Part 29

Hazlitt, in one of his discursive essays, says, "I stopped these two days at Bridgewater, and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn and read Camilla. So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy; but wanting that have wanted everything." Alas! who has not wanted one thing? Fortunatus had a cap, which when he put on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he was there. Aladdin had a lamp, which if he rubbed, and desired anything, immediately it was his. If we each had both, there would still be something wanting--one thing more. Donatello's matchless statue of St. George "wanted one thing," in the opinion of Michel Angelo; it wanted "the gift of speech." The poor widow in Holland that Pepys tells us about in his Diary, who survived twenty-five husbands, wanted one thing more, no doubt--perhaps one more husband. "Hadst thou Samson's hair, Milo's strength, Scanderbeg's arm, Solomon's wisdom, Absalom's beauty, Croesus's wealth, Caesar's valor, Alexander's spirit, Tully's or Demosthenes's eloquence, Gyges's ring, Perseus's Pegasus, and Gorgon's head, Nestor's years to come, all this," saith Burton, "would not make thee absolute, give thee content and true happiness in this life, or so continue it." Proverbially, we never are, but always to be, blest. "A child," said the good Sachs, "thinks the stars blossom on the trees; when he climbs to the tree-tops, he fancies they cluster on the spire; when he climbs the spire, he finds, to reach them, he must leave the earth and go to heaven." There is an old German engraving, in the manner of Holbein, which represents an aged man near a grave, wringing his hands. Death, behind, directs his attention to heaven. In the palace Sciarra is a very expressive picture by Schedone. On the ruins of an old tomb stands a skull, beneath which is written--"I, too, was of Arcadia;" and, at a little distance, gazing at it in attitudes of earnest reflection, stand two shepherds, struck simultaneously with the moral. What we have is nothing, what we want, everything. "All worldly things," says Baxter, "appear most vain and unsatisfactory, when we have tried them most." The prize we struggled for, which filled our imagination, when attained was not much; worthless in grasp, priceless in expectation. The one thing we want is one thing we have not--that we have not had.

"I saw the little boy, In thought how oft that he Did wish of God, to scape the rod, A tall young man to be.

"The young man eke that feels His bones with pain opprest, How he would be a rich old man, To live and lie at rest:

"The rich old man that sees His end draw on so sore, How he would be a boy again, To live so much the more."

This hunger, this hope, this longing, is our best possession at last, and fades not away, unsubstantial as it may seem. It builds for each one of us magnificent castles. "All the years of our youth and the hopes of our manhood are stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults; and we know that we shall find everything convenient, elegant, and splendid, when we come into possession." Curtis, in one of his exquisite sketches, treats this element of us as no other author has. He calls it his Spanish property. "I am the owner," he says, "of great estates; but the greater part are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. I have never been to Spain myself, but I have, naturally, conversed much with travelers to that country, although, I must allow, without deriving from them much substantial information about my property there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them you easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest and in the loveliest positions.... It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find that it is the case with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. It is always so with rich men.... It is not easy for me to say how I know so much as I certainly do about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand large and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. All the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscapes, that I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps; so fine, indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect of them from the highest tower of my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland. The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as those of Italy, and my desire of standing in the Coliseum and of seeing the shattered arches of the aqueducts, stretching along the Campagna, and melting into the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched. The rich gloom of my orange groves is gilded by fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, looking over the high plastered walls of Southern Italy, hand to the youthful travelers, climbing on donkeys up the narrow lane beneath. The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies upon their edge, and Damascus stands in my garden. I am given to understand, also, that the Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions. The Golden Horn is my fish preserve; my flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is distilled from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna--all in my Spanish domains. From the windows of these castles look the beautiful women whom I have never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. They wait for me there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my eye so long ago, now bloomed into an impossible beauty. The lights that never shone glance at evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that were never spread. The bands I have never collected play all night long, and enchant the brilliant company, that was never assembled, into silence. In the long summer mornings the children that I never had, play in the gardens that I never planted.... I have often wondered how I shall ever reach my castles. The desire of going comes over me very strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how I can arrange my affairs so as to get away. To tell the truth, I am not quite sure of the route,--I mean, to that particular part of Spain in which my estates lie. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody seems to know precisely.... Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense trade with all parts of the world will know all that I have come to inquire.' 'My dear sir,' answered he, wearily, 'I have been trying all my life to discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there--none of my captains have any report to make. They bring me, as they brought my father, gold-dust from Guinea; ivory, pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and travelers of all kinds; philosophers, pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except one young poet, and he died in a mad-house.'... At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had ever heard of the best route to our estates. He said that he owned castles, and sometimes there was an expression in his face as if he saw them.... 'I have never known but two men who reached their estates in Spain.' 'Indeed,' said I, 'how did they go?' 'One went over the side of a ship, and the other out of a third story window,' answered Titbottom. 'And I know one man that resides upon his estates constantly,' continued he. 'Who is that?' 'Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any day at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or going to call upon his friend the Grand Lama, or dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon, or receiving an embassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever I go to see him, Slug insists that I am the pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he entertains me in the most distinguished manner. He always insists upon kissing my foot, and I bestow upon him, kneeling, the apostolic benediction. This is the only Spanish proprietor in possession, with whom I am acquainted.'... Ah! if the true history of Spain could be written, what a book were there!"

