invariably every impression of
beauty leads my thoughts, and console myself for my contemptible facility
of impression by the reflection that it is, upon the whole, a merciful
system of compensation by which my whole nature, tortured as it was last
night, can be absorbed this morning, in a perfectly pleasurable
contemplation of the capers of crabs and the colour of mosses as if
nothing else existed in creation. One thing, however, I think, is equally
certain, and that is, that I need never expect much sympathy; and perhaps
this special endowment will make me, to some degree, independent of it;
but I have no doubt that to follow me through half a day with any species
of lively participation in my feelings would be a severe breathless moral
calisthenic to most of my friends,--what Shakspeare calls 'sweating
labour.' As far as I have hitherto had opportunities of observing,
children and maniacs are the only creatures who would be capable of
sufficiently rapid transitions of thought and feeling to keep pace with
me.

And so I rode through the crabs and the coral. There is one thing,
however, I beg to commend to your serious consideration as a trainer of
youth, and that is, the expediency of cultivating in all the young minds
you educate an equal love of the good, the beautiful, and the absurd
(not an easy task, for the latter is apt in its developement to
interfere a little with the two others): doing this, you command all the
resources of existence. The love of the good and beautiful of course you
are prepared to cultivate--that goes without saying, as the French say;
the love of the ludicrous will not appear to you as important, and yet
you will be wrong to undervalue it. In the first place, I might tell you
that it was almost like cherishing the love of one's
fellow-creatures--at which no doubt you shake your head reprovingly;
but, leaving aside the enormous provision for the exercise of this
natural faculty which we offer to each other, why should crabs scuttle
from under my horse's feet in such a way as to make me laugh again every
time I think of it, if there is not an inherent propriety in laughter,
as the only emotion which certain objects challenge--an emotion
wholesome for the soul and body of man? After all, _why_ are we
contrived to laugh at all, if laughter is not essentially befitting and
beneficial? and most people's lives are too lead-coloured to afford to
lose one sparkle on them, even the smallest twinkle