightened by the Word of God, experi- 
 encing the truth, that great peace have they that love 
 God’s law, and that nothing shall offend them. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LOOKING AT THE BKIGHT SIDE. 
 
 In the days of our youth, we met with the story 
 of a Dutch merchant, who was accustomed to meet 
 every trouble with the cheerful words, ''There may 
 something good come out of it yet.’’ When on one 
 occasion he broke his leg, and .his friends were bemoan- 
 ing him, he replied to their sympathies with the usual 
 phrase, "There may something good come out of it 
 yet ; ” and so it proved in the course of time. He^ 
 happened afterwards to be shipwrecked on a cannibal 
 island. His fellow-passengers were devoured in suc- 
 cession before his eyes, after having in the first instance 
 been presented as an offering to the natives’ god. 
 When it came to his turn, however, to be thus offered, 
 a scar left upon the broken limb was considered a 
 blemish, which rendered him an unfit sacrifice. His 
 life accordingly was saved, and he got back to his 
 native land more convinced than ever of the truth of 
 his maxim, and of the wisdom of cheerfully looking at 
 the bright side of things. 
 
 This cheerful habit is indeed a great ingredient of 
 happiness. With some individuals, cheerfulness is more 
 or less constitutional. Mr. Pitt used to tell the story of 
 
142 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 a French nobleman coming to him drowned in tears, at 
 the news of the execution of Marie Antoinette, and ere 
 the tears were dry, pulling out a little fiddle, and 
 asking him to see how nicely his dog could dance. 
 There are many individuals who can thus from natural 
 temperament float like corks over waves of trouble, and 
 whose faces shine like the countenance of the gentleman 
 who always looked as if he had just had a fortune of 
 30,000Z. left to him. Well wrote Miss Mitford : '' High 
 spirits are amongst the best of God’s gifts. I had them 
 once, but anxiety and loneliness have toned them down. 
 The highest I ever knew were Lady Croft’s. They 
 have borne her through all sorts of calamities, her 
 husband’s sad death, the death of her favourite son, 
 comparative poverty, every sort of trial, and still she is 
 the most charming old lady in the world, and as 
 active in mind and body at eighty as most girls are at 
 eighteen.’’ 
 
 Cheerfulness, however, is a quality which admits of 
 cultivation. Unselfishness promotes it. When Sir 
 Walter Scott was dull, he found that talking to please 
 others dissipated his dulness. Innocent wit and humour 
 will also play their part ; some persons have a natural 
 fund of these qualities, and the most trivial circum- 
 stance will develop them. A gentleman, who worked 
 with Charles Lamb in the India House, told us that he 
 one day lightened his prosaic labours by taking up the 
 interest tables used in the office, and writing ‘'that 
 the volume was full of interest, and that, unlike too 
 many volumes in the present day, the interest increased 
 instead of diminishing as you proceeded.” Duty well 
 discharged, however, will be found to make a man more 
 truly cheerful than a thousand jests will when it is 
 
LOOKING AT THE BRIGHT SIDE, 
 
 143 
 
 neglected, as Charles Lamb himself sometimes perhaps 
 felt, when the convivialities of the evening did not bear 
 the morning’s reflection. Care unduly cherished is also 
 a great enemy to cheerfulness, and we should try in a 
 measure to imitate the art of throwing off the worries 
 of business displayed by the great Mr. Pitt, who, when 
 he was awoke in the night, during the mutiny of the 
 Nore, to sign an order for the sinking of a ship of war 
 that had mutinied, signed the order accordingly, and 
 was snoring in sleep again, before the person who had 
 brought the paper had left the apartment. Then to 
 these recipes for cheerfulness must be added the avoid- 
 ance of debt; the belief with the Dutchman of our 
 story, ''that something good may come out of it yet;” 
 with temperance in eating and drinking, as whimsically 
 illustrated by Sydney Smith in a manner which 'has its 
 special application to such of our readers as are apt to 
 feel drowsy on the day of rest, through the incautious 
 indulgence of appetite : " My friend,” he says, " sups 
 late ; he takes strong soup, then a lobster, then a tart, 
 and he dilutes these esculent varieties with wine. The 
 next day I call upon him ; he is going to sell his house 
 in London and retire to the country ; he is alarmed at 
 the state of his daughter s health ; his expenses are 
 hourly increasing, and nothing but a timely retreat can 
 save him from ruin. All this is the lobster ; and when 
 over-exhausted nature has had time to manage the tes- 
 taceous membrane, the daughter recovers, the finances 
 are in good order, and every rural idea effectually ex- 
 cluded from the mind.” This is sensible advice, and 
 worth remembering, though expressed in playful 
 language. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. While not 
 
144 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 neglecting any subsidiary means of promoting cheerful- 
 ness, it applies that merry heart which maketh a con- 
 tinual feast, by settling on a solid ground the problems 
 of eternity, and giving a man that true peace with God 
 which is the grand foundation of cheerfulness. Dr. 
 Marsh, at ninety, in the possession of this peace cheered 
 all around him by his schoolboy glee and gladness of 
 spirit. A Christian, too, can anchor his care on God, 
 as caring for him, and knows that, however dark events 
 may look, there will something good come out of them 
 yet,” because all things, he is assured, work together for 
 good to those who love God. It was this conviction, 
 that made Fenelon so calm when he learned the intel- 
 ligence of his library and archiepiscopal palace being 
 burned, that a friend who had heard of the intelligence, 
 and came to communicate the news to him, could not, 
 on seeing his placid manner, believe that he was already 
 aware of the calamity. Then, Christianity commands 
 its true followers to “ rejoice in the Lord always.” In 
 the language of Mr. Spurgeon, who has been so largely 
 endowed with a cheerful spirit, ‘'It is a very vulgar 
 error to suppose that a melancholy countenance is the 
 index of a gracious heart. I commend cheerfulness to 
 all who would win souls ; not levity and frothiness, but 
 a cheerful, happy spirit. There are more flies caught 
 by honey than with vinegar, and there will be more 
 souls led to heaven by a man who wears heaven in his 
 face, than by one who wears Tartarus in his looks.” 
 
CONTENTMENT. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONTENTMENT. 
 
