of my readers, that what they have been reading is
really not sublime.
No 65. LOOKER-ON. 155
N 65. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10.
All things are in a constant flux.
Although I really believe that the reverses of for-
tune and the revolutions of matter have been felt in
less proportion by me and my race than by the ge-
nerality of the world, yet I must own that no senti-
ment is so frequently in my mind as that which is
inspired by a view of the transitoriness of our na-
tures, and the perishable allotment of every thing
that appertains to man. I was grey-headed at
twenty-five, and grey-headed I remain: and my
mother assures me, that forty years have made but
little alteration in my face or figure. But, in the
mean time, what a wreck have I beheld of things
around me! How many have been swept away, and
how many have been led forwards by the hand of
Time! How many have again succeeded and de-
parted, and carried away with them all memory of
their existence ! How often have I marked the early
promise of manhood bloom, ripen, wither, and drop
off! How often have I seen the throne of beauty
disputed, till both competitors have lost their claims!
And what a list of queens in the empire of love have
these forty years afforded ! In the midst of such
caducity, one almost wonders that man should be
merry ; but one wonders more that he should be
sad; and, most of all, that he should be ambitious;
156 LOOKER-ON. N65.
that he should have his objects, and hopes, and
friendships, and enmities, is all wonderful in the few
short years of this passing existence.
That our habits should so outlive our powers ;
that our ambition should begin at the close of life ;
that our hopes and anxieties should bloom in our
wrinkles; that the love of acquisition should so long
survive the enjoyment; and that our desire of know-
ledge should increase with our decay; are to me ir-
resistible proofs of the vast disproportion between
our existence and our faculties, and of the separate
natures of our corporeal and mental constitution.
This princely permanence of the mind, this " forma
mentis asterna," is proved in a clear and astonishing
manner by the inverse proportion in which its ca-
pacities improve under a visible decay of the instru-
ment of its operations. Even in the hour of mortal
decrepitude the soul asserts its independency, and
exhibits proofs that, however it may fail in its or-
ganical functions, its essential powers are in no sort
diminished. The living faculties are destined here
to work with instruments not immortal like them-
selves, but of frail and perishable natures. When
these are injured by age or accident, they are some-
times repaired, sometimes supplied, by human con-
trivance : the mind, when called upon, is always
ready ; give it but an engine, and its action re-
commences. Now either it was the same, or it was
reduced in its capacities, during the suspension of its
operations, and mutilation of its instruments. If it
were defalcated and reduced, we must consent that
human means could restore the living powers. If it
were the same, then is the mind as separate from the
body, its vehicle, as is the charioteer from the cha-
riot in which he rides.
Yet for all this it is melancholy to reflect upon the
Z*63. LOOKER-ON. 157
changing condition of all that regards our nature ; to
contemplate the decline and dissolution of the osten-
sible objects of all our cares, affections, and friend-
ships ; then to look inwards, and regard the re-
volutions of our own bosoms, the shadowy succes-
sion of hopes and wishes, the gradual dereliction of
those interests and pleasures in which our hearts
have formerly delighted, and the painful disenchant-
ment of those happy delusions which make a para-
dise of our thoughts in early life, and which are
among the most precious sacrifices that youth can
make to manhood, or inexperience to knowledge.
Yet this changing condition of man brings its com-
forts as well as its regrets : the objects of our anxie-
ties, our pains, our loves, and our sorrows, alter their
complexion or lose their existence in a little time,
and nothing but remorse can so fasten upon the
mind, but that its liberty may again be regained at
some subsequent period, in some new condition or
posture of things. It is the solace of disappointed
ambition to reflect that those rewards and attainments,
which at present elude its grasp, will one day or
other be robbed of their relish and attractions, and
that thus a sort of revenge will be given it in this na-
tural waste of life ; and love despised may find com-
fort in the thought, that the period is not very
distant when those features, which inspired it, shall
lose their polish, and those feelings shall be blunted
from which it drew its power to torment us.
