the firm ground of experience; that his progress to the sublime temple
of truth and of fame, would have been ever secure and progressive; that
happiness itself would have blessed him for his tranquil and
dispassionate devotedness to exalted pursuits.

But perhaps the clear perception of the realities of life is not the
secret source of contentment. Many a scholar has shrunk from the contest
of transient interests, and sought happiness rather in the world of
contemplation; and perhaps the studies of antiquity derive a part of
their charm, from their affording us a place of refuge against the
clamours and persecutions which belong to present rivalries. If the view
of human nature, adopted by a large portion of our theologians, is a
just one, the heart must recoil with horror from the true consideration
of the human world in its natural unmitigated depravity, and throw
itself rather into the hopes that belong to the future, and the mercies
that attach to the Supreme Intelligence, for relief against the apathy
which so cold a contemplation of unmingled evil might naturally produce.

In the mouth of Pindar, life might be called a dream, and it would but
pass for the effusion of poetic melancholy. But when the sagacious
philosopher asserts it, that all hope is but the dream of waking man, a
latent discontent broken from the concealment of an unsatisfied
curiosity, a baffled pursuit; when his mind had arrived at that state,
nothing but its remarkable vigour could have preserved him from settled
gloom.

Again the venerable sage examined into the sources of happiness. It does
not consist, he affirms, in voluptuous pleasures, for they are
transient, brutalizing, and injurious to the mind; nor in public
honours, for they depend on those who bestow them, and it is not
felicity to be the recipient of an uncertain bounty; nor yet does
happiness consist in riches, for the care of them is but a toil; and if
they are expended, it is plainly a proof, that contentment is sought for
in the possession of other things. In the view of the Stagyrite,
happiness consists in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the practice of
virtue, under the auspices of mind, and nature, and fortune. He that is
intelligent, and young, and handsome, and vigorous, and rich, is alone
the happy man. Did the world need the sublime wisdom, the high mental
endowment of the Stagyrite, to learn, that neither the poor, nor the
dull, nor the aged, nor the sick, can share