 Duking the Revolutionary war in America, a few 
 British officers, the bearers of a flag of truce, were 
 invited by the general of the insurgents to stop and 
 dine with him. Accepting this act of courtesy, they 
 were ushered into a tent in which was a camp stove^ 
 before which lay an officer watching some potatoes that 
 were being roasted. After some time had elapsed 
 without any signs of dinner, in the shape of the table 
 being spread with plate, as it would have been at their 
 own luxurious quarters, the visitors were astonished 
 when the officer before the stove wiped away the ashes 
 from the potatoes, now sufficiently cooked, and placed 
 the latter on the table, as the materials, along with a 
 little salt, of the dinner for the general and his com- 
 pany. When they returned back to their own camp, 
 and contrasted this simplicity of living with their own 
 expensive fare, they reflected, and with justice, on the 
 difficulty, with their self-indulgent habits, of maintain- 
 ing a successful conflict with opponents who had learned 
 such contentment with their circunj stances. 
 
 Contentment, or the art of regulating the desires of 
 the mind, has been from time immemorial considered 
 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 the leading ingredient of happiness, as is evident by the 
 saying, that has so long passed current, A contented 
 mind is a continual feast.” It was said of a speaker in 
 the House of Commons, who was reputed to be rather 
 vain, that after speaking, he seemed to sit down, as if 
 he were like the Hindu deity, Brama, satisfied in him- 
 self ; and to be thus satisfied from within, and to have 
 few or no desires for exterior things, was once looked 
 upon as the ideal of what contentment should be. This, 
 however, was really an absurdity. To be without any 
 desires would make man like a log upon stagnant waters, 
 whereas to have healthy desires, and to seek by legiti- 
 mate means to gratify them, is no less a pleasure than a 
 duty. When from insurmountable causes, however, 
 lawful desires cannot be gratified, then to sit down 
 contented is true philosophy. The fox in the fable who 
 kept leaping up at the grapes, and who, when he found 
 after his best exertions that he was unable to reach 
 them, came to the conclusion that they looked rather 
 sour, and walked away contented without them, was 
 more of a true philosopher tlian the world has generally 
 given him credit for being. 
 
 To extinguish vain desires is a part of true content- 
 ment. Some desires are foolish, because unattainable. 
 Such were those of the child who cried for the moon. 
 Some desires are extravagant. Such were those of 
 Beau Brummell in his fallen days, when he would have 
 expensive blacking for his ragged boots ; of the Portu- 
 guese bishop with whom Mr. Ticknor dined, who got 
 his pastry all the way from Holland; of Elizabeth, 
 the Empress of Russia, with her wardrobe of fifteen 
 thousand gowns ; or of Bruhl, the Saxon minister, with 
 his three hundred suits of clothes. Some desires are 
 
CONTENTMENT. 
 
 149 
 
 wicked, as those of Napoleon, when he embezzled, so to 
 speak, Spain from its people and reigning family, or 
 those of the burglar, who steals your plate. It is true 
 contentment to be freed from all desires of the above 
 character. Well said the heathen Emperor Marcus 
 Aurelius, in reference to the government which the 
 mind in this respect required : “ My dominions are 
 greater within than they are without.’’ True content- 
 ment makes us also satisfied with our individual lot, 
 after having tried all reasonable plans to improve it, 
 teaching us to look at the compensations it possesses. 
 Every lot in life has a crook in it, and every one also 
 has a counterbalancing advantage. Contentment gives 
 us a magnifying glass with which to see the latter, like 
 the Spaniard, who when eating cherries always put on 
 his spectacles, that they might appear larger to his eye. 
 
 Contentment is especially useful, when we meet with 
 reverses of fortune, by making us bring down our mind 
 to our circumstances, and cut our coat according to our 
 cloth. John Howe showed this spirit, when, obliged to 
 leave the court on the death of Oliver Cromwell, he 
 retired contentedly to his beloved obscurity and little 
 flock at Great Torrington. Contentment is, in short, 
 the true elixir of life. With it, everything pleases, while 
 without it, as Carlyle said, even suns and solar systems 
 would not satisfy. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. It teaches us, 
 with the great Apostle, to say, “I have learned in 
 whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.” The 
 Christian is thankful in prosperity, patient in adversity. 
 Feeling that he deserves nothing, he is grateful for every- 
 thing, and rather counts up the mercies he possesses, than 
 those that he wants. An Italian once said that all his 
 
ISO LIFERS PLEASUFE G A EDEN. 
 
 days were fine days. If it rained, it pleased him that 
 it did so, because it was the will of God that it should 
 rain. If the weather was fine, it pleased him that it 
 should be so, not only because it was agreeable to the 
 senses, but because it was the will of God that it should 
 be fine. Thus he had no disappointments. In like 
 manner, the Christian, seeing the hand of God as 
 arranging or permitting all events, while he will make 
 prudent plans, and act with as much care as if every- 
 thing depended on his own exertions, is satisfied with 
 the results, as having the hand of God in them, and as 
 seeing that hand “ from seeming evil still educing good.” 
 Thus he learns in everything to give thanks, and enjoys 
 Divine contentment, having, in proportion as he learns 
 to submit to what Madame Guyon calls '"the sweet 
 beloved will of God,” no disappointments. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 WRECKERS OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 In the British Museum there used to stand the 
 beautiful Portland vase, which had come down from 
 
 THE POKTLA.ND VASE. 
 
 .antiquity as one of the triumphs of art in the olden 
 time. The visitor hung over it in silent admiration ot 
 its grace and beauty. One day, however, a drunken 
 
152 
 
 LIFES PLEASURE GARDEAT. 
 
 maniac entering the room, struck the vase and shivered 
 it to pieces, causing a thrill of lament and a note of 
 indignation to go through the land, at a calamity which 
 had destroyed so fair an object. 
 
 In a similar manner, disappointing as it is to arrive 
 at such a conclusion, the gift of innocent enjoyment or 
 happiness, committed to our trust at the beginning of 
 life, and the ingredients of which have been briefly 
 detailed in the preceding pages, is seldom (even when it 
 has not been sacrificed at the shrine of duty) found by 
 mortals to remain an unbroken possession, when life 
 closes. Some men, it is true, by wise moderation, fore- 
 thought, prudence and favouring circumstances, appear 
 to have enjoyed through life an almost unclouded 
 felicity. The late Sir Henry Holland, a physician of 
 our own day, seems to have had some such experience. 
 '' His book,’’ says a biographer, describing Sir Henry’s 
 Autobiography, ''is remarkable, as being the picture of 
 a life entirely successful, entirely pleasurable, and 
 entirely happy. Never before did we meet with any 
 human lot entirely without vicissitude or disappoint- 
 ment, or without any change except from one desired 
 success to another.” This experience, however, even if 
 reliable, is most exceptional. Although, no doubt, after 
 all deductions are made, there is a large amount of 
 enjoyment in the world, yet multitudes play havoc with 
 V their happiness, never taking even the trouble to inquire 
 as to its conditions. 
 