Were it not for this insensible change, that is per-
petually taking place in our bosoms and in the colour
of every thing around us, it would be impossible for
human nature to support the losses and sorrows to
which it is subject. It is that law of our existence in
which Providence has peculiarly consulted human
imbecility ; for, without such a law, our reason could
VOL. XLIII. P
15$ LOOKER-ON. No 65.
but ill contend with the crosses and calamities of
life. But if this condition of universal change was
designed as a source of consolation to suffering hu-
manity, it was also designed to be a perpetual lesson
of instruction, and a gradual preparation for that last
great change to which at length we must resign
ourselves.
Amidst so much fluctuation and so much mortality,
in such a state of lubricity and deception, amidst
such a mass of perishing objects of pleasure and
fleeting monuments of pride, one would think it im-
possible for a mind that has been exercised to re-
flection to fix its hopes on any thing in this life, or
lend to present concerns that greater half of our
being which belongs to a permanent and solid fu-
turity. Such contemplations as these, continually
renewed, make a salutary impression upon the mind;
they release it from that thraldom in which the
devotees to this world and its pleasures are involved,
and hold it in a sort of equilibrium as to temporal
concerns, while its option and its views fasten on a
spiritual eternity.
While such is the insecurity of enjoyment, the
pleasures of this existence must be always incom-
plete ; and as no depression of fortunes can long
endure, so no elevation of circumstances can raise us
above the dread of change. A certain secret alarm,
an obtrusive threatening idea, enters into all our de-
lights which depend upon present objects, and trou-
bles those moments of felicity to which have been
devoted all the ardours of the mind, as to the consum-
mation of its hopes and rewards. This pensively
painful feeling grows intenser as our happiness in-
creases, gains strength with the progress of our for-
tunes, and is in a manner nourished from those very
circumstances with which it is ever at hostility.
H65> LOOKER-ON. 159
How admirably is this constitution of things con-
trived! Our splendours, our sufferings, and our
sorrows, thus carry their correctives and antidotes
in themselves; and while life is restrained within
that measure of enjoyment which is necessary to
prevent or to disappoint a too great addiction to
worldly pleasures, in the bosom of misery also there
grows up a silent and comforting anticipation of
change, which, where a sense of religion prevails, is
fostered by our griefs, and fed by our calamities .
How admirably are things contrived in a world like
this, that is nothing but the fore-runner of an im-
mortal futurity, to dispose the mind to the contem-
plation of that futurity! How suited to such ends is
a world wherein such a passing scene is moving be-
fore us, such a giddy whirl of unwearied alteration,
such a sliding succession of objects, that the thoughts
have no repose, no resting-place in the compass of
our present existence, no points of contact to which
they can adhere, but are forced involuntarily on-
wards to those durable and stedfast objects which
eternity presents!
Although the physical vicissitudes of life, such as
the loss of strength and the decay of beauty, more
deeply affect us by their closer connection with our
being, yet the suddenness of moral changes, and the
rapid revolutions of our external condition, more
forcibly excite our attention, and rouse a more ani-
mated sense of the uncertainty of human affairs.
When we reflect on the sinking fortunes of nations,
and the sudden fall of mighty kingdoms, we are im-
pressed with an aweful idea of the supreme Disposer,
in whose hands a whole nation is but as one man.
When we walk upon fields and meadows, where no-
thing but a few mounds remain to remind us that
here, in ancient times, was raised a fortification that
p2
160 LOOKER-ON. N< 65.
withstood the efforts of armies ; and reflect that on
the same spot where oxen now graze in tranquillity,
was once decided the fate of empires ; when we
tread upon piles of stones, which once administered
to the grandeur of princes, and over-awed the terri-
tory round ; how can we persist in building our
pride upon such transitory foundations, and in sacri-
ficing the repose of our minds for such unstable
rewards ?
In the packet which my friend Eugenio has left
with me, I find a short letter to his Amelia, where
there are some affecting ideas on the present subject.