"Gayly bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado.

"But he grew old, This knight so bold, And o'er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado.

"And as his strength Failed him at length, He met a pilgrim shadow: 'Shadow,' said he, 'Where can it be-- This land of Eldorado?'

"'Over the Mountains Of the Moon, Down the Valley of the Shadow, Ride, boldly ride,' The shade replied, 'If you seek for Eldorado!'"

Steele, in a paper of The Spectator, dilates in this vein. "I am," he says, "one of that species of men who are properly denominated castle-builders, who scorn to be beholden to the earth for a foundation, or dig in the bowels of it for materials; but erect their structures in the most unstable of elements, the air; fancy alone laying the line, marking the extent, and shaping the model. It would be difficult to enumerate what august palaces and stately porticoes have grown under my forming imagination, or what verdant meadows and shady groves have started into being by the powerful feat of a warm fancy. A castle-builder is ever just what he pleases, and as such I have grasped imaginary sceptres, and delivered uncontrollable edicts, from a throne to which conquered nations yielded obeisance. There is no art or profession, whose most celebrated masters I have not eclipsed. Wherever I have afforded my salutary presence, fevers have ceased to burn and agues to shake the human fabric. When an eloquent fit has been upon me, an apt gesture and proper cadence has animated each sentence, and gazing crowds have found their passions worked up into a rage, or soothed into a calm. I am short, and not very well made; yet upon sight of a fine woman, I have stretched into proper stature, and killed with a good air and mien. These are the gay phantoms that dance before my waking eyes, and compose my day-dreams. I should be the most contented happy man alive, were the chimerical happiness which springs from the paintings of fancy less fleeting and transitory. But alas! it is with grief of mind I tell you, the least breath of wind has often demolished my magnificent edifices, swept away my groves, and left no more trace of them than if they had never been. My exchequer has sunk and vanished by a rap on my door, the salutation of a friend has cost me a whole continent, and in the same moment I have been pulled by the sleeve, my crown has fallen from my head. The ill consequence of these reveries is inconceivably great, seeing the loss of imaginary possessions makes impressions of real woe. Besides, bad economy is visible and apparent in builders of invisible mansions. My tenants' advertisements of ruins and dilapidations often cast a damp on my spirits, even in the instant when the sun, in all his splendor, gilds my Eastern palaces."

