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CHAPTER V.

CONTENTMENT.

Si on n'a pas ce qu'on aime,

Il faut aimer ce qu'on a.

BUSSY RABUTIN.

HOWEVER bright the sun may be, and we might

say just because the sun is bright, there must be shadows, -the world must have one side darker than the other. No doubt, as Pindar says:

For ever to and fro

The tides of joy and grief athwart us flow.

But it is ungrateful to add, as he does, that

For every good the gods bestow

They add a double share of woe.*

"I am very much attracted," says Plutarch, "by the remark of Diogenes when he saw a stranger at Lacedaemon preparing himself with much ostentation for a feast. 'Does not a good man consider every day a

*Pindar. Morice's translation.

feast?' Aye, and a very great feast too, if we are only wise. For the world is a most holy and divine temple into which man is introduced through his birth, not to be a spectator of motionless images made by man's hand, but of those things which the Divine Mind has exhibited as the visible representations of what the mind alone can grasp, having innate in them the principle of life and motion, as the sun, moon, and stars, and rivers ever flowing with fresh water, and the earth sending up her sustenance to plants and animals. Seeing, then, that life is a complete initiation into all these things, it ought to be full of ease and joyfulness. But men do disgrace to the festivals which God has supplied us with and initiated us into, passing most of their time in lamentation and gloominess of spirit, and distressing cares. How is this? They will not even listen to the admonitions of others whereby they would be led to acquiesce in the present without repining, to remember the past with thankfulness, and to act for the future with gracious and cheerful hopes, without fear or suspicion."

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If life is not a blessing, why is death regarded as an evil? And how few wish to die:

No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever really wished for death.*

Yet we find throughout literature innumerable and, as it seems to me, most unreasonable complaints. The world is made out to be a place teeming with anxieties, racked with suffering, and so dark with gloom and sorrow, that "life protracted is protracted woe." **

'Tis a very good world that we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in,

But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own,

'Tis the very worst world that ever was known.***

"It were best for a man," said Purchas, † "not to be born, the next soon to die." And again: "Our bodies are a little world-nay, a little hell-of misery."

Even Solomon, on whom blessings were showered

with such lavish profusion, complained:

Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun; because I should leave it unto the men that shall be after me.

Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.

For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?

* Tennyson.

** Johnson.
Microcosmus.

*** Old Song.

For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.*

Lord Beaconsfield assures us that "youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret;" and again: "The disappointment of manhood succeeds to the delusion of youth." There seems a general impression that childhood is the age of innocence and happiness, and that life grows duller and gloomier with advancing years. “In old age,” says Castiglione in the Courtier, "the sweet flowers of our joys fall from our hearts like leaves in autumn.” Herrick takes the same line:

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But, being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.**

According to Shakespeare:

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;

Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short;

Youth is nimble, age is lame;

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;

Youth is wild, and age is tame.***

* Ecclesiastes.

** Amatory Odes, 93.

*** Shakespeare.

Indeed, he generally disparages old age.

It is per

haps hardly fair to quote Macbeth when he says:

My way of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Macbeth no doubt had brought this punishment on himself. This perhaps was not necessarily Shakespeare's own opinion. On the other hand, this can hardly be said of the wonderful picture in the Seven Ages of Man, but it may be alleged that he is speaking then only of extreme old age.

It is perhaps not surprising that Byron should share the same opinion. In his ode "On my thirty-sixth

year"-only his thirty-sixth!-he says:

My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone;

The worm, the canker, and the grief

Are mine alone;

and elsewhere he asserts that man is

Born to be ploughed with years, and sown with cares,
And reaped by Death, lord of the human soul.

In his delightful ode on Eton College, Gray says:

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