 Many lose health by neglecting its simplest rules, to 
 say nothing of those who destroy it by intemperance, 
 like the statesmen of last century mentioned by Mr. 
 Trevelyan in his Life of Fox, who, through their deep 
 carousings, were old before middle age. Men’s calling 
 
WRECKERS OF HAPPINESS, 
 
 153 
 
 in life, which ought to give them so much pleasure, 
 becomes a source of misery through their neglect of its 
 successful conditions; or when they have callings really 
 suitable to them, they will grumble continually at them, 
 like Charles Lamb, and only find out when they get, as 
 he did, insipid leisure, how much they have been quar- 
 relling with occupation, their best friend. The wrong 
 use of that excellent gift, money, is a fruitful marrer of 
 happiness. Some are not provident, and are tortured by 
 debt. Others, who have made money, are injudicious in 
 their mode of investing it, and then break their hearts 
 over their loss, like a tradesman in our neighbourhood, 
 who, after making 20,000Z. in his business, committed 
 suicide, because a portion of his wealth took wings. 
 Others fix their aims amiss, and are chagrined because 
 they are not accomplished. '' My hopes, public and 
 private,” said Hazlitt, writing in a soured spirit, '' have 
 been left in ruins.” Marriage, that great fountain of 
 felicity, often becomes, through want of prudence, a 
 Marah of bitterness. Some grieve because they cannot 
 get married, while others, like the poor man in the 
 story, would go to the clergyman who tied the nuptial 
 knot to get it untied, did they not know that, like him, 
 they would be referred to the sexton in the churchyard 
 as the one who unmarried people. Crime dashes the 
 vase of happiness all to pieces. “ This is what I was,’’ 
 wrote a youth in prison under a portrait of himself, 
 which he had drawn on the wall, looking bright and 
 happy. ''This is what I am,” was his second inscrip- 
 tion on another portrait of himself, miserable and in his 
 felon’s dress. Some never taste life’s sweet intellectual 
 pleasures, their souls remaining rude as unsculptured 
 blocks of marble. How little, again, culture and genius 
 
f54 
 
 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 can do without correct conduct to produce happiness is 
 shown by Lord Byron writing a mournful epitaph on 
 the thirty-third year of his wasted life. Then evil 
 tempers, unregulated passions, and an accusing con- 
 science can make, has been strongly but truly said, an 
 incessant hell of people’s thoughts. Bereavement, again, 
 comes to all in turn, and many a man sees a domestic 
 paradise blighted, because 
 
 “ The mossy marbles rest 
 On the lips that he has prest 
 In their bloom : 
 
 And the names he loved to hear 
 Have been carved for many a year 
 On the tomb.” 
 
 Accident will sometimes, as Mr. Carlyle says, cause a 
 thunderbolt to fall out of a blue sky, wrecking people’s 
 happiness, as the sudden death of his wife did his, just 
 in the moment of his reaching a great prize in life, and 
 being installed Rector of Edinburgh University. Then 
 there are unavoidable natural calamities. The earth- 
 quake destroyed Lisbon last century, and almost did 
 the same with the island of Ischia the other day. 
 Again, the earth has been in every age a field of 
 blood ; and the vast proportion of our race which has 
 perished by the sword almost exceeds credibility or 
 calculation ; nor can the compassionate mind think on 
 the subject without horror and amazement. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that the difficulty of the 
 postman of our opening chapter, in finding a happy 
 man to whom to give his letter, was not so greatly to be 
 wondered at, and that though prudence will do much to 
 secure happiness, it will not do all. Many a fair and 
 beauteous flower, it is true, grows in Life’s Pleasure 
 
WRECKERS OF HAPPINESS. I 5 5 
 
 Garden, but evidently the plant of perfect felicity 
 cannot be reared on earth. 
 
 Christianity can do the best for us here. It does not 
 profess to give us our rest on earth, but treats life as a 
 mixed condition, in which joy and sorrow are both 
 necessary to perfect the character. It will largely 
 exempt its followers, however, from those sorrows which 
 men s follies and unregulated passions bring upon them, 
 and in the retrospect of life can make them re-echo 
 Miss Havergahs glowing experience : 
 
 ‘‘Thou, Divinest Wisdom, Thou hast said, 
 
 Thy ways are paths of pleasantness, and all 
 Thy paths are peace ; and that the path of him 
 Who wears Thy perfect robe of righteousness 
 Is as the light, that shineth more and more 
 Unto the perfect day. ^ 
 
 Master, I set my seal that Thou art true, 
 
 Of Thy good promise not one thing hath failed. 
 
 Yes, there is tribulation ; but Thy power 
 Can blend it with rejoicing. 
 
 . . . Every step leads on to more and more ; 
 
 From strength to strength Thy pilgrims pass, and sing 
 The praise of Him who leads them on and on, 
 
 From glory unto glory, even here.” 
 

 
 • -■•.0 '-, .;■' ' 
 
 . . ..r‘ 
 
PART III. 
 
 THE KELATIOHS OF PAIN TO PLEASUEE. 
 
THE EELATIONS OF PAIN TO PLEASURE. 
 
 We now arrive at the last division of our subject, the 
 relations of Pain to Pleasure. Keeping up the simili- 
 tude of a garden, we leave, so to speak, the parterres 
 where the flowers were decked in gay colours. The 
 plants that now court our notice are dark in hue, and 
 at flrst sight unpleasant to the eye. It may be, how- 
 ever, that a nearer acquaintance will reconcile us to 
 them, and show us that they possess at least healing 
 properties. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE WARNINGS OF PAIN. 
 
 We well remember the day, when at the public 
 school at which we were educated, 'Hhe Tawse” or 
 Scottish substitute for the English rod, were first pro- 
 
 THE TAWSE. 
 
 duced. We had — in order, we presume, that our master 
 might more easily discover the bent of our characters — 
 been allowed, for a few days, a considerable amount of 
 
THE WARNINGS OF PAIN, l6l 
 
 licence ; but the production of the grim leathern strap, 
 which was the school instrument of punishment, pro- 
 duced a very salutary dread upon the mind. At the 
 junior academy we had left, a bag of sugar comfits had 
 been kept for the reward of well-doing young pupils, so 
 that we were thus early taught that pain and pleasure 
 are the two pivots on which human actions turn. 
 