"Alas!" cries Heine, in his Confessions, "fame, once sweet as sugared pine-apple and flattery, has for a long time been nauseous to me; it tastes as bitter to me now as wormwood. With Romeo I can say, 'I am the fool of fortune.' The bowl stands full before me, but I lack the spoon. What does it avail me that at banquets my health is pledged in the choicest wines, drunk from golden goblets, if at the same time I, with all that makes life pleasant denied to me, may only wet my lips with an insipid, disagreeable, medicinal drink? What benefit is it to me that enthusiastic youths and maidens crown my marble bust with laurel wreaths, if meanwhile the shriveled fingers of an aged hired nurse press a blister of Spanish flies to the back of my head? What does it avail me that all the roses of Sharon tenderly glow and bloom for me? Alas! Sharon is two thousand miles away from the Rue d'Amsterdam, where I in the dreary solitude of my sick-room have nothing to smell, unless it be the perfume of warmed-over poultices."

"When I look around me," said Goethe, "and see how few of the companions of earlier years are left to me, I think of a summer residence at a bathing-place. When you arrive, you first become acquainted with those who have already been there some weeks, and who leave you in a few days. This separation is painful. Then you turn to the second generation, with which you live a good while, and become really intimate. But this goes also, and leaves us lonely with the third, which comes just as we are going away, and with which we have, properly, nothing to do.... I have ever been considered one of Fortune's chiefest favorites; nor can I complain of the course my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been nothing but toil and care; and in my seventy-fifth year, I may say that I have never had four weeks of genuine pleasure. The stone was ever to be rolled up anew."

"What a multitude of past friends can I number amongst the dead!" exclaimed another venerable worthy in literature. "It is the melancholy consequence of old age; if we outlive our feelings we are nothing worth; if they remain in force, a thousand sad occurrences remind us that we live too long." It was Sir William Temple's opinion that "life is like wine; who would drink it pure must not draw it to the dregs." Dr. Sherlock thought "the greatest part of mankind have great reason to be contented with the shortness of life, because they have no temptation to wish it longer." De Tocqueville said, "Man is a traveler toward a colder and colder region, and the higher his latitude, the faster ought to be his walk. The great malady of the soul is cold. It must be combated by activity and exertion, by contact with one's fellow-creatures, and with the business of the world. In these days one must not live upon what one has already learnt, one must learn more; and instead of sleeping away our acquired ideas, we should seek for fresh ones, make the new opinions fight with the old ones, and those of youth with those of an altered state of thought and of society."

The following authentic memorial was found in the closet of Abdalrahman, who established the throne of Cordova, and who, during his life, enjoyed thousands of wives, millions upon millions of wealth, and was the object of universal admiration and envy: "I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honor, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man, place not thy confidence in this present world!"

Voltaire makes Candide sit down to supper at Venice with six strangers who were staying at the same hotel with himself, and as the servants, to his astonishment, addressed each of them by the title of "your majesty," he asked for an explanation of the pleasantry. "I am not jesting," said the first, "I am Achmet III.; I was sultan several years; I dethroned my brother, and my nephew dethroned me. They have cut off the heads of my viziers; I shall pass the remainder of my days in the old seraglio; my nephew, the Sultan Mahmoud, sometimes permits me to travel for my health, and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." A young man who was close to Achmet spoke next, and said, "My name is Ivan; I have been Emperor of all the Russias; I was dethroned when I was in my cradle; my father and my mother have been incarcerated; I was brought up in prison; I have sometimes permission to travel attended by my keepers, and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." The third said, "I am Charles Edward, King of England; my father has surrendered his rights to me; I have fought to sustain them; my vanquishers have torn out the hearts of eight hundred of my partisans; I have been put into prison; I am going to Rome to pay a visit to my father, dethroned like my grandfather and myself, and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." The fourth then spoke, and said, "I am King of Poland; the fortune of war has deprived me of my hereditary states; my father experienced the same reverses; I resign myself to the will of Providence, like the Sultan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, and the King Charles Edward, to whom God grant a long life; and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." The fifth said, "I am also King of Poland; I have lost my kingdom twice, but Providence has given me another in which I have done more good than all the kings of Sarmatia put together have ever done on the banks of the Vistula. I also resign myself to the will of Providence, and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." There remained a sixth monarch to speak. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am not as great a sovereign as the rest, but I, too, have been a king. I am Theodore, who was elected King of Corsica; I was called 'your majesty,' and at present am hardly called 'sir;' I have caused money to be coined, and do not now possess a penny; I have had two secretaries of state, and have now scarcely a servant; I have sat upon a throne, and was long in a prison in London, upon straw, and am afraid of being treated in the same manner here, although I have come, like your majesties, to pass the Carnival at Venice." The other five kings heard this confession with a noble compassion. Each of them gave King Theodore twenty sequins to buy some clothes and shirts. Candide presented him with a diamond worth two thousand sequins. "Who," said the five kings, "is this man who can afford to give a hundred times as much as any of us? Are you, sir, also a king?" "No, your majesties, and I have no desire to be."

