CONTENT OR NOT CONTENT.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ.

Not content, for the following reasons.-Vide PEERS' PROTESTS.

"ARE you content?" asks the duke, when he has doomed old Shylock to beggary and the abjuration of his creed. "I am content," responds the miserable Jew.

So say-with exactly the same degree of truth-most miserable Christians, when they have arrived at the hopeless point--when they can no longer help themselves. While they possess this power, they do not even put on the affectation of content, though they make amends for a total absence of the virtue, by devoutly recommending it to their neighbours. George Robins is, in this respect, mankind's epitome; he holds it to be every other mortal's first duty to be " contented with his lot." It is our business, he would argue, to take the lot which is adjudged to be ours, with the duty upon it. We discover that the tobacco which was put up at twopence-farthing, and knocked down to us at twopence-halfpenny, means neither more nor less than six thousand pounds of damaged shag at twopence-halfpenny per pound;-and, stern as the sternest moralist of them all, he has no comfort for us beyond the cold advice-Be contented with your lot. We complain of the mistake, the hardship; his hammer answers us, but his voice is silent. He has not a word to waste upon a man who is dissatisfied with his lot. His continual and ever-increasing familiarity with what is most sacred to others, with life and death -the preparing to depart, and the departure that "going, gone" of his, which is the whole history of man-has converted his native sensibility into a philosophical substance, hard as ebony, which he could fling in the teeth of all fools, who, ignorant of the final meaning of those two solemn and significant words, "going, gone," are so surpassingly silly as to be discontented with their lot!

There is modesty in human nature after all. If anything particularly good come to our share, we are apt to think it too good for us, and are hardly content to keep it. If a fine haunch fall in our way, we send it to a friend. So with the virtues. How few of them we ourselves exercise, compared with the number we prescribe for daily use, by our acquaintances. If people would but follow our advice, they would be angels; but as they only follow our example, they are something a little lower. Thus it is, that although we are constantly warning others to be content, they are no more contented than ourselves.

one.

Although this content be classed with the virtues, it is but a conditional A free-born being is suddenly cast among slaves, stripped of his birthright, and degraded to the brutish level-content, here, becomes a vice. A stupid angler is jerked into the stream by the stupider fish he would have drawn out of it-content in this case is an absurdity. Sometimes it is a folly, sometimes it is a crime. Now it is sheer cowardice, anon it is indolence; much oftener it is hypocrisy, but most frequently it is the result of that comfortless conviction at which the poor Jew arrived, when the document which doomed him to wretchedness and despair was sent after him for signature.

space

had for

An

In fact, there is scarcely such a thing as true content-continuous, unyearning, and cherished upon principle-apart from the lot, whatsoever it may be, that comfort or custom hath made agreeable to us. apparent case of true content once arose, in connexion with the very play we have referred to. An actor, who perhaps still fills some small in the public eye, 66 years gone on," as the phrase is, for the peculiarly unimportant part of Tubal. Now it is notorious, not only that Tubal is a very miserable little character, with less than six lines to utter, but that it is a very disagreeable character in other respects; the costume, in the theatre's unreformed day at least, was painfully guyish, and the laughter of the spectators was generally loud. To find an actor content to be the representative of Tubal, was to find a miracle. Gibbons had played it for years, and then confessed that he despaired of working it up into tragic effect.

"Sir," said that performer, when he came off the stage, after completing his forty-first representation, "it's of no use talking: John Kemble couldn't do anything with such a part."

Tubal therefore is exceedingly disliked in the profession, and for one reason, amongst others that every gentleman who " " for it, goes on conceives that he ought to play Shylock. But our Tubal was content with the character. Its insignificance suited him, and to the audible derision he had become accustomed. He had played it many, many times to Kean-Edmund Kean; and it had become a reminiscence with many playgoers. Above all, he had that contented mind which is a continual feast, and it feasted with the Jewish Tubal. Suddenly, the contented actor is deposed; the part is given to another; he is Tubal no more. Now shall we test that principle of contentment which in him seems the guiding-star of his whole moral being. He was content with that which was a grievance to others; is he content to do nothing, instead of doing the disagreeable? Is he satisfied to play something else, and deliver nine words instead of fifteen? No, all the virtue vanished at the first trial. This Cato told the gods he was not satisfied. Instead of sitting down under the tranquil and abiding shadow of content, he tore his hair, and stormed about after the fashion of Kean himself in the great scene with Tubal. He supplicated for a re-installation in vain. Nightly has he played since, but with a broken spirit, and his soul will

know contentment no more.