" My dearest Emily,
" I was thinking, last night, as I sat in my
little plantation, how many new possessors it is des-
tined perhaps to receive, long after time shall have
swept away the memory of our names and our loves.
In this frame of mind, I cast my eyes upon that frag-
ment of a Gothic window, and those other vestiges of
an ancient abbey, which remain upon the premises.
Here my thoughts were carried back, through a
series of changes, to that long-forgotten period in
which this abbey stood in all its pride, regarded per-
haps then as an upstart edifice in the fashion of the
day, and built perhaps in part with the ruins of
some older monument that occupied the same spot
of ground
But time has seen, that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,
I las seen this broken pile complete,
Big with the vanity of state ;
But transient are the smiles of Fate!
A little rule, a little sway,
A sun-beam in a winter's day,
Is all the great, the mighty, have
Between the cradle and the grave.
No 65. LOOKER-ON. 161
" Thus, in the great mysterious system of change,
by which the universe is governed, we see one thing
gradually drop into another ; and, amidst a perpetual
fluctuation of its parts, the great order of the world
goes on with unchangeable constancy. While ' one
day telleth another, and one night certifieth another;'
while the seasons return with unfailing regularity,
and the great and governing laws of nature preserve
an unerring uniformity ; a silent succession of parts,
a perpetual course of renewal and decay in the or-
ganization of the particulars which compose this
great whole, make the tenure of life and all its cir-
cumstances awfully precarious in the midst of such
general certainty and catholic order.
" This fickle constitution of our natures I can
easily apply to myself: I can imagine the hand
with which I am writing palsied and decayed ; but
on thy dear face I cannot suppose a wrinkle ; I can-
not figure to my fancy that victory of time, which
shall destroy the charms of that mouth I have so
often hung over enraptured. Yet, my dear Emily,
that beauty must yield, all paramount as it is at
present ; and unless the grave interfere, those fea-
tures will one day have nothing but the mind to illu-
minate them, though such a mind as would have
made thee handsome in spite of rules.
" You complain of the grave turn of my reflec-
tions, and recommend me to mix in the world, and
take a part in its contests and ambitions. Indeed,
my child, I am not dull, except when you are from
me ; as for grave reflections, this is surely not a
merry being that we possess ; and it is more our own
folly than the comedy of life which makes some
of us go so laughingly through it. But into the
contests and ambitions of the world, another consi-
deration deters me from embarking and that is., the
r 3
162 LOOKER-ON. N 65.
vanity and uncertainty with which they are attended,
I am no novice in the game of life ; and it is from
conviction that I affirm all that part of it to be but a
splendid cheat in which our solid comforts are played
against a slippery and hazardous elevation. I should
as soon persuade myself to sacrifice my friend to a
momentary jest, as to give up what I conceive to be
the serious business of life for the short-lived vanity
of rising in the world.
" Happily, you have more reading than experi-
ence in the affairs of mankind ; but your reading
supplies you with sufficient examples of the disap-
pointment of every scheme of aggrandisement whose
views terminate with our present existence. In all
the compass of history, I know of no instance in
which ambition has ended in enjoyment, or wherein
its troubles and sacrifices have been ultimately re-
warded. Those have turned it to the best account
who have voluntarily descended from their heights,
and anticipated the changes of fortune by a timely
abdication. Yet these have in some measure cut off
their own retreat by an unavoidable depravation of
their minds in a course of ambitious pursuits : for a
mind once exercised to cabal and intrigue, is unhappy
in its own element, and unfitted for every other.
" If, then, after all our endeavours, and all our
anxieties, the best we can do with our bargain is to
forfeit the deposit, how infinitely wiser to rest satis-
fied as we are, and give up the concern altogether!
I am sure you are not unacquainted with the name
of Pyrrhus, although you may happen to be with this
anecdote of him. ' What do you propose to your-
self in this expedition against the Romans?' says
Cineas. ' To conquer ail Italy,' answers the mo-
narch. ' And what next?' ' Next we will make
Sicily our own.' ' And then?' < Why then we will
S a 63* LOOKER-ON, 165
sail into Africa, and bring that country into subjec-
tion to our arms.' ' And after this ? ' After this,
we will sit down and be merry.' ' And what,' re-
turns Cineas, ' prevents your majesty from doing so
at present?'