Bacon's contemporary and cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, who was principal secretary of state to Queen Elizabeth and James I., and ultimately lord high treasurer, when he was acknowledged to be the ablest, as he appeared the most enviable, statesman of his time, wrote to a friend, "Give heed to one that hath sorrowed in the bright lustre of a court and gone heavily over the best seeming fair ground. It is a great task to prove one's honesty, and yet not spoil one's fortune.... I am pushed from the shore of comfort, and know not where the winds and waves of a court will bear me; I know it bringeth little comfort on earth; and he is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh this way to heaven." Bacon himself says, in one of his Essays, "Certainly great persons have need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling they cannot find it; but if they think with themselves what others think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within; for they are the first that find their own griefs, though they be the last that find their own faults."

Madame de Stael, surrounded by the most brilliant men of genius, beloved by a host of faithful and devoted friends, the centre of a circle of unsurpassed attractions, was yet doomed to mourn "the solitude of life." A short time before her death, she said to Chateaubriand, "I am now what I have always been--lively and sad."

The illustrious Madame Recamier, "after forty years of unchallenged queenship in French society, constantly enveloped in an intoxicating incense of admiration and love won not less by her goodness and purity than by her beauty and grace," writes thus from Dieppe to her niece: "I am here in the centre of fetes, princesses, illuminations, spectacles. Two of my windows face the ball-room, the other two front the theatre. Amidst this clatter I am in a perfect solitude. I sit and muse on the shore of the ocean. I go over all the sad and joyous circumstances of my life. I hope you will be more happy than I have been."

Madame de Pompadour, recalling her follies, serious matters they were to her, said to the Prince de Soubise, "It is like reading a strange book; my life is an improbable romance; I do not believe it." "Gray hairs had come on like daylight streaming in,--daylight and a headache with it. Pleasure had gone to bed with the rouge on her cheeks."

"Ah!" wrote also Madame de Maintenon to her niece, "alas that I cannot give you my experience; that I could only show you the weariness of soul by which the great are devoured--the difficulty which they find in getting through their days! Do you not see how they die of sadness in the midst of that fortune which has been a burden to them? I have been young and beautiful; I have tasted many pleasures; I have been universally beloved. At a more advanced age, I have passed years in the intercourse of talent and wit, and I solemnly protest to you that all conditions leave a frightful void."

Coleridge sums up all more wisely. "I have known," he says, "what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more refined pleasures which learning and intellectual power can bestow; and with all the experience that more than three-score years can give, I now, on the eve of my departure, declare to you that health is a great blessing,--competence obtained by honorable industry a great blessing,--and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives; but that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian."

"We are born and we live so unhappily that the accomplishment of a desire appears to us a falsehood, the realization of hope a deception, as if our sad experience had taught us the bitter lesson that in the world nothing is true but sorrow." "Who ordered toil," says Thackeray, "as the condition of life, ordered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success,--to this man a foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd; to that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or sudden accident; to each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it." "Nature," says Pliny, "makes us buy her presents at the price of so many sufferings, that it is dubious whether she deserves most the name of a parent or a step-mother." "Solomon and Job judged the best and spake the truest," thought Pascal, "of human misery; the former the most happy, the latter the most unfortunate of mankind; the one acquainted by long experience with the vanity of pleasure, the other with the reality of affliction and pain."