 The firsts and, so far as we have gone, the only 
 purpose of pain in nature would appear to be, to warn 
 us by the disagreeable feelings attached to it, of the 
 duty of avoiding actions that cause it; just as pleasure, 
 by the agreeable sensations annexed to it, has seemed 
 to be nature's voice calling us to do the things that 
 produce pleasurable feeling. During the last century. 
 Sir Francis Delaval was a man notorious for his addic- 
 tion to fun and frolic, in which he fooled away his time 
 and money. At the close of his career, when still in 
 the prime of life, he found himself a moral wreck, and 
 expressed himself to the late Mr. Edgeworth in some- 
 what the following terms : '' Let my example,” he said, 
 ''warn you of a fatal error into which I have fallen. I 
 have pursued amusement or rather frolic instead of 
 turning my ingenuity and talents to useful purposes. 
 If I had employed half the time and half the pains 
 which I have wasted in exerting my powers on trifles, 
 instead of making myself a conspicuous figure at places 
 of amusement, instead of giving myself to gallantry 
 which disgusted me and disappointed me, instead of 
 dissipating my fortune and tarnishing my character, . . . 
 I should have been a useful member of society and an 
 honour to my family.” To the same effect spoke a 
 poor prisoner at the assizes to Eowland Hill, who asked 
 him, seeing him in deep dejection, what he had done 
 
1 62 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 that brought him there. Oh, sir,” was his reply, I 
 have done that which has undone me, and which I 
 cannot undo.” 
 
 These are specimens of the warnings of pain. On 
 the other hand, in such instances as the following, 
 nature, as it were, produces her bag of sweetmeats, and 
 allures us to imitate their example by the pleasure 
 she has attached to them. My trials,” said the late 
 William Jay of Bath, at the end of a long life, ‘'have 
 been few compared with my comforts. My pleasures 
 have been cheap and simple, and therefore very numer- 
 ous. I have enjoyed without satiety the seasons and 
 the sceneries of nature. I have relished the bounties 
 of Providence, using them with moderation and thank- 
 fulness. I have delighted in the means of grace. 
 Unutterable have been my delights in studying and 
 perusing the Scripture.” To the same effect spoke, in 
 his old age, the Rev. Haldane Stewart : " The Lord has 
 provided me a quiet habitation and resting-place, in 
 which by His blessing I may close my days in peace. 
 He has brought me to my seventieth year, and up to 
 this day has fed, guided, preserved, protected and 
 strengthened me, and has given me so great a portion 
 of health as to enable me to discharge duties for which 
 I had not strength twenty years ago. I close the year 
 in health of body and peace of mind. How can I render 
 thanks for all His benefits 1 ” 
 
 Were our subject, then, to terminate here, the lessons 
 which the previous pages indicate would be found to 
 be— 
 
 First, that we should, so far as is consistent with 
 duty, studiously avoid pain and follow pleasure. 
 
 Second, that the materials of pleasure, when they are 
 
THE WARNINGS OF PAIN. 1 63 
 
 collected, are most fully enjoyed when they are used in 
 an unselfish spirit. Happiness may be compared in 
 this respect to the apple which was carved by a knife, 
 one side of whose blade was deleterious and the other 
 healthful. The man who carves the fruit of pleasure 
 selfishly is sure to taste dissatisfaction in some form, 
 just as the man who carves it in an opposite spirit will 
 find it yield him true satisfaction. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. Did the 
 question of happiness now end, and did it consist only 
 in the attainment of the pleasures we have enumerated 
 in these pages, Christianity would give us, as we have 
 shown, the best share of these pleasures and double the 
 enjoyment of them, by the unselfish spirit it inculcates. 
 There are other aspects of the question, however. 
 
 M 2 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CHEMISTRY OF PAIN. 
 
 When Napoleon the First invaded Egypt, he en- 
 deavoured to produce on the natives an impression of 
 the power of their conquerors, by getting the savans, 
 who accompanied the expedition, to perform before 
 them some of the more remarkable of the experiments 
 of chemistry. Marvellous indeed is the chemist's 
 power. He can change bitter into sweet, hard into 
 soft, black into white, and transmute apparently the 
 very character of material substances. 
 
 This illustration brings us to what we may properly 
 term ''the chemistry of pain." When Nature warns us, 
 as we have seen in the last chapter, by the infliction of 
 pain of the danger of violating her laws, she makes 
 sometimes that very infliction the means of producing 
 a new form of enjoyment to those who bear it aright. 
 Pain, for instance, often causes those who suffer it to 
 have for the first time a true sympathy with other 
 sufferers. ''Sweet," writes our great poet, pursuing 
 this line of thought, "are the uses of adversity." 
 " Being myself not unacquainted with misfortune," 
 Virgil represents Queen Dido as saying to the hero of 
 the Mneid, "I learn to have pleasure in succouring 
 
THE CHEMISTRY OF PAIN. 1 65 
 
 others.” During the last century, one of the English 
 judges having, as a sort of frolic, got himself fastened in 
 the village stocks, and having been accidentally left in 
 them longer than was intended by an absent-minded 
 companion, he afterwards when he visited as a county 
 gentleman his quarter sessions, felt much sympathy for 
 those who were about to be sentenced to this kind of 
 punishment, asking his brother magistrates if they had 
 ever been put in the stocks, as if not, he had been. 
 '"Mrs. Murray of Keith,” says Dr. Charteris in his 
 admirable little book on Almsgiving, “when suffering 
 from incurable lameness, bequeathed two thousand 
 pounds for the^ support of the incurable poor, giving a 
 preference to the lame.” Dr. Swift felt the approach of 
 lunacy, and founded an hospital for lunatics. 
 
 Pain when alleviated, too, gives a sense of relief to 
 the sufferer unknown to the man in full health. On 
 this principle, Paley says that he is not sure, but that a 
 man is a gainer by suffering a moderate interruption of 
 health for a couple of hours out of the four and twenty. 
 Beautifully does Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer paint the 
 rapturous feelings of returning health felt by the invalid, 
 when, speaking of his experience of the water cure at 
 Malvern, he tells of his enjoyment in rising from a 
 sleep sweet as childhood’s, the impatient rush into the 
 open air, while the sun was fresh and the birds first 
 sang, his sense of an unwonted strength in every limb, 
 the delicious sparkle of the morning draught of water 
 from the fountain, the walk along the green terrace on 
 the mountain side, with the rich landscape far and wide 
 below, while the breeze but exhilarated the blood and 
 lifted the mind into a purer joy. 
 
