Falkland | Page 8

I feel all the
powers, and gather together all the resources, of my mind. I recall my
recollections of men; and, unbiassed by the passions and prejudices
which we do not experience alone, because their very existence
depends upon others, I endeavour to perfect my knowledge of the
human heart. He who would acquire that better science must arrange
and analyse in private the experience he has collected in the crowd.
Alas, Monkton, when you have expressed surprise at the gloom which
is so habitual to my temper, did it never occur to you that my
acquaintance--with the world would alone be sufficient to account for
it?--that knowledge is neither for the good nor the happy. Who can
touch pitch, and not be defiled? Who can look upon the workings of
grief and rejoice, or associate with guilt and be pure? It has been by
mingling with men, not only in their haunts but their emotions, that I
have learned to know them. I have descended into the receptacles of
vice; I have taken lessons from the brothel and the hell; I have watched

feeling in its unguarded sallies, and drawn from the impulse of the
moment conclusions which gave the lie to the previous conduct of
years. But all knowledge brings us disappointment, and this knowledge
the most--the satiety of good, the suspicion of evil, the decay of our
young dreams, the premature iciness of age, the reckless, aimless,
joyless indifference which follows an overwrought and feverish
excitation--These constitute the lot of men who have renounced hope in
the acquisition of thought, and who, in learning the motives of human
actions, learn only to despise the persons and the things which
enchanted them like divinities before.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I told you, dear Monkton, in my first letter, of my favorite retreat in Mr.
Mandeville's grounds. I have grown so attached to it, that I spend the
greater part of the day there.
I am not one of those persons who always perambulate with a book in
their hands, as if neither nature nor their own reflections could afford
them any rational amusement. I go there more frequently en paresseux
than en savant: a small brooklet which runs through the grounds
broadens at last into a deep, clear, transparent lake. Here fir and elm
and oak fling their branches over the margin and beneath their shade I
pass all the hours of noon-day in the luxuries of a dreamer's reverie. It
is true, however, that I am never less idle than when I appear the most
so. I am like Prospero in his desert island, and surround myself with
spirits. A spell trembles upon the leaves; every wave comes fraught to
me with its peculiar music: and an Ariel seems to whisper the secrets of
every breeze, which comes to my forehead laden with the perfumes of
the West. But do not think, Mounton, that it is only good spirits which
haunt the recesses of my solitude. To push the metaphor to
exaggeration--Memory is my Sycorax, and Gloom is the Caliban she
conceives. But let me digress from myself to my less idle
occupations;-- I have of late diverted my thoughts in some measure by
a recurrence to a study to which I once was particularly
devoted--history. Have you ever remarked, that people who live the

most by themselves reflect the most upon others; and that he who lives
surrounded by the million never thinks of any but the one
individual--himself?
Philosophers--moralists-historians, whose thoughts, labours, lives, have
been devoted to the consideration of mankind, or the analysis of public
events, have usually been remarkably attached to solitude and seclusion.
We are indeed so linked to our fellow-beings, that, where we are not
chained to them by action, we are carried to and connected with them
by thought.
I have just quitted the observations of my favourite Bolingbroke upon
history. I cannot agree with him as to its utility. The more I consider,
the more I am convinced that its study has been upon the whole
pernicious to mankind. It is by those details, which are always as unfair
in their inference as they must evidently be doubtful in their facts, that
party animosity and general prejudice are supported and sustained.
There is not one abuse--one intolerance--one remnant of ancient
barbarity and ignorance existing at the present day, which is not
advocated, and actually confirmed, by some vague deduction from the
bigotry of an illiterate chronicler, or the obscurity of an uncertain
legend. It is through the constant appeal to our ancestors that we
transmit wretchedness and wrong to our posterity: we should require, to
corroborate an evil originating in the present day, the clearest and most
satisfactory proof; but the minutest defence is sufficient for an evil