This case is cited here at some length, because it really did seem to be a case of true content; but it was simply an instance of eccentricity of taste. The stage philosopher liked the character of Tubal-that was all! A mystery, admitted; but less a mystery than the lurking-place of

content.

It must frankly be owned that content may and does exist--that is to say in company with a complete gratification of our desires. When we are in possession of the thing we like, there is small doubt but that we are contented with it for the time being. As resignation is said to be much more perfect when the object we resign has ceased to have any attraction in our eyes, so contentment is unquestionably more sincere when the condition in which we entertain it is exactly suited to our fancy, and therefore all that we could wish. But this condition is the exception to the rule of life-hence the scarcity of content.

Content is the brightest jewel of the mind;

which is as true as truth generally is in copy-books; but then the diamond so often turns out to be paste. So many boots pinch that are highly polished! We encountered lately an apparent example of content in a quiet country-residence, quite a sylvan snuggery as it is called-a freehold paradise that was never "to be let"-no noise, no smoke-all clear, tranquil, happy, and suited to the retired and musing tastes of its master. It turned out-yes, that's the word—that its master wanted to turn out also. He lived there, not because it was his choice, but because it was "his own." It was not content that kept him there so long, but convenience. When you choose the least of two evils, does it follow that you are contented with the smaller one because it is the smaller? Our rustic moralist was panting to be a rover in town. He seemed a creature that would shrink, like a sensitive leaf, at the touch of a city-a being framed to steal through life, as though it were ever night-time, without making the least noise. On the contrary his ambition was, to

Flame in the forehead of the morning sky,

and cut a tremendous dash in London. While his soul seemed to crave no occupation, no delight, but to creep along under hedges in a green coat and drab gaiters, it was pining to become the centre of a circle and the founder of a fashion. The demure and modest simpleton, as town-breeding would have designated him, confessed that so far from shunning the public gaze, his pride would be "to drive a tandem with two large black dogs with him in front to keep his legs warm, and a black servant behind blowing a key-bugle." While angling, twelve hours at a stretch, he was only brooding over the chances at hazard; and while tenderly training his roses, he was dying to live in town and wrench off a knocker nightly.

"Never be a schoolmaster!" was the last injunction that rung in our youthful years as we sprang, liberated for life, out of the dominie's dominions. How that old clergyman hated the life of a schoolmaster, and how regularly he had admonished us to be always contented with our lot! The gallant officer who finds himself, at sixty seven, without a liver or a stiver, cries, "Now, if I had been put into a merchant's counting-house!" and the speculator, at seventy-five, wishes he had been born a quarter of a century sooner, for he should have made a million had the war lasted. But to show where content is not, is ". run the great circle and be still at home."

"to

True content must, in any case, be very short-lived. The image of it may be imagined, rubicund and riotous, over a jolly full bottle at night, but not with a green and yellow melancholy in the morning. Suppose content has the gout, or wants a dinner!-evils that fall to the lot of rather more than are ever satisfied with them. To picture content stretched on the rack, is not an unreal or even a fantastic view of the ordinary condition of that virtue; since beneath every roof, wherever mortal infirmity finds its needful habitation, there is a rack more or less screwed up, on which humanity stretches itself either compulsorily or voluntarily." And if people were to speak plain English ("a language," as Mr. Evelyn observes, "which so few of the English do speak") the phrases "Will you join our party of pleasure?" or "Let us have the other bottle," would not be more frequently in their mouths, than "We are going to put ourselves to torture, will you join us?" or The rack is ready, will you take a turn ?"

The poets tried for a long period to palm content off upon us as a prime virtue, ready for use at every season. They always portrayed this capital quality, as resident in a cottage-shabbily clad, and with a sharp appetite, which the good creature treated with silent contempt. The poets found the virtue sufficiently fabulous, and they left it more so. They never imagined, in those loyal times, that content could be the occupant of a throne. There, "pale Discontent sat crowned;" while charming cherry-cheeked Content was blooming in beggary. Concord had her temple, Fame too had hers; Peace had her pavilion, and Bliss forsooth must have her bower; Pleasure had her palace, and even Indolence had her castle, nothing less; but poor Content never got beyond a cottage. This it is to be a modest, humble, any-thing-will-do-for-me kind of virtue. The poets forgot that Content was at least as likely to take up her everlasting rest amidst the good things of this life as amidst the want of them. Poets are worldly fellows after all; they will not allow a meek virtue to be rewarded—it must always be "its

own reward."

