done you any deliberate wrong or wilful injury; he would probably shrink with horror from the very thought of such a thing; but he may none the less have destroyed your peace and ruined your happiness by his perverse conduct, his maddening inconsistency, or his ill-advised interference in your affairs. To make him comprehend the mischief he has wrought is out of the question. Conscious of the purity of his motives, he forgets what tragedies have sprung from good intentions, and he ignores the disastrous consequences of his actions. He cannot, for the life of him, weep over the misery he has caused, because he cannot take your eyes. You love him dearly, but you and he cannot get on together. The plague of Babel is upon you both, and neither can understand the other. In no case more poignantly than in this do we feel the incommunicability of sorrow: "Si vous voulez pleurer mes malheurs, prenez mes yeux." Alas, my heart! It is not to be done. Though a thousand friends were grouped around the bed of a dying man, still must he die alone. Unaccompanied by any one of those who view with anguish the ebbing of the tide of life must he descend into the valley of the shadow of death. And as it will be in death, so also is it in life. Through the most momentous eras of our earthly career, every man and woman of us must walk, not, it may be, uncared for, nor unloved, but alone, all alone. The sense of solitude inspired by this thought is indeed saddening; yet it may be turned to profitable account. Of what avail is it to attempt to explain that which is in its very nature inexplicable? What good end is to be attained by harassing our friends with the recital of griefs which, however they may commiserate, they cannot comprehend? The selfishness of such a proceeding is apparent at a glance. There is no patent of affliction. Every man has sorrows enough of his own, without being saddled with those of his friends as well. Every man must carry his own cross. To seek to shift it upon other shoulders were as futile as unmanly. "Bear ye one another's burdens." Yes, by all means, in the sense of giving our help and sympathy to all who are in affliction, but not in the hopeless sense of torturing others with a tale of woe intelligible only to ourselves. "We must instruct our sorrows to be proud." Let us cull comfort, if not from the sublime precepts of Christianity, at all events from the benign philosophy of the Ancients. Come what may, never forget this august maxim, "Qui silenter patitur nullo ille spernitur deo;" "He who suffers in silence is not disdained by any god." THE DIGNITY AND DELIGHT OF IGNORANCE. POETS and speakers, more or less melodious and eloquent, have not been wanting to sound the praises of Imagination, of Memory, and of Hope. How strange it is how very strange-that no one should ever have attempted to celebrate the dignity and delight of Ignorance! What nobler theme than this could possibly inspire the harp of the lyrist, the pen of the essayist, or the tongue of the orator? Distrustful of my own ability, however richly endowed with Ignorance, to rise to the grandeur of the "topic," I should hesitate to approach it, but that a strong sense of duty impels me to do my best to supply what must be universally regarded as a desideratum in literature. I propose, therefore, to devote this essay to a consideration of the claims of Ignorance upon the admiration and gratitude of mankind. I have already unmasked Beauty, exposing her to the world in her true colors as the basest of sirens, the most perfidious of sorceresses. Come for a ramble with me to-day, dear reader mine, and I hope to conduct you safely to a happy destination-the profound conviction that Knowledge ranks next after Beauty in the order of mischief, sharing with her the bad distinction of pre-eminent hostility to the peace and happiness of the human race. Bear with me for a while and you shall be proud to acknowledge that the amount of man's ignorance is the measure of his felicity. "Non meus hic sermo." While disclaiming any intention to venture upon the shoreless sea of dogmatic theology, I may be permitted to remind you of what all Christians are of accord in admitting, let their differences on other points be what they may-namely, that we should all be now leading joyous and sinless lives in the amaranthine groves of Paradise had it not been that Adam, at the instigation of his wife, ate in an evil hour of the tree of knowledge. Conscious of this fact and pathetically observant of its influence on the destiny of man, Solomon, the son of David, set his hand to this memorable declaration, "In the multitude of wisdom is grief, and he that increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow." On this immortal maxim I take my stand as on a rock, defying contradiction and laughing my assailants to scorn. quite in the spirit of Solomon's benignant philosophy that Matthew Prior penned his verse, witty as musical : It was : “If we see right we see our woes, The only wretched are the wise." Yes. Solomon was right; so was Prior; so, not to speak it profanely, am I. Don't be run away with by your feelings. View the question dispassionately, and regarding it honestly from what point you may, you will still be driven in candor to the conclusion that Beauty and Knowledge are man's direst foes, Ugliness and Ignorance his truest friends. The next best thing to being ugly is to be ignorant. Be both if you can; but that were more easily said than done. The man who is at once ugly and ignorant-and such a man have I met ere now-may be said to have reached the very acme of human felicity; but such a combination of good luck is rare, indeed. He who possesses it may account himself the prime favorite of fortune. "Is deis, is superis, proximus est." Ugliness is a gift-a special blessing inherited from Nature, not to be acquired by art. The beauty of ignorance is that it is within the reach of every one. Not everybody can be ugly, but any one can be ignorant. What a blessed thought! Then let us be ignorant; as we value our happiness, let us be ignorant! Is it not written, "in the multitude of wisdom is grief, and he that increaseth wisdom increaseth sorrow?" and does not every day's experience attest the truth of the saying, "Utinam ne scirem literas?" "Oh! that I had never known my letters," exclaimed the unhappy Abbé Lamennais; and what man of sense is there who would not echo that sentiment? Forgery would have been unknown, and Dr. Dodd, instead of being hanged at Newgate, would have died in his bed had he not learned to write. "Where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise," sang Gray, the poet; and where in this weary world is ignorance not bliss? where is it not folly to be wise? One of the happiest men I have ever known is one solid mass of ignorance. He doesn't know a wheel-barrow from an act of parliament; yet is he the luckiest, jolliest man on earth, as rich as the sea, and the very picture of fat, contented ignorance. His round rosy face, his witless laugh, everything about him bespeaks utter vacuity of mind. "Thought would destroy his paradise." Educate a man and you make him critical; being critical he will become fastidious: and once fastidious, farewell forever to enjoyment! To an ignorant man the world is full of surprises; and surprise is, according to Burke, one of the primary elements of happiness. A lettered man is surprised at nothing. “Nil admirari" is the maxim of his joyless life; but your ignoramus is ever in a transport of sudden delight. Explain things to him, and you destroy interest and curiosity at a blow. It is mystery that gives zest and piquancy to existence. Who would find the slightest satisfaction in the marvellous exhibition of a conjurer if the secret of his magic were divulged? Why should any man be taught algebra, that "execrable joke," as the old gentleman calls it in the play? Tom Sheridan was one of the pleasantest, brightest-hearted of men, yet he lived and died in the belief that algebra was one of the learned languages. Your scholar, roving by the sea-side, sets his poor brains on the rack thinking about conchology, the current of the tides, the law of storms, and all the rest of it. Your ignoramus doesn't care a fig-stalk for any of these things: and what the worse is he? He enjoys his walk, and goes home with the appe |