 Then pain, rightly improved, developes the virtues of 
 
1 66 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 patience and resignation. The face of Lady Sidmoath^ 
 a great sufferer, was taken, Miss Mitford tells us, by a 
 sculptor, as a model of sweetness. Pain, again, rebukes 
 inordinate self-love, and chastens it into humility, a 
 process beautifully described by Longfellow, in one of 
 his poems, where he paints 
 
 “ Robert of Sicily, Lord of Allemaine,” 
 
 puffed up with pride, like Nebuchadnezzar of old, and 
 taught, like the same monarch, by a temporary eclipse 
 of reason, the wisdom of a lowly mind. The loss of 
 five beloved children in a few days from fever, prepared, 
 it cannot be doubted, Catherine Tait for (what might 
 otherwise have been a dizzy elevation) that exalted 
 position in society which she afterwards filled and 
 adorned, as the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 Pain has even a mysterious alliance with pleasure ; 
 the poet speaks of there being such a thing as ''the 
 luxury of woe.” Mary of Modena seems to have sought 
 this pleasure, when, after the death of J ames the Second 
 of England (a husband dear to her, whatever faults the 
 historian has found in him), she shut herself up in a 
 chamber to which artificial light only was admitted, and 
 fondly, though unwisely, gave herself up to a pleasing 
 mourning for the departed object of her affections. To 
 complete the matter, Charles Lamb has shown that 
 there is even a humorous side to the picture of pain, as 
 represented in sickness. " To be sick,” he says, " is to 
 enjoy monarchical prerogatives. Compare the silent 
 tread and quiet ministry, almost by the eye only, with 
 which he (the invalid) is served, with the careless 
 demeanour, the unceremonious goings in and out, 
 slamming of doors, or leaving them open, of the very 
 
THE CHEMISTRY OF PAIN, 1 6 / 
 
 same attendants, when he is getting a little better, and 
 you will confess, that from the bed of sickness (throne 
 let me rather call it) to the elbow-chair of convalescence, 
 there is a fall from dignity amounting to a deposition/’ 
 Christianity does the best for us here. The Saviour 
 proves Himself to be the great alchemist, making those 
 whom He afflicts, though not willingly, learn from 
 sanctified affliction gratitude for mercies when restored, 
 and the right use of them in the future, together with 
 patience, resignation, a dissipation of the illusions of 
 life, and preparation for the world to come. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CONQUEST OF PAIN. 
 
 Duping the Peninsular campaigns of Lord Welling- 
 ton an unexpected check Avas given by him to the 
 French general Marmont. The latter seemed, as 
 Wellington retreated before him, to be driving his 
 opponent into the most hopeless defeat, till suddenly 
 Marmont found himself confronted with the lines of 
 Torres Vedras (a strong range of fortifications which 
 had been secretly constructed), and was then obliged 
 himself to change positions with the English general, 
 and retreat in turn. 
 
 Noav, so far as we have gone, our task has been a 
 very simple one. We have had only to show how, by 
 care, pain should be avoided and the pleasurable emo- 
 tions of life produced. Pain, although it sometimes, as 
 we have seen in the last chapter, produces good, has 
 hitherto appeared a thing caused solely by vice, folly or 
 imprudence. So far, we repeat, our task has been a 
 simple one ; but now the moral lines of Torres Vedras 
 appear, and we come to a class of actions where pain is 
 not produced by want of prudence or by misconduct, 
 but where it must be faced and conquered, if Ave wish 
 to be led to the higher forms of life’s enjoyment. 
 
THE CONQUEST OF PAIN 
 
 169 
 
 Few men, for instance, had an evening of life more 
 enjoyable than the Duke of Wellington. He saw 
 statues erected to his honour; he had a mansion and 
 estate purchased for him by the nation, and titles con- 
 ferred upon him. He lived, too, in the hearts of his 
 countrymen, and had the sweet satisfaction of reflecting 
 that he had been the instrument by which peace had 
 been restored to Europe. Yet this enjoyment had 
 been attained, not by avoiding pain, but by confronting 
 every form of it in the battle-fleld. 
 
 It is the same, as regards mental pain at least, in 
 many other walks of life. What difficulties explorers 
 have had to face, from Columbus downwards ! What 
 obloquy Clarkson and Wilberforce also had to endure 
 in abolishing the slave trade ! What a fight with those 
 who tried to rob him of the benefit of his patent as the 
 inventor of the steam engine had James Watt ! In 
 short, energy, patience, perseverance, determination, 
 courage, a strong will and the temporary denial of 
 pleasure, with the power of facing and conquering pain, 
 seem requisite to success in life, and to the enjoyment 
 of that retrospect of difficulties overcome which is so 
 delightful. ''I looked down on my dress — says 
 William Cobbett, after he had made his mark in life, 
 and when describing his visit to the scenes of his early 
 days, where he had been a simple peasant boy — '"I 
 looked down on my dress — what a change ! How altered 
 my state ! I had dined the day before at a Secretary 
 of State’s in company with Mr. Pitt, and had been 
 waited on by men in gaudy liveries. I had had nobody 
 to assist me in the world, no teachers of any sort, no 
 one to shelter me from the consequences of bad, and no 
 one to counsel me to good behaviour. The distinctions 
 
1 70 LIFE'S FLEAS [/EE GARDEN, 
 
 of rank, birth and wealth all became nothing in my 
 eyes, and from that moment I resolved never to bend 
 before them/’ A similar burst of enthusiasm broke 
 from the lips of Stanley, the African explorer, as he 
 reviewed the perils he had undergone in his successful 
 search for Livingstone. 
 
 A writer has said that the Anglo-Saxon race does 
 not thrive in climates where there is no frost; and 
 without difficulty and pain there would be no room for 
 the heroic element in life. Pain too becomes a stand- 
 ard by which the nobility of actions is weighed. To 
 help your neighbour to a dish at table is a courteous, 
 but could scarcely be called a noble act. To jump 
 overboard, however, as Captain Bate did, into water 
 swarming with sharks, and rescue a fellow-creature 
 from drowning, is an action, the grandeur of which is 
 estimated by the risk of pain which he faced ‘and con- 
 quered in the performance of it. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here. In peaceful 
 times it is like a ship of war dressed out with flags 
 for a fete;, but in the sterner seasons of life, it is like 
 the same ship manned for action. It strengthens the 
 will, and warns us to be ready, if needful, to endure 
 hardness, and to And pleasure in pain subjugated 
 and made a spring of pleasant recollection. Pobert 
 Moffatt, the eminent missionary, was, at the age of 
 eighty-six, entertained at a banquet given to him in 
 the Mansion House. When he ate of its delicacies, 
 they must have tasted the sweeter, as he remembered 
 his toils in Africa, and the day when he had to tie up 
 his stomach with a thong of leather, in order to blunt 
 the pangs of hunger. Dr. Marsden, as he rejoiced to 
 see the progress of the Gospel in New Zealand, must 
 
THE CONQUEST OF PAIN, 
 
 171 
 
 have recalled his early antecedent toils with a keen 
 zest, just as John Wesley, when he walked as an old 
 man through a place in Cornwall, and was greeted 
 with affectionate respect by the inhabitants, must have 
 pleasingly thought of the day when, some forty years 
 before, he had been mobbed in that very town. Then 
 Christianity makes the subjugation of pain a source of 
 enjoyment, from the more than mortal supports which 
 she gives under it. Thus, for instance, a modern writer 
 paints a Christian prisoner s experience in a dungeon 
 called Little Ease, to which he had been consigned, and 
 where a person could neither sit, stand, nor lie down. 
 ‘‘I could pray,” he says, ''as Jonah did. That was the 
 first gleam of inward light. After that it grew, aye and 
 grew till I was no more alone, because God companied 
 with me ; till I was no more a hungered, because God 
 fed me ; till I thirsted no more, because God led me to 
 living fountains; till I wept no more, because God 
 wiped away all tears from my eyes. Ere I came out, 
 I would not have changed Little Ease for the fairest 
 chamber in the king s palace, if thereby I had left God 
 behind.’^ 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PARADOX OF LIFE. 
 
