ittle the
painter could dispense with them. But, then, how easily the
philosopher can: for, alas! I have taken wing from my station, and
looked in through the miserable easement, and seen, not only what
is disgusting to the senses,--which is a small matter,--but ignorance
and disease, and fear, and guilt, and racking pain, and doubt, and
death; and I have not been able to help saying, in pity, 'O for
absolute solitude!--how much nature would be improved if the human
race were annihilated!'"

"The human race," said I, laughing, "is very much obliged to the
pity which would thus exterminate them; but as one of them, I should
decidedly object to so sweeping a mode of improving the picturesque.
Besides, I suppose you make an exception in favor, yourself, otherwise
the picturesque would vanish just when it was brought to perfection.
I am often inclined to say with Paley, though I remember well having
sometimes felt as you do, 'It is a happy world after all.' I admit,
however, that a buoyant, cheerful, habitual conviction of this will
depend on the constitution of the mind, and even vary with the same
in its different moods. But I am sure it may be a really happy world,
whatever its sorrows, to any one who will view it as he ought."

"I wish you could teach me the art."

"It is," said I, "to exercise the faith and the hope of a Christian,
humbly to regard this life as what it is,--a scene of discipline and
schooling, a pilgrimage to a better. It is an old remedy, but it has
been often tried; and to millions of our race has made this world
more than tolerable, and death tranquil, nay, triumphant. Do you
remember Schiller's 'Walk among the Linden-Trees'?"

"Perfectly well."

"Do you not remember how the two youths differ in their estimate of
the beautiful in nature? 'Is it possible,' says Edwin, 'you can thus
turn from the cup of joy, sparkling and overflowing as it is?'--'Yes,'
said Wollmar, 'when one finds a spider in it; and why not? In your
eyes, to be sure, Nature decks herself out like a rosy-checked maiden
on her bridal day. To me she appears an old, withered beldame, with
sunken eyes, furrowed cheeks, and artificial ornaments in her
hair. How she seems to admire herself in this her Sunday finery! But
it is the same worn and ancient garment, put off and on some hundreds
of thousands of times.' But how natural is the explanation of all
given at the beautiful close of the dialogue! 'Here,' said the jocund
Edwin, 'I