ambition, and desirous in some way of advancing their fortunes, it is not our purpose to deny; yet, for the reasons stated, the foregoing remarks are particularly applicable to ourselves. These same political circumstances, too, which so conduce to the increase of ambition, render us extremely liable to great and sudden vicissitudes of fortune, which are always detrimental both to moral and physical health.

Mental occupation-some determinate and animating object of endeavor, is, as I have previously said, essential to the attainment of what we are all seeking-I mean happiness. Yet if the mind is not allowed its needful intervals of relaxation and recreation,-if its objects of desire are prosecuted with an unintermitting toil and anxiety, then will this great aim of our being assuredly fail us. Now, may it not reasonably be doubted if our own citizens, under their eager covetings for riches and preferment, under their exhausting and almost unrelieved confinement to business, do not mistake the true road to happiness? Absorbed in their ardent struggles for the means, do they not lose sight of their important ends? As a people we certainly exhibit but little of that quiet serenity of temper, which of all earthly blessings is the most to be desired.

When loitering in the streets of Naples I have contemplated the half-naked and houseless lazzaroni, basking in indolent content in the gay sunshine of their delicious climate, or devouring with eager gratification the scant and homely fare of uncertain charity, and watched their mirthful faces, and heard their merry laugh, and then in fancy have contrasted them with our own well-provided citizens, with

their hurried step and care-worn countenances, or at their plenteous tables, dispatching their meals scarce chewed or even tasted-every where haunted by their restless and ambitious desires-I could not but ask myself, Are we really any nearer the great purpose of our existence than these heedless beggars in their "loop'd and window'd raggedness?" and when each have attained the final goal, is it impossible even that the latter may have actually had the advantage in the sum total of human enjoyment? casual pains of cold and hunger which make up their chief suffering, will hardly compare with those which continually agitate the discontented breast.

The

To the force of the same passion, to the uneasy cravings of ambition is it that the rash speculations so common among us, and so destructive to peace of mind and health of body, are in a great measure to be ascribed. This commercial gambling-for such it may be rightly named-will oftentimes be even more widely ruinous in its consequences than that more humble sort to which our moral laws affix a penalty of so deep disgrace. For while the private gamester trusts to the fall of a die, or the turn of a card, but his own gold, the gambler on change risks on the hazards of the market, not what belongs to himself only, but, many times, the fortunes of those who had reposed their confidence in his integrity, and may thus involve in one common ruin whole circles of kindred and friends. And yet such are the ethics of social life, that whilst the latter is respected, courted, and elevated to high places, civil and religious, the former is shut out of all virtuous society.

No truth, perhaps, has been more generally enforced and admitted, both by ancient and modern wisdom, while none has received less regard in practice, than that happiness is equally removed from either extreme of fortune,-that health and enjoyment are most frequently found associated with the aurea mediocritas, the golden mean.

16

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AND

ITS

THE IMAGINATION WHEN NOT PROPERLY DISCIPLINED RESTRAINED, BECOMES A SOURCE BOTH OF MORAL AND PHYSICAL DISORDER.CAUSES OF A DISORDERLY IMAGINATION. EROTIC MELANCHOLY OR MONOMANIA.-HAS ORIGIN OFTEN IN AN UNCONTROLLED AND ROMANTIC IMAGINATION, AND IS FREQUENTLY EXCITED BY AN UNREASONABLE INDULGENCE IN NOVEL READING.-ITS DESCRIPTION.-ITS MOST COMMON SUBJECTS. THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT.-SECURITIES AGAINST A MORBID ASCENDENCY OF THE IMAGINATION, AND ITS CONSEQUENT NERVOUS INFIRMITIES.

An ill-regulated and unbridled imagination, united, as it always is, with strong and varying emotions, must be inimical to the health both of body and mind. In respect to their consequences, it is of little moment whether the passions have their incentive in the creations of fancy, or the sterner truths of reality.

"It was undoubtedly the intention of nature," says Professor Stewart, "that the objects of perception should produce much stronger impressions on the mind than its own operations. And, accordingly, they always do so, when proper care has been taken, in early life, to exercise the

different principles of our constitution. But it is possible, by long habits of solitary reflection, to reverse this order of things, and to weaken the attention to sensible objects to so great a degree, as to leave the conduct almost wholly under the influence of imagination. Removed to a distance from society, and from the pursuits of life, when we have been long accustomed to converse with our own thoughts, and have found our activity gratified by intellectual exertions, which afford scope to all our powers and affections, without exposing us to the inconveniences resulting from the bustle of the world, we are apt to contract an unnatural predilection for meditation, and to lose all interest in external occurrences. In such a situation, too, the mind gradually loses that command which education, when properly conducted, gives it over the train of its ideas; till at length the most extravagant dreams of imagination acquire as powerful an influence in exciting all its passions, as if they were realities."*

There is a class of individuals always to be met with in society, who, unsatisfied with the tameness of real life, create for themselves new conditions, and please themselves with impossible delights in the worlds of imagination; who riot amid the false hopes and unnatural joys of entrancing day-dreams, till at last the unreal acquires absolute dominion over their minds-till wholesome truth is sacrificed to sickly mockeries:

"And nothing is,

But what is not."

* Philosophy of the Human Mind.