Falkland | Page 6

the energy, yet fitfulness of my
nature; mingling to-day in the tumults of the city, and to-morrow alone
with my own heart in the solitude of unpeopled nature; now revelling in
the wildest excesses, and now tracing, with a painful and unwearied
search, the intricacies of science; alternately governing others, and
subdued by the tyranny which my own passions imposed--I passed
through the ordeal unshrinking yet unscathed. "The education of life,"
says De Stael, "perfects the thinking mind, but depraves the frivolous."
I do not inquire, Monkton, to which of these classes I belong; but I feel
too well, that though my mind has not been depraved, it has found no
perfection but in misfortune; and that whatever be the acquirements of
later years, they have nothing which can compensate for the losses of
our youth.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
I returned to England. I entered again upon the theatre of its world; but
I mixed now more in its greater than its lesser pursuits. I looked rather
at the mass than the leaven of mankind; and while I felt aversion for the
few whom I knew, I glowed with philanthropy for the crowd which I
knew not.
It is in contemplating men at a distance that we become benevolent.
When we mix with them, we suffer by the contact, and grow, if not
malicious from the injury, at least selfish from the circumspection
which our safety imposes but when, while we feel our relationship, we
are not galled by the tie; when neither jealousy, nor envy, nor
resentment are excited, we have nothing to interfere with those more
complacent and kindliest sentiments which our earliest impressions
have rendered natural to our hearts. We may fly men in hatred because
they have galled us, but the feeling ceases with the cause: none will
willingly feed long upon bitter thoughts. It is thus that, while in the
narrow circle in which we move we suffer daily from those who
approach us, we can, in spite of our resentment to them, glow with a
general benevolence to the wider relations from which we are remote;
that while smarting beneath the treachery of friendship, the stinging of
ingratitude, the faithfulness of love, we would almost sacrifice our lives
to realise some idolised theory of legislation; and that, distrustful,
calculating, selfish in private, there are thousands who would, with a
credulous fanaticism, fling themselves as victims before that
unrecompensing Moloch which they term the Public.
Living, then, much by myself, but reflecting much upon the world, I
learned to love mankind. Philanthropy brought ambition; for I was
ambitious, not for my own aggrandisement, but for the service of
others-- for the poor--the toiling--the degraded; these constituted that
part of my fellow-beings which I the most loved, for these were bound
to me by the most engaging of all human ties--misfortune! I began to
enter into the intrigues of the state; I extended my observation and
inquiry from individuals to nations; I examined into the mysteries of

the science which has arisen in these later days to give the lie to the
wisdom of the past, to reduce into the simplicity of problems the
intricacies of political knowledge, to teach us the fallacy of the system
which had governed by restriction, and imagined that the happiness of
nations depended upon the perpetual interference of its rulers, and to
prove to us that the only unerring policy of art is to leave a free and
unobstructed progress to the hidden energies and province of Nature.
But it was not only the theoretical investigation of the state which
employed me. I mixed, though in secret, with the agents of its springs.
While I seemed only intent upon pleasure, I locked in my heart the
consciousness and vanity of power. In the levity of the lip I disguised
the workings and the knowledge of the brain; and I looked, as with a
gifted eye, upon the mysteries of the hidden depths, while I seemed to
float an idler, with the herd, only on the surface of the stream.
Why was I disgusted, when I had but to put forth my hand and grasp
whatever object my ambition might desire? Alas! there was in my heart
always something too soft for the aims and cravings of my mind. I felt
that I was wasting the young years of my life in a barren and
wearisome pursuit. What to me, who had outlived vanity, would have
been the admiration of the crowd! I sighed for the sympathy of the one!
and I shrunk in sadness from the prospect of renown to ask my heart for
the reality of love! For what purpose, too, had I devoted myself to the
service of men? As I grew more sensible of the labour