Such is the complicated constitution of human nature, that a man without
a predominant inclination is not likely to be either useful or happy.
He who is every thing is nothing, is as true of our sensitive as of our
intellectual nature. He is rather a bundle of little likings, than a
compact and energetic individual. A strong desire soon subdues the
weaker, and rules us with the united force of all that it subjugates.
Such being the force of human feelings, it must embitter our daily lives
if our employments are unsuited to our talents and our wishes; yet how
few, alas, are so fortunate as to be gaining either wealth or fame while
gratifying an inclination!
In the best of all arts, the art of living, the greatest skill is not to
wait; but, as you run along, snatch at every fruit and every flower
growing within your reach; for, after all that can be said, youth, the
age of hope and admiration, and manhood, the age of business and of
influence, are to be preferred to the period of extinguished passions
and languid curiosity. At that season, our hopes and wishes must have
been too long dropping, leaf by leaf, away. The last scenes of the fifth
act are seldom the most interesting, either in a tragedy or a comedy.
Yet many compensations arise as our sensibility decays:
Time steals away the rose, ’tis true;
But then the thorn is blunted too.[88]
Life, without some necessity for exertion (says Mr. Walker[89]), must
ever lack real interest. That state is capable of the greatest enjoyment
where necessity urges, but not painfully; where effort is required, but
as much as possible without anxiety; where the spring and summer of life
are preparatory to the harvest of autumn and the repose of winter. Then
is every season sweet, and, in a well-spent life, the last the best—the
season of calm enjoyment, the richest in recollections, the brightest in
hope. Good training and a fair start constitute a more desirable
patrimony than wealth; and those parents who study their children’s
welfare rather than the gratification of their own avarice or vanity,
would do well to think of this. Is it better to run a successful race,
or to begin and end at the goal?
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Footnote 88:
Richard Sharp.
Footnote 89:
In _The Original_, a series of Periodical Papers, published in 1835,
by Thomas Walker, M.A., one of the Police Magistrates of the
Metropolis.
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