of ability to perceive and to adopt this; mean and uninformed minds seize on corners, which they cultivate with narrow views to very little advantage: enlarged and well-informed minds embrace great and honorable objects; and if they fail of obtaining them, are liable to none of those pangs which rankle in the bosom of artifice defeated, or of cunning over-matched. To the improvement of our faculties, as well as of our principles, the love of letters appears to be favorable. Letters require a certain sort of application, though of a kind perhaps very different from that which business would recommend. Granting that they are unprofitable in themselves, as that word is used in the language of the world; yet, as developing the powers of thought and reflection, they may be an amusement of some use, as those sports of children in which numbers are used, familiarize them to the elements of arithmetic. They give room for the exercise of that discernment, that comparison of objects, that distinction of causes, which is to increase the skill of the physician, to guide the speculation of the merchant, and to prompt the arguments of the lawyer; and though some professions employ but very few faculties of the mind, yet there is scarce any branch of business in which a man who can think will not excel him who can only labor. We shall accordingly find, in many departments where learned information seemed of all qualities the least necessary, that those who possessed it in a degree above their fellows, have found from that very circumstance, the road to eminence and to wealth. But I must often repeat that wealth does not necessarily create happiness, nor confer dignity: A truth which it may be thought declamation to insist on, but which the present time seems particularly to require being told. The influx of foreign riches, and of foreign luxury, which this country has of late experienced, has almost levelled every distinction but that of money among us. The crest of noble or illustrious ancestry has sunk before the sudden accumulation of wealth in vulgar hands; but that were little, had not the elegance of manners, had not the dignity of deportment, had not the pride of virtue, which used to characterize some of our high-born names, given way to that tide of fortune which has lifted the low, the illiterate, and the unfeeling, into stations of which they were unworthy. Learning and genius have not always resisted the torrent; but I know no bulwarks better calculated to resist it. The love of letters is connected with an independence and delicacy of mind, which is a great preservative against that servile homage which abject men pay to fortune; and there is a certain classical pride, which from the society of Socrates and Plato, Cicero and Atticus, looks down with an honest disdain on the wealth-blown insects of modern times, neither enlightened by knowledge, nor ennobled by virtue. The non omnis moriar of the poet draws on futurity for the deficiencies of the present; and even in the present, those avenues of more refined pleasure, which the cultivation of knowledge, of fancy, and of feeling, opens to the mind, give to the votary of science a real superiority of enjoyment in what he possesses, and free him from much of that envy and regret which less cultivated spirits feel from their wants. In the possession, indeed, of what he has attained, in that rest and retirement from his labors, with the hopes of which his fatigues were lightened and his cares were soothed, the mere man of business frequently undergoes suffering, instead of finding enjoyment. To be busy, as one ought, is an easy art; but to know how to be idle, is a very superior accomplishment. This difficulty is much increased with persons, to whom the habit of employment has made some active exertions necessary; who cannot sleep contented in the torpor of indolence, or amuse themselves with those lighter trifles, in which he, who inherited idleness as he did fortune, from his ancestors, has been accustomed to find amusement. The miseries and mortifications of the "retired pleasures" of men of business, have been frequently matter of speculation to the moralist, and of ridicule to the wit. But he who has mixed general knowledge with professional skill, and literary amusement with professional labor, will have some stock wherewith to support him in idleness, some spring for his mind when unbent from business, some employment for those hours which retirement or solitude has left vacant and unoccupied. Independence in the use of one's time is not the least valuable species of freedom. This liberty the man of letters enjoys; while the ignorant and the illiterate often retire from the thraldom of business, only to become the slaves of languor, intemperance, or vice. But the situation in which the advantages of that endowment of mind which letters bestow are chiefly conspicuous, is old age, when a man's society is necessarily circumscribed, and his powers of active enjoyment are unavoidably diminished. Unfit for the bustle of affairs and the amusements of his youth, an old man, if he has no source of mental exertion or employment, often settles into the gloom of melancholy and peevishness, or petrifies his feelings by habitual intoxication. From an old man whose gratifications were solely derived from those sensual appetites which time has blunted, or from those trivial amusements of which youth only can share, age has cut off almost every source of enjoyment. But to him who has stored his mind with the information, and can still employ it in the amusement of letters, this blank of life is admirably filled up. He acts, he thinks, and he feels with that literary world whose society he can at all times enjoy. There is perhaps no state more capable of comfort to ourselves, or more attractive of veneration from others, than that which such an old age affords; it is then the twilight of the passions, when they are mitigated but not extinguished, and spread their gentle influence over the evening of our days, in alliance with reason and in amity with virtue. Nor perhaps, if fairly estimated, are the little polish and complacencies of social life less increased by the cultivation of letters, than the enjoyment of solitary or retired leisure. To the politeness of form and the ease of manner, business is naturally unfavorable, because business looks to the use, not the decoration of things. But the man of business who has cultivated letters, will commonly have softened his feelings, if he has not smoothed his manner or polished his address. He may be awkward, but will seldom be rude; may trespass in the ignorance of ceremonial, but will seldom offend against the substantial rules of civility. In conversation, the pedantry of profession unavoidably insinuates itself among men of every calling. The lawyer, the merchant and the soldier, (this last perhaps, from obvious enough causes, the most of the three,) naturally slide into the accustomed train of thinking and the accustomed style of conversation. The pedantry of the man of learning is generally the most tolerable and the least tiresome of any: and he who has mixed a certain portion of learning with his ordinary profession, has generally corrected, in a considerable degree, the abstraction of the one and the coarseness of the other. In the more important relations of society, in the closer intercourse of friend, of husband, and of father, that superior delicacy and refinement of feeling which the cultivation of the mind bestows, heighten affection into sentiment, and mingle with such connexions a dignity and tenderness, which gives its dearest value to our existence. In fortunate circumstances, those feelings enhance prosperity; but in the decline of fortune, as in the decline of life, their influence and importance are chiefly felt. They smooth the harshness of adversity, and on the brow of misfortune print that languid smile, which their votaries would often not exchange for the broadest mirth of those unfeelingly prosperous men, who possess good fortune, but have not a heart for happiness. END OF THE PAPERS FROM THE LOUNGER. |