Content

However, they have now abandoned the theme. There has not been such a thing as a new Ode to Contentment written during the last quarter of a century. Not the most daring and imaginative of our young bards has taken such a flight as that. Yet such odes during the last century were the staple commodity of our poetry. During the American and French wars people read and ruminated about nothing but contentment. The word has not been mentioned in public since the peace. would militate terribly against the acquisition of capital, and affect very materially the course of our exchanges. It would have stopped short at the old oil-dripping lamp-post; it would now stop at the gas-crowned column, and put an extinguisher on the Bude light. It would have forbidden a single railroad to be cut, and would now forbid the establishment of a union between the earth and the moon, on the principle of that which already exists between England and Ireland.

Content, in short, to judge by the practice of the world, and not by the theory which the world maintains when neighbour advises neighbour, is an excellent thing, a very excellent thing indeed, when there is no other comfort left. The real Cottage of Content, therefore, is the Refuge for the Destitute. What contradictions we are made of! When a man is quite without resources, when he is done up, we bid him be content! It is fruitless to advise those who have much, to be satisfied, while they can make it more; it is absurd to advise those who have little, to abstain from making it much; it is only those who have NOTHING, who can ever be CONTENT.

H O W QU A

Is of three different sorts; although they are not generally particularized by the tea-dealers or brokers: viz.,

SOMEHOW-QUA, which includes Hyson, Souchong, Bohea, &c., as well as the tea advertised by Captain Pidding:

ANYHOW-QUA-composed of sloe, ash, willow, secondhand tea-leaves, or any other vegetable rubbish, and,

all.

NOHOW-QUA, which falls to the lot of those who cannot get any tea at

TEA H.

SOME ACCOUNT OF ELIAN'S PATCHWORK.

ABOUT the middle of the third century of our æra, when the vast empire of Rome was really in the enjoyment of a few months' in conpeace, sequence of the deeds of the Divus Hadrianus, there habited, not many hundred yards beyond the walls of the rose-loving Præneste, one Claudius Ælianus, a bachelor, author, and traveller, of some repute in that his native town. It was a snug little box that same bachelor's residence, with its tall poplars casting a pleasant shade over the small portico; its neatly paved Atrium; its comfortable Triclinium, not too small for nine, or too large for six, adorned with hangings, and lighted by four lamps of the bronze of Ægina, supported on tall candelabra of the same beautiful metal, and diffusing a pleasing and equable light from the corners of the room. And then too its Xystus, where the fairest flowers of Italy pleased the sight, and gratified the smell; its warm Solarium, where on a hot day the evening meal might be enjoyed amid lofty shrubs, in large moveable stands, and gently trickling fountains; and above all, its Bibliotheca. Now a library was a rarity in Præneste in those days, when a few rolls of papyrus gained more credit for their owner, than twenty square feet of well-filled bookcases do in these enlightened times. Ergo, the owner of a library was-a somebody.

Besides Claudius Elian was such a pleasant companion; he had studied at Athens, had travelled in Persia, visited the savage Britons, and could tell such excellent anecdotes that he had heard or made, and relate such hair-breadth escapes among the untutored savages north of the Danube, who, poor wretches, had never heard of Garum. Therefore every one in Præneste knew Ælian, and Ælian knew every one in Præneste. Then too, he was an author, and that was something in the days of Hadrian; the nephew of an author, and that was something more and although his book had not shared in the sunshine of the emperor's smiles, as that of his uncle had, still it not only ought, but certainly would; so every one in Præneste declared, had any one but Hadrian sat on the throne. The reason was obvious. The uncle had written on military tactics, of which the Divus Hadrianus was no mean judge; the nephew had discoursed on rare and strange animals; and though the emperor was a tolerable judge of horse-flesh, though rather given to whims, in the arrangement of his ménage, yet he knew nothing and cared less for goats without horns, or sheep with, sea-wolves, or clever mice. But still our bachelor was an author. Besides, he now and then went to Rome to stay with some of the literati of the capital, and as he reclined on his elbow at the triclinium, could rehearse many a facetious saying of his friend Sammonicus, the court physician; could, if greatly pressed, give a friend an unpublished recipe for some new sauce, given to him by his dear friend Apicius, only a few days before he destroyed himself; could quote the sententious philosophy of Apuleius or the historical comments of Justin; could obtain a free gratis opinion of husbandry from his friend Palladius, the great writer on that subject and experimental farmer of the time, and was in short a very busy and very useful personage.

But with all this Claudius Elian was not happy. He had, as we Feb.-VOL. LXIV. NO. CCLIV.

U