 On one occasion, during a tour in North Wales, we 
 paid, with other tourists, a visit to the grave of the 
 Greyhound Bedgellert, under the shadow of Snowdon. 
 The story of this dog is a familiar but touching one. 
 His master, so runs the legend, coming home one day, 
 missed his infant son. His cloak lay stained with blood, 
 and the jaw of Bedgellert bore similar traces of gore. 
 Rushing to the conclusion that the blood was that of 
 his child, and that the dog had killed him, the chief 
 in a fit of fury slew the dog, when on lifting up the 
 cloak there was the infant peacefully sleeping, and 
 beside it the carcase of a wolf which the noble hound 
 had destroyed while defending the child from it. A 
 stone was erected by the sorrowing chief to the memory 
 of the faithful animal, and a sympathizing crowd of 
 tourists still visit it, and heave a sigh of regret for the 
 brave dog that may be said to have lost its life through 
 doing its duty. 
 
 Our last chapter has shown pain conducting to higher 
 forms of pleasure. We come now, however, to a class 
 of actions, by the performance of which, though they 
 are not careless or vicious actions, but actions of an 
 
THE PARADOX OF LIFE. 
 
 173 
 
 excellent character, all pleasure is extinguished. The 
 touching lessons from the tomb of Bedgellert are 
 repeated when we examine the monuments of some 
 of our distinguished Englishmen. Here, for instance, 
 under the shadow of Gloucester Cathedral, is a monu- 
 ment erected to Bishop Hooper. It is not raised to 
 commemorate how he enjoyed the architecture of the 
 old structure, its solemn music and the retirement of 
 the palace grounds. No ! the monument was erected 
 because he consented to suffer the pain of being burned 
 alive, rather than swerve from what he considered truth. 
 Here again is a monument to Havelock, not because he 
 enjoyed life, but because he parted with it in rescuing his 
 countrymen at Lucknow. In another part of London 
 is a monument to Franklin and his gallant companions, 
 who died victims to cold and hunger in the cause of 
 science. In St. Paul’s there is a monument to Howard, 
 vrho died prematurely from fever while pursuing his 
 mission of philanthropy. The chiirches of our sea- 
 coasts contain tablets to the memory of gallant life- 
 boat-men, who in the prime of life and in the full 
 capability of enjoying pleasure, died in rescuing others 
 from shipwreck. We see therefore that there is in 
 nature a higher principle than the mere conservation 
 of our own enjoyment, and that some of the grandest 
 and noblest actions in life — actions in the train of which 
 follow remote and present advantages to the world — 
 actions, too, which will be remembered with commend- 
 ation to the end of time — lead to the extinction of all 
 pleasure on earth, for the obvious reason, that in the 
 performance of them life itself is extinguished. 
 
 This, then, is the great paradox of life, that nature 
 should stir us up by the strongest motives of prudence 
 
174 LIFE'S PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 to cultivate apparently as the chief end of our being, 
 the many innocent and delicious forms of enjoyment 
 enumerated in these pages, and should then at times 
 place us in circumstances where it is needful, if we 
 would promote .the good of the community, and have 
 the respect of conscience, that we should throw them 
 
 FRANKLIN MONUMENT. 
 
 unhesitatingly away. In the first and second parts 
 to this little treatise, we have been climbing, so to 
 speak, the mountain of pleasure; but on arriving at 
 its summit we discover that the peak of the mountain 
 of duty, or self-sacrifice, soars above it, in the blue vault 
 of heaven. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SELF-SACEIFICE. 
 
 In Westminster Abbey is the well-known monument 
 to Garrick, on which he is represented as being drawn 
 on one side by Tragedy, and on the other by Comedy, 
 unable apparently to decide which has the stronger 
 claim upon him. 
 
 The position of man in this world, having within him 
 lawful inclinations, that so strongly urge him to enjoy 
 pleasure, and another principle called duty, which at 
 times so powerfully commands him to deny pleasure, 
 is one of those mysteries that stir thought to its 
 depths, when the question is fully considered. Vice, 
 as may be seen every day in the world around us, can 
 destroy enjoyment, by destroying life itself, and virtue, 
 from the instances given in the previous chapter, would, 
 strange as it may seem, appear to have the same 
 effect. But the results in the two cases are very 
 different. The sacrifices to vice are followed by shame ; 
 those to virtue by honour. The latter sends down a 
 stream of benefits to the community; the other only 
 mischief. 
 
 Self-sacrifice in the cause of duty is also not un- 
 accompanied by solid satisfaction, which sometimes 
 
I/6 
 
 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN, 
 
 deprives the act of the feeling of pain, and renders it 
 even pleasurable. In the memorable naval engagement 
 between the Shannon and the Ghesapeahe, the two 
 commanders seem to have been so animated by profes- 
 sional enthusiasm and patriotic ardour as to have entered 
 on the deadly encounter as if they had been going to 
 a feast. '' My soul,’’ said Sir Richard Granville, when 
 dying after his world-renowned conflict with fifty-three 
 Spanish vessels — “ my soul most joyfully departeth out 
 of this body.” Love, too, can take the pain out of the 
 self-sacrifice, as it must have done in the case of the 
 Russian serf who threw himself down among the wolves 
 that were following the sledge, in order that, while 
 devouring him, his master, to whom he was attached, 
 might have time to escape. The prospect, too, of an act 
 of self-sacrifice sending down a stream of benefits to 
 posterity will reconcile to a generous mind any personal 
 loss it may occasion. 
 
