The Pleasures of Life | Page 7

has nothing, who is
naked, houseless, without a hearth, squalid, without a slave, without a

city, can pass a life that flows easily? See, God has sent a man to show
you that it is possible. Look at me, who am without a city, without a
house, without possessions, without a slave; I sleep on the ground; I
have no wife, no children, no praetorium, but only the earth and
heavens, and one poor clock. And what do I want? Am I not without
sorrow? Am I not without fear? Am I not free? When did any of you
see me failing in the object of my desire? or ever falling into that which
I would avoid? Did I ever blame God or man? Did I ever accuse any
man? Did any of you ever see me with a sorrowful countenance? And
how do I meet with those whom you are afraid of and admire? Do not I
treat them like slaves? Who, when he sees me, does not think that he
sees his king and master?"
Think how much we have to be thankful for. Few of us appreciate the
number of our everyday blessings; we look on them as trifles, and yet
"trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle," as Michael Angelo
said. We forget them because they are always with us; and yet for each
of us, as Mr. Pater well observes, "these simple gifts, and others equally
trivial, bread and wine, fruit and milk, might regain that poetic and, as
it were, moral significance which surely belongs to all the means of our
daily life, could we but break through the veil of our familiarity with
things by no means vulgar in themselves."
"Let not," says Isaak Walton, "the blessings we receive daily from God
make us not to value or not praise Him because they be common; let us
not forget to praise Him for the innocent mirth and pleasure we have
met with since we met together. What would a blind man give to see
the pleasant rivers and meadows and flowers and fountains; and this
and many other like blessings we enjoy daily."
Contentment, we have been told by Epicurus, consists not in great
wealth, but in few wants. In this fortunate country, however, we may
have many wants, and yet, if they are only reasonable, we may gratify
them all.
Nature indeed provides without stint the main requisites of human
happiness. "To watch the corn grow, or the blossoms set; to draw hard
breath over plough-share or spade; to read, to think, to love, to pray,"

these, says Ruskin, "are the things that make men happy."
"I have fallen into the hands of thieves," says Jeremy Taylor; "what
then? They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving
wife and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can
still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry
countenance and my cheerful spirit and a good conscience.... And he
that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with
sorrow and peevishness who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to
sit down on his little handful of thorns."
"When a man has such things to think on, and sees the sun, the moon,
and stars, and enjoys earth and sea, he is not solitary or even helpless."
[18]
"Paradise indeed might," as Luther said, "apply to the whole world."
What more is there we could ask for ourselves? "Every sort of beauty,"
says Mr. Greg, [19] "has been lavished on our allotted home; beauties
to enrapture every sense, beauties to satisfy every taste; forms the
noblest and the loveliest, colors the most gorgeous and the most
delicate, odors the sweetest and subtlest, harmonies the most soothing
and the most stirring: the sunny glories of the day; the pale Elysian
grace of moonlight; the lake, the mountain, the primeval forest, and the
boundless ocean; 'silent pinnacles of aged snow' in one hemisphere, the
marvels of tropical luxuriance in another; the serenity of sunsets; the
sublimity of storms; everything is bestowed in boundless profusion on
the scene of our existence; we can conceive or desire nothing more
exquisite or perfect than what is round us every hour; and our
perceptions are so framed as to be consciously alive to all. The
provision made for our sensuous enjoyment is in overflowing
abundance; so is that for the other elements of our complex nature.
Who that has revelled in the opening ecstasies of a young Imagination,
or the rich marvels of the world of Thought, does not confess that the
Intelligence has been dowered at least with as profuse a beneficence as
the Senses? Who that has truly tasted