Falkland | Page 5

pleasures of life, I have not enjoyed them. Women, wine,
the society of the gay, the commune of the wise, the lonely pursuit of
knowledge, the daring visions of ambition, all have occupied me in turn,
and all alike have deceived me; but, like the Widow in the story of
Voltaire, I have built at last a temple to "Time, the Comforter:" I have
grown calm and unrepining with years; and, if I am now shrinking from
men, I have derived at least this advantage from the loneliness first
made habitual by regret; that while I feel increased benevolence to
others, I have learned to look for happiness only in myself.
They alone are independent of Fortune who have made themselves a
separate existence from the world.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I went to the University with a great fund of general reading, and habits
of constant application. My uncle, who, having no children of his own,
began to be ambitious for me, formed great expectations of my career
at Oxford. I staid there three years, and did nothing! I did not gain a
single prize, nor did I attempt anything above the ordinary degree. The
fact is, that nothing seemed to me worth the labour of success. I
conversed with those who had obtained the highest academical
reputation, and I smiled with a consciousness of superiority at the
boundlessness of their vanity, and the narrowness of their views. The
limits of the distinction they had gained seemed to them as wide as the
most extended renown; and the little knowledge their youth had
acquired only appeared to them an excuse for the ignorance and the
indolence of maturer years. Was it to equal these that I was to labour? I
felt that I already surpassed them! Was it to gain their good opinion, or,
still worse, that of their admirers? Alas! I had too long learned to live
for myself to find any happiness in the respect of the idlers I despised.
I left Oxford at the age of twenty-one. I succeeded to the large estates
of my inheritance, and for the first time I felt the vanity so natural to
youth when I went up to London to enjoy the resources of the Capital,
and to display the powers I possessed to revel in whatever those
resources could yield. I found society like the Jewish temple: any one is
admitted into its threshold; none but the chiefs of the institution into its
recesses.
Young, rich, of an ancient and honourable name, pursuing pleasure
rather as a necessary excitement than an occasional occupation, and
agreeable to the associates I drew around me because my profusion
contributed to their enjoyment, and my temper to their amusement--I
found myself courted by many, and avoided by none. I soon discovered
that all civility is but the mask of design. I smiled at the kindness of the
fathers who, hearing that I was talented, and knowing that I was rich,
looked to my support in whatever political side they had espoused. I
saw in the notes of the mothers their anxiety for the establishment of
their daughters, and their respect for my acres; and in the cordiality of

the sons who had horses to sell and rouge-et-noir debts to pay, I
detected all that veneration for my money which implied such contempt
for its possessor. By nature observant, and by misfortune sarcastic, I
looked upon the various colourings of society with a searching and
philosophic eye: I unravelled the intricacies which knit servility with
arrogance and meanness with ostentation; and I traced to its sources
that universal vulgarity of inward sentiment and external manner,
which, in all classes, appears to me to constitute the only unvarying
characteristic of our countrymen. In proportion as I increased my
knowledge of others, I shrunk with a deeper disappointment and
dejection into my own resources. The first moment of real happiness
which I experienced for a whole year was when I found myself about to
seek, beneath the influence of other skies, that more extended
acquaintance with my species which might either draw me to them with
a closer connection, or at last reconcile me to the ties which already
existed.
I will not dwell upon my adventures abroad: there is little to interest
others in a recital which awakens no interest in one's self. I sought for
wisdom, and I acquired but knowledge. I thirsted for the truth, the
tenderness of love, and I found but its fever and its falsehood. Like the
two Florimels of Spenser, I mistook, in my delirium, the delusive
fabrication of the senses for the divine reality of the heart; and I only
awoke from my deceit when the phantom I had worshipped melted into
snow. Whatever I pursued partook of