 Meaner considerations will also sometimes come into 
 play ; for persons who are ambitious of reputation may 
 be urged on to self-denying actions by the fame that 
 often follows in their train. In order to make self- 
 sacrifice more easy, the virtue has been honoured with 
 every form of commendation. Oliver Cromwell stimu- 
 lated this feeling among the English navy, by in- 
 terring brave Admiral Blake among the Kings of 
 England in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel in Westminster 
 Abbey. Cowardice, or an inclination to shrink from 
 self-sacrifice, has been loaded, on the contrary, with 
 every kind of contumely. The youth of America who 
 stayed at home during the great contest between North 
 and South, must have winced under the withering 
 sarcasm of Wendell Holmes’s lines : 
 
f 
 
 
I; 
 
 
SELFS A CRIFICE. 
 
 179 
 
 ‘‘ Bring him the buttonless garment of woman, 
 
 Cover his face, lest it freckle and tan ; 
 
 All the fair maidens about him shall cluster, 
 
 Pluck the white feather from bonnet and fan, 
 
 Make him a plume, like a turkey-wing duster. 
 
 That is the crest for the sweet little man.” 
 
 Accustomed as most men are in modern times to 
 consider happiness as the great object of pursuit in 
 life, it is curious to notice the different estimate of 
 its value which has been sometimes taken. Among 
 nations given to warlike pursuits, there is of course 
 little time to study the enjoyment of life, and it 
 has been frowned down, as being supposed to weaken 
 self-sacrifice. Fortitude in bearing pain is in these 
 communities the great quality to be cultivated, such as 
 was shown by the Irish chief, who at his baptism took 
 no notice until the ceremony was over, of the spiked 
 pole which bore the cross having been driven by acci- 
 dent through his foot into the earth. The Romans 
 took as their type of a model man, Regulus, who could 
 face torture and death rather than shrink from duty, 
 while they lavished contempt on the inhabitants of 
 Sybaris, who used couches stuffed with rose-leaves, 
 offered rewards for new dishes, and banished cocks 
 from the town, that the inhabitants’ sleep might not be 
 broken by their crowing. Mr. Carlyle in his writings 
 has fostered this love of the heroic, and the contempt of 
 enjoyment as the chief end of life. Our theory of duty, 
 he says, ought to be constructed on '' the greatest noble- 
 ness,” not on “the greatest happiness” principle. For 
 a son of man, there is, in his opinion, no crown so noble 
 as a crown of thorns. The type of character he would 
 have admired, would have been that of such an indi- 
 vidual as Algernon Sydney, who, when the executioner 
 
l8o LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEN. 
 
 noticed that he shifted his position after he had knelt 
 down at the fatal block, and asked him, '' Do you wish 
 to rise again ? ’’ sublimely replied, Not till the general 
 resurrection; strike on.” The ascetic, too, instead of 
 using enjoyment in moderation, has treated it as an 
 enemy to be extirpated, retiring as he has done to the 
 deserts, wearing sharp-pointed crosses of steel next his 
 skin, and mingling his food and drink with bitter 
 ingredients. 
 
 These illustrations, extravagant as some of them are, 
 may, however, teach us some useful lessons. In our 
 pursuit of happiness we should also learn to take every 
 kind of enjoyment with temperance, and hold it in 
 strict subjection to duty. Mr. Ellis, whose name is so 
 honourably associated with missions, could, in England, 
 enjoy his rose culture, his literary studies, and refined 
 home pleasures, and yet leave them at an hours notice, 
 when intelligence of the death of the persecuting Queen 
 of Madagascar summoned him to a perilous journey to 
 that island. If all the pleasures in life, it has been 
 well said, could be purchased for a penny, that penny 
 should not be paid for them^ if to acquire it duty had 
 to be sacrificed. Pleasure, it -^-has been often noticed, is 
 best enjoyed when it follows in the pa.th of duty; and 
 Benjamin Franklin uttered a wise proverb when he 
 made his poor Richard say, '' Shun pleasures, and they 
 will run after you.” Professor Whewell defined happi- 
 ness as being duty and pleasure harmonized ; and most 
 of our readers, at this stage of the subject, will consider 
 the definition a sound one. 
 
 Christianity does the best for us here — 
 
 1. Its tendency is, when there are no exceptional 
 circumstances at work, to promote, as we have 
 
SELFS A CRIFJCE, 
 
 i8i 
 
 endeavoured to show in the notes appended to each of 
 our chapters, the true enjoyment of every innocent 
 form of happiness. When self-sacrifice, however, is 
 needful, it changes duty into pleasure by making it be 
 done from love to God and man. It thus harmonizes 
 duty and pleasure. 
 
 2. It gives men Divine supports of the Holy Spirit 
 in the hour of trial, which can make them yield up even 
 life itself with pleasure and triumph. 
 
 3. When life is sacrificed for Christ, it is found again 
 in heaven. 
 
 4. It explains that self-sacrifice, with all its inter- 
 ruptions to the ordinary forms of happiness, arises 
 chiefly from a condition of things (war, for instance) 
 in which there has been some disobedience, on one side 
 or other, to the commands of God, and that when evil 
 ceases, in a future happy state of existence, there will 
 be no occasion for the moral nature to be strained in 
 the manner in which sin has caused it to be strained 
 here. Duty and pleasure will then be synonymous. 
 There will be no more pain, and every tear shall 
 be wiped away by the Redeemer from the eyes of 
 His people. 
 
CHAPTER VI, 
 
 A SCENE AT VENICE. 
 
 VENICE BY KIGHT. 
 
 When a distinguished modern journalist visited 
 Venice at the time of certain festivities prepared for 
 the King of Italy, in commemoration of that citys 
 
A SCENE AT VENICE, 1 83 
 
 deliverance from the Austrian rule, he attended a state 
 ball given on the occasion. The ball-room was situated 
 on an island, and when the journalist, oppressed with 
 heat, retired from the gay and gorgeous scene into one 
 of the cool passages, he saw that the whole festival, 
 splendid and glittering as it was, was surrounded by the 
 sea, which loomed black in the shadows of night, while 
 in the foreground lay the gondola of the King of 
 Naples, ready to carry him away when the festivities 
 were over. Even so seemed to the journalist, forced 
 into a moralizing vein, man s position in this world, he 
 enjoying life for a brief hour, but having the brightest 
 moments of his existence all girdled round with a sea of 
 mystery, while death's dark ship waited to bear him 
 away — ah ! whither ? 
 
