and flowers, supplying the place of the zephyrs and the butterflies." II. With what lively pleasure does our imagination rest upon scenes, among which our earlier years were past! These associations are acknowledged by all orders of men; though it follows, of necessity, that the charm of recollection must depend on peculiar circumstances and manners. Dante, goaded and irritated in manhood, doubly felt the loss of those hours of comparative delight, spent in the society of a mother, the most accomplished woman of the age, in which she lived. Tasso,-of a milder and more gentle nature,-enjoyed the same pathetic associations. Spenser had equal advantages; and the days of satisfaction, enjoyed by Milton in his earlier years, are frequently alluded to in his poetical works; and still more beautifully in those poems, written in the lan guage, and after the best manner, of Tibullus. These impressions were not unknown to Dioclesian; they were still more vividly felt by Henry IV. of France; and Bernadotte, on the throne of Sweden, re-enjoys the hours of infancy and boyhood every day. Madame Necker, wife to the celebrated French Minister of Finance, remembered, in the midst of Parisian elegance and splendour, all the retired graces of her childhood; passed in a valley, in the bosom of which she imbibed the purest of instruction from the lips of her father; and qualified her mind and her heart to shed lustre over the public labours, and retired enjoyments, of the first statesman of his age. III. HAYDN-whose musical memory my soul loves!Haydn, loaded with years and with glory, derived the most solid of enjoyments, when tuning those simple airs, which he had been accustomed to sing with his father and mother; when, being a child, he stood between them, and beat time with two pieces of wood:-one of which served him as a violin; and the other as a bow.-Rubens, in the zenith of his subsequent fame, always turned with pleasure to the time, when he studied under Van Veen; and when he laid the foundation of his eminence in the society of that painter's two beautiful daughters, Gertrude and Cornelia; both of whom arrived at distinction in their father's profession. Rousseau, in his old age, charmed his imagination with the airs, which, in a voice of sweetness, his aunt was accustomed to sing. "To her," says he, in his Confessions, "I attribute that passion for music, which has always distinguished me." Equally agreeable, and still more sublime, were the associations of the BARON DE HUMBOLDT, when crossing the Equinoctial regions. Early in life, that accomplished traveller had imbibed an ardent wish to visit those regions; where he might behold the constellations, ranged around the Southern Pole. Impatient to visit that hemisphere, he could not raise his eyes to heaven, without indulging the silent charm of meditating on the cross. When, therefore, his favourite wish was realized, impossible is it to describe the solemn interest, with which he beheld the two magnificent stars, that mark the foot and summit of the southern cross, appear above the horizon, and become almost perpendicular at the moment, in which it passes the meridian. The remembrance of his early years instantly fascinated his imagination; and he repeated, with enthusiasm, the following fine passage from the Paradise of Dante. Io mi volsi a man destra e posi mente Goder parca lo ciel di lor fiammelle; O settentrional vedovo sito Poi che privato se' di mirar quelle ! IV. Few can estimate the rapture with which RoUSSEAU wrote the first part of his Confessions at the castle of Eri. Every thing, as he acknowledges, he had to recollect, was a new source of enjoyment; the beautiful scenes, he had beheld; the mountains, he had traversed; the lakes, he had navigated; the rivers, he had crossed; and the remembrance of the finest portion of his years, passed with so much tranquillity and innocence, left in his heart a thousand impressions, which he loved incessantly to recal to recollection. The ABBE OLIVET, too, always remembered with pleasure the sensations, with which he used, in his infancy, to wander in the gardens of Benserade, at Gentilly; where every tree and every spot possessed a relic of his genius. The recollec tions of MARMONTEL, also, were sources of real comfort and alleviation to him, at the period, when the demon of license passed over the horizon of France: -when No spot was hallowed; sacred, no retreat; Yriarte.-Belfour. For in the hour of sickness or misfortune, memory, by that magic power, with which it is gifted, suspends for a time, the acutest torments; while old age, if life has been well spent, receives as great a consolation from its properties, as youth enjoys from the flattering whispers of hope.-HOPE! the nepenthe of the heart, the restorer of the languid,—the medicine and refuge of the miserable. CHAPTER V. THE SCHOLIASTS number five methods of acquiring knowledge: observation, reading, listening, conversation, and meditation. They leave out the most important;-suffering. But mere scholars, and men, who have been rich from their birth, and continue so till the hour of their death, ought never to take so great a liberty with common sense, as to think, they have ever possessed a thorough knowledge of mankind. Felicity was deified by the Greeks and Romans; but they found her the most ungrateful of all the . deities. The Scythians represented Fortune, as a woman having hands and wings, but not a foot to stand upon; yet many men think misfortune not only a disgrace, but a crime, till they come to be unfortunate themselves: and then they see, that those men are superficial, who assert, that every misfortune may be prevented by courage or by prudence. They find, too, that fortune not only triumphs over folly and imprudence, but not unfrequently over wisdom and virtue. Many worthy persons, however, seriously fancy their good fortune to be the result of their own management; when all, they have to do, is to sit still, and keep themselves warm! Fortune, in robbing a man of his property, is not always so cruel, as she is represented: for she frequently gives pride of heart and peace of mind as equivalents. This pride and this peace are shields, consolations, equivalents; nay more than equivalents; they are rewards. For love and peace not unfrequently spring out of loss; as flowers rise out of beds of lava. They speak profoundly, who say, that the world is like a theatre; where the best judges are obliged to sit in the worst places. But they would speak more profoundly still, if they were to add, that the best judges, notwithstanding the badness of their seats, frequently enjoy the spectacle more to the comfort of their hearts, than those, who sit on velvet cushions. Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Bears yet a precious jewel in its head.1 For this fable, vide Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxvii. and Philostratus in Vit. Apollon. lib. iii. c. 8. |