How many persons do we all know, who resemble Petrarch, as described by Zimmerman: Displeased 'because he was not where he could not go, because he 'could not obtain every thing he wished, and because he looked in vain for something it was impossible to 'find.'

I

One day, conversing with an officer, who superintended a martello tower, then building on the coast of Sussex: Sir,' said the officer, in answer to my question, how he liked his situation, 'I would rather be in 'the deserts of Arabia than in this miserable place. ' have been in all quarters of the world, but I declare to you, sir, as a man of honour and a gentleman, that 'the heats of Hindostan and the snows of Canada are ' preferable to the monotony of this inconceivable place! "If I would drink a bottle of wine, there is nobody to 'drink a bottle of wine with. Indeed, dulness eats, 'drinks, and sleeps in the centre of these walls; the fosse is a circular grave; the drawbridge leads, as it were, to the hole of Calcutta ; and set me down for a 'kite, if I would not rather be a mouse or a ring-ouzle, 'than spend three months more in such a pestilent place as this. What I am to do in the winter, Heaven C only knows!

I wish to the Lord I was once more in 'the back settlements of Canada!'

Things are frequently to the mind as cinchona is to the stomach. One small event has, occasionally, greater influence on our happiness than twenty others, let them be ever so large. So in respect to cinchona; out of sixty grains, one grain has an equal, if not superior, influence to that of the whole original quantity*.

*Med. Chir. Rev., Jan. 1826.

The rich live, as it were, too much on the contemplation of their diamonds; but let us illustrate what we would say by a passage from the poets:

• tion.

'Tamar! thy pastures, large and rich, afford
Flowers to thy bees, and herbage to thy sheep;
But, batten'd on too much, the poorest croft

Of thy poor neighbour yields what thine denies*.*

Some are always praising the past, and condemning the present; others, as I said before, are never happy in the place they chance to be. The last town, city, or country is the place for them. And this reminds me of Pilatus and the poet of the Seasons. Discontented with the world ' and with himself,' says Gibbont in relation to Leo Pilatus, he depreciated his present enjoyments, while 'absent persons and objects were dear to his imaginaIn Italy, he was a Thessalian; in Greece, a ' native of Calabria; in the company of the Latins, he disclaimed their language, religion, and manners: but no sooner was he landed at Constantinople, than he ' again sighed for the wealth of Venice and the elegance of Florence.' 'That enthusiasm,' said Thomson in a letter from Rome to Lord Melcombe, which I had upon me with regard to travelling, goes off, I find, very 'fast. One may imagine fine things in reading ancient authors, but to travel is to dissipate the vision. A C great many antique statues (where several of the fair 'ideas of Greece are fixed for ever in marble) and the 'paintings of the first masters, are indeed most enchant'ing objects. How little, however, of these suffices! 'How unessential are they to life!'

There are some scenes, however, so delightful to elegant men, that it were impossible to love. any half so well; and to these Bowles alludes in the following passage:

'Fair scenes, ye lend a pleasure, long unknown
To him who passes weary on his way;

The farewell tear, which now he turns to pay,
Shall thank you; and whene'er of pleasures flown
His heart some long-lost image would renew,

Delightful haunts! he will remember you.'

The feeling, alluded to just now, extends even to the appreciation of men. In England a man of this kind talks of Frenchmen; in France, of Germans; in Germany, of the Swiss; and when in Switzerland, perhaps, he will love to dwell upon the superiority of an Italian, a Spaniard, or a Portuguese. If some feel perpetually discontented with what they see, others, as idly, give splendour even to the solitude of deserts. 'Sweet are the songs of Egypt on paper,' said Ledyard*. Who is not ravished with gums, palms, dates, figs, 'pomegranates, circassia, and sycamores, without recollecting that amidst these are dust, hot and fainting 'winds, bugs, musquitoes, spiders, flies, leprosy, fevers, ' and almost total blindness ?' Let those travel to Egypt, then, who cannot exist without seeing monuments, erected by Tyranny to the frantic demon of Superstition.

Some of the lower classes at Venice value the houses and streets in which they live so highly, that they have never seen the square of St. Mark.

A horse or a tree,' says Madame de Stael, would be truly

* Life and Travels of Ledyard, p. 404.

'wonderful phenomena.' There are, also, thousands in London who never saw Westminster Abbey.

To blame the present and admire the past is an error in the education of most. To traverse distant regions, and neglect the land of our birth, is equally characteristic. Thousands visit the Alps and Pyrenees, who would not give one single marvedi to see the plain of Perth, the residence of the Lady of the Lake, the woods and rocks of Westmoreland, or the imprisoned paradise of Nant-Frangon.

LXXV.

WHO THINK NOTHING WORTH HAVING THEY HAVE NOT.

'Before I die I cast you from me.

Lie there and perish: I am rid of you:

Or deck the splendid ruin of some other.'

Eschylus; Agamemnon. Potter.

THUS do many men act by their friends; and some, following the example of Faulconbridge, rail at that which is farthest from their reach, or the farthest from their state.

'Whiles I'm a beggar I will rail,
And say, there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say, there is no vice but beggary.'

King John, act ii., sc. 2.

Hence arises the lamentable circumstance, that all men, as Young has it, are

The

'For ever on the brink of being born.'

passage from King John' reminds me of another, equally eloquent of sense, in a poem called the 'New Morisco' (published in 1600).

"When his purse is swolne but sixpence bigge,

Why then he sweares, "Now, by the Lorde, I thinke All beere in Europe is not worth a figge;

A cuppe of clarette is the only drinke."

And thus his praise from beere to wine dothe goe,
E'en as his purse in pence dothe ebbe and flowe.'

Yet I could never despise the conduct of the fox in regard to the grapes. Most persons laugh at poor Reynard but I esteem him one of the wisest of men who regards all fruits sour he cannot obtain. A French poet, therefore, has a passage very congenial to my taste, where he hints, that nothing is worth having that is not in our own possession.

'Pour m'assurer le seul bien

Que l'on doit estimer au monde,

Tout ce que je n'ai pas, je le compte pour rien.'

The late William Windham said, very justly, to Mr. Boswell, that we are more uneasy from thinking of our wants, than happy in thinking of our acquisitions; and this remark reminds me of what Lord Clarendon says of Weston, Earl of Portland :-' He took more pains of 'inquiring into other men's affairs than in the dis

*

charge of his own; and not so much joy in what he ‹ had as trouble and agony in what he had not.'

It was an awful time for the Trojan, when Venus removed the film from his eyes, and addressed him after the following manner :—

'Adspice: namque omnem, quæ nunc obducta tuenti

Mortales hebetat visus tibi et humida circum

Caligat, nutem eripiam.'

* Vol. i., p. 47.