 In like manner, when the reflecting soul perceives 
 that happiness on earth is at the best so chequered a 
 thing, and that those who play the noblest part upon 
 life's stage are often the first to be hurried away from 
 it, through the performance of duty, it is forced to 
 inquire, whether earth be the final scene of its being. 
 Deeper thoughts, too, will arise within the soul; thus 
 pondering life's enigmas. It will ask itself the ques- 
 tion, ''Who made this great framework of order and 
 beauty?" How, too, does the Creator regard rUan's 
 evil conduct ? Does He view vice merely as an infirmity 
 of His creature, undesirable, it is true, but still a mere 
 mistake, the result of imperfect training and unfavour- 
 able surroundings ; or, as conscience whispers, does He 
 regard it as a crime to be answered for in a future state 
 of being? In vain, however, does the soul sound 
 material nature for an answer to these inquiries. It 
 sees only as the journalist saw it, life girdled round 
 
I 84 LIFE'S FLEAS C/EE GARDEN, 
 
 with a dark sea of mystery, and death waiting at the 
 close to convey ns to some undiscovered shore. 
 
 Christianity does the best for the heart weighed 
 down by these perplexities ; but its remedy we reserve 
 for our next and concluding chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A LARGE HOUSE IN THE CITY. 
 
 It is an impressive spectacle, in one of the crowded 
 thoroughfares of the City of London, to walk through 
 the library of a great iostitution there, which has had 
 translated into some two hundred and fifty languages 
 that wonderful volume called ''the Bible.’" We see 
 manuscripts hoary with time, volumes the masterpieces 
 of the printer’s art, some coeval with the birth of print- 
 ing, others that have just unlocked the entangled puzzle 
 formed by the alphabets of semi-barbarous tribes, the 
 whole collection showing the interest which this volume 
 has created among the children of men, and how it has 
 indeed given light to every age and borrowed it from 
 none. 
 
 If we would have an answer to the enigmas men- 
 tioned in the preceding chapter, and have the true 
 tenure of happiness explained to us, we must consult 
 this volume, which attests its heavenly origin no less by 
 a wonderful body of evidence, in the shape of type, 
 miracle and prophecy, than by the Divine simplicity 
 and dignity of its style, as well as by the purifying 
 influence it has exerted on the life of all who truly 
 receive its teachings. 
 
lB6 LIFERS PLEASURE GARDEAr. 
 
 These Scriptures inform us that there exists a great 
 and glorious Creator, Lord God Almighty, who when 
 He framed this world, presented as the condition of His 
 creatures’ happiness, that they should love Him with 
 all their heart, and each other as themselves. The 
 representative man having disobeyed his Creator, trans- 
 mitted, in virtue of the hereditary law, the taint of 
 disobedience to his offspring ; and man’s will being no 
 longer submitted to God’s will, misery has followed as a 
 consequence, causing rivers of tears to stream both in 
 public and private. Sin, or disobedience to the Divine 
 Will, is represented, indeed, as having introduced into 
 the moral world the same confusion that would follow 
 in the physical world, were the sun or the ocean to 
 refuse obedience to the conditions which have been 
 impressed on them. To add to this solemn view of 
 matters, Scripture informs us that man is endowed 
 with the perilous gift of living hereafter, and that as sin 
 produces misery here, it will, unless arrested in this 
 world, flow on in a stream of eternal sorrow to its 
 victims. 
 
 The remedies the Scriptures point out for this state 
 of things are familiar to our readers. The Son of God 
 became incarnate, made Himself an offering for sin, and 
 by His sacrifice put it away and made a full satisfaction 
 to Divine justice. When the soul receives this message 
 of love, and surrenders itself with penitent trust into the 
 hands of its Divine Benefactor, it obtains pardon and the 
 indwelling'' presence of God Himself by the gift of the 
 Holy Spirit. This Divine indweller frees the soul from 
 the dominion of evil, renews it in purity, and makes it 
 once more move on the pivot of love to God and man, 
 finding its happiness in pleasing the Divine Being, 
 
A LARGE HOUSE IN THE CITY. 1 8 / 
 
 and in extending the knowledge of His goodness to 
 others. 
 
 In a world governed so much by selfishness, and 
 where there are so many obstacles to virtue, Christianity 
 necessarily comes into contact with evil, and its followers 
 have in consequence to suffer. It frankly warns them 
 therefore in the outset, that they may have to undergo 
 the loss of all things, finding their supports in an 
 interior joy, a peace that passeth all understanding, and 
 the prospect of a heaven of glory and of undying bliss. 
 In peaceful times, however, Christianity has an alliance 
 with every lawful pleasure, giving the best of it to its 
 followers. The Christian is therefore the only truly 
 happy man. In him duty and pleasure harmonize, and, 
 whether in a self-sacrificing or enjoying attitude, he has 
 the best of what earth can give. In life Christianity 
 enabled the pious Doddridge to say, '' My days begin 
 and end in pleasure, and seem short because they are 
 so delightful ; ” while in the hour of death it caused 
 Edward Bickersteth to exclaim, The visions of glory 
 that break in upon me have been quite indescribable.’’ 
 
 TUE END. 
 
London: R. Clay, Sons, wnd Taylor, Bread Street Hill. 
 
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 in cloth^ gilt edges ; or 2 5^*. each in morocco^ 
 elegant. 
 
 “THOSE HOLY FIELDS.” Palestine Illustrated by Pen and 
 Pencil. By the late Rev. Samuel Manning, LL.D. 
 
 THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS. Egypt and Sinai. Illus- 
 trated by Pen and Pencil. By the late Rev. Samuel 
 Manning, LL.D. 
 
Eight Shillings each^ in handsome cloth boards; or 
 2^s. each in morocco ^ elegant. 
 
 PICTURES FROM BIBLE LANDS, drawn witli Pen and 
 Pencil. Edited by the Rev. S. G. Green, D.D. 
 
 ENGLISH PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the 
 late Rev. Samuel Manning, LL.D., and the Rev. S. G. 
 Green, D.D. 
 
 SCOTTISH PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By S. G. 
 Green, D.D., author of “English Pictures,” “French 
 Pictures,” &c. 
 
 FRENCH PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the 
 Rev. Samuel G. Green, D.D. 
 
 SEA PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By Dr. 
 Macaulay, Editor of “The Leisure Hour,” &c. 
 
Eight Shillings each, in handsome cloth boards; or 
 2^s. each in morocco, elegant. 
 
 PICTURES FROM THE GERMAN FATHERLAND, drawn 
 with Pen and Pencil. By the Rev. Samuel G. Green, 
 
 D.D. 
 
 INDIAN PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the 
 Rev. William Urwick, M.A. 
 
 ITALIAN PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the 
 late Rev. Samuel Manning, LL.D. New Edition. 
 Revised. 
 
 SWISS PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By the late 
 Rev. Samuel Manning, LL.D. 
 
 AMERICAN PICTURES, drawn with Pen and Pencil. By 
 the late Rev. Samuel Manning, LL.D. New Edition. 
 
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