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N° XCI.

On Inordinate Expectations in Life.

Edinburgh, Dec. 7, 1812.

PERHAPS there is no rule in the art of life more conducive to happiness than not to form inordinate expectations. There is but little in what is called the world, to gratify a poetic imagination, and to realize the flattering pictures of Hope. In his happier hours of solitude the inexperienced visionary is too apt to believe that mankind are indeed his brethren; that in crowded assemblies he will meet with sympathy; and that, amid the "hum and shock of men," he will feel himself moving pleasantly in a congenial sphere of comfort, light, and elegance. Alas, how must he be disappointed! Amid the great and the little vulgar, the tribes that "have the body without the mind," he will feel himself equally a prey to disgust, indignation, and uncontrollable irritability; till, unless he has fortitude to resist the cruel impressions left by the spectre forms of dull reality; unless he has fortitude to

Pope once observed to a captain of a troop of horse, the finest man of his time, "You, Sir, have the body, I the mind."

withstand the innumerable difficulties, the "phials of wrath," the inexhaustible springs of misery, that assail him from every quarter, he must inevitably sink into insanity and incurable despair.

The gift of superior sensibility and taste almost always implies the curse of superior misery. Their possessor is alone in the world; or rather he is far worse than alone. Nothing is more injurious to the mind than any thing approaching to, or resembling intimacy, or friendship, with an uncongenial character; and by what but uncongenial characters can such an individual be surrounded?

It is only when sufficient good fortune and sufficient stamina of resistance and opposition enable him to break his fetters in sunder, to frame for himself a sphere of his own, full of light and elegance, that the bard's is indeed a happy lot. To those who have had the good fortune to behold the mighty Minstrel of modern times, the bright luminary of the North; what a contrast is afforded by that admirable poet and his chosen compeers! but above all by himself, the sun of the sphere in which he .moves, to the surrounding gloom; to the wearisome waste of all that is "stale, flat, and unprofitable," of the Caledonian capital!

While I write, the castled cliffs, the aërial towers of this romantic city, are seen "like a scene of enchantment," enveloped in the white mists and

tinged with the purple rays of a wintry morning. It is indeed a scene of enchantment! But oh when the eye turns from the sublime scenery of nature to the crowded pavement, to countenances furrowed with base and ignoble passions, stamped with the lineaments of meanness and vice, or to visages round and sleek and jolly, on which the eye searches in vain for a trace of sensibility, are we not tempted to exclaim" where is the mind that must enable such inhabitants to reflect its own light on the scenery?" The very atmosphere in which so many uncongenial characters exist is polluted and infectious. A new sphere must be sought for; one's own independent energies must be fostered, or the consequences must be inevitable destruction, or a gradual lapse into the same state of apathy and contented stupidity with which ordinary characters continue to move in their own narrow circle.

But, imagine a youth of powerful fancy and inordinate sensibility; such a one, for example, as the hero of Mr. Crabbe's admirable tale, "the Patron ;" or rather a character such as Lord Byron probably once was, when in early years he trod the wild heaths of "Loch-in-ivar," imagine him framing in solitude dreams of happiness and distinction, and brilliance and fascination; imagine, such a one for the first time, brought out of the regions of fairyland into those of dismal reality; imagine him for

the first time listening to a college lecture, or making a maiden speech at the bar, and what must be his agony of disappointment and despair.

Life is a theatre of arduous exertion and strenuous contention, and one of the best rules for obtaining happiness is, to avoid forming inordinate expectations.

H. F. A.

N° XCII.

On Posthumous Fame,

No mistake is more frequently made by the great and little vulgar, than that of confounding together the passion for posthumous fame, than which nothing, as I have observed in a former letter, can be more noble and rational, and the passion for popular and temporary distinction, than which nothing can be more contemptible and destructive in its consequences.

The love of posthumous fame is not inconsistent with a due regard to the nurture and preservation of our own independent energies. It is not incon sistent with a due regard to our social duties, to the practice of piety, to the dictates of that philosophy which inculcates that, to act with becoming fortitude and dignity in every situation, forms in itself the "summum bonum" in human felicity. But the passion for temporary applause and distinction, that distortion of the intellect, by which a man becomes dependant for his happiness and comfort on the caprice of the mob, is utterly inconsistent with all these. It renders its victim useless to himself, and,

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