" In truth, the only conquest necessary to be
gained for the attainment of this object, is the con-
quest of one's-self ; and if I have not advanced in
tliis sufficiently far to render myself merry, I am at
least become by its assistance tolerably tranquil. I
think I am armed against most of the vicissitudes of
this world, except those in which love is concerned;
and here, indeed, should any cross accident inter-
vene, I cannot answer for my own philosophy, or
even for my life. Ah! why, my dearest Emily, do
we yet delay to complete that felicity which is within
our grasp, and to raise what rampart we can round
our loves, by such means as our stars afford us? I
have seen the rev. Mr. Olive-Branch to day, who
has promised to perform the ceremony of our nup-
tials. This kind promise on his part seems in a man-
ner to strengthen those sacred bonds which unite us;
to give alacrity to my confidence, and security to my
hopes. He says the verses you sent are exquisite,
and ought to afford me some consolation. They are
indeed beautiful; but a smile from thee, dear girl,
would have wrought a more powerful effect. Adieu."
The history of all times and all nations is so re-
plete with examples of sudden elevations and sudden
downfalls in the lives of particular persons, that I
have forborne to introduce any instances in aid of my
observations. Besides which, the riotous sports of
fortune in a neighbouring kingdom have afforded
such a train of unprecedented revolutions, as beggars
all former experience. The vulgar . details of the
164- LOOKER-ON. N65.
day are full of lessons on the instability of greatness,
and the vanity of ambition ; the very elements of
civilization have been destroyed in a moment, and
society itself disbanded. In the general agitation
and tumult, the very mud of the community has
been excited from the bottom of the pool, which no
longer reflects from its surface the human face di-
vine, but exhibits a dark and melancholy abyss, in
which nothing is traceable, nothing distinct ; nothing
but a squalid commixture of human woes and de-
pravities. At this moment, how many testimonies to
the instability of grandeur are spread over this part
of the globe! How many are wandering without
homes, whose homes were principalities ; and how
many have exchanged their palaces for prisons !
How humiliating are these lessons to the pride of
human nature ! But a little while ago our shores were
visited by a mendicant general, supplicating an asy-
lum in that country whose establishments he had
menaced with certain overthrow, whose prosperity
he had viewed with derision, and whose fair and
flourishing land in his heart he had vowed to de-
struction.
Such catastrophes instruct us in the littleness of
our pride and pretensions, and show us the folly of
all those hopes which depend upon man for their ac-
complishment. They are greater, indeed, than such
as fall within the experience of ordinary men, and
more awful by their magnitude ; but they are only
the same, on a greater scale, with those constant
miscarriages in lower life, with which every attempt
is accompanied, that is not founded on principles of
prudence and probity, and makes, no provision for
those perpetual shocks and vicissitudes which place
disappointment and disaster among the moral cer-
tainties of life.
* 66. LOOKER-ON. 165
N 66. SATURDAY, AUGUST 17.
Satis est, mi Tiheri, si hoc habemas ne quis nobis male facere
possit. Sueton. in Aug.
Let them say what they please, Tiberius ; it is enough revenge
for us, that we are out of the reach of their malice.
The reader may naturally wonder, that, consider-
ing the prevalence of scandal in the world, it has
not drawn upon itself, before this time, the attention
of the Looker-ox. The truth is, that, like a cau-
tious physician, I amnot fond of being called in upon
desparate occasions ; and I really regard the pro-
pensity to slander and detraction as one of the most
incurable diseases to which the mind of man is sub-
ject. It seems hardly to undergo the common fluc-
tuations which we may observe in the course of
other vices. In all ages and all nations it has been
triumphantly mischievous ; and from Hesiod to Ad-
dison, every moral writer has complained of it, as
the prevailing infirmity of his times. The gigantic
growth, ascendancy, and universality of this evil,
arise from the extraordinary nourishment it receives
from all the bad propensities of our nature : there is
no passion but what lends to it some assistance ; and
the sources which contribute to sustain it are so va-
rious and inexhaustible, that, before it can be sub-
dued in the mind, a thousand collateral supports
must be destroyed.
166 LOOKER-OX. N 66
I have observed too, that it is the retreat of disap-
pointed passion ; and that, when our hopes and am-
bitions are defeated, they not seldom fall upon this
mode of reparation. As soon as our schemes of ag-
grandisement fail, we rarely perplex ourselves for a
moment with inquiring into the grounds on which
they stood ; but, by scattering a promiscuous abuse
on all around us, endeavour to save our own credit
at the expense of the public judgment or public
probity. We forget, however, that mankind are,
after all, to be our judges, and that by these mea-
sures we are in fact denouncing those to whom we
are making our appeal. It is a truth which wc are
long in being taught, that the world is very inde-
pendent of every individual, while no individual is
independent of the world ; and that, if one man be
rejected by the rest, he can have no revenge in at-
tacking the whole. After all our spleen and all our
resentment, the world will still continue to suppose
itself right, and will not be cudgeled into approba-
tion.
It is somewhat curious to observe the uniform ap-
pearance under which this vice has shown itself in
all ages, and how nearly the different descriptions of
it, which the poets and moralists of all times have
left us, do coincide in the circumstances under which
they represent it. Lucian has left us a kind of ser-
mon upon scandal, which is as suitable to the com-
plexion of the present times as it was to that of his
own; and the Thersites of Homer may be found in
every village in England. The blacksmiths' and
barbers' shops in Greece and in Rome were always,
as they are at this day in country towns, the resorts
of idle folks and gossiping tale-bearers. Thus Aris-
tophanes, in his Plutus:
N66 LOOKER-ON. 167
Cv tfftiQouai
K?t TCI \oyoQ y'r,v, vi) t" HjaxXEc, 'S'v'hu;
Ewt Tots-t xokjsiokti tot xaflti^cEiav.
" I would not credit it, if it were the common talk of all the
lounging fellows in the barbers' shops."
The Greeks, whose language affords us a name
[i7rncjx,ipx.a.x.ia.) for this cruel delight in the misfor-
tunes of others, had certainly so strong a propensity
to gossiping, that nothing but their constant occupa-
tion in their wars would have prevented their be-
coming the veriest prattlers under heaven: and this
seems to have been eminently the character of all
those who were settled in peaceful situations at Rome
under the emperors. As their affairs declined, and
their ardour in the cause of liberty no longer en-
gaged them in continual warfare, this prominent
part of their character began to develope itself, and
increased to such a degree, that at length they talked
themselves out of all their dignity, and much of theif
philosophy. The following verse in the Acts of the
Apostles bears testimony to the truth of this remark
" For all the Athenians and strangers which were
there, spent their time in nothing else, but either to
hear or tell some new thing." Of how many of my
countrymen does this at present constitute the only
classical accomplishment!
It gives me pain to observe, that, in ancient as well
as modern times, the reproach of this gossiping mania
has principally fallen upon the women, whose na-
tural bias towards tenderness and mercy would make
this a very unaccountable particularity, unless we
looked for the cause of it in the narrower compass of
their education, and the more circumscribed range
of their lives and employments. The love of scan-
168 LOOKER-ON. Ji66^
dal is generally in proportion to the deficiency of
other topics ; and, as in some countries it has been
the fashion to starve the minds of the females, in all
to abridge them of the necessary nourishment, we
are not to wonder at their resorting to these supple-
ments and succedaneums.
Whether it be true or not of nature, it is clear
enough that the mind abhors a vacuum, and, if it be
not supplied with better matter for contemplation, it
will fill up its measure of thinking with the homely
topics of the day, or the vulgar gossip of idle curio-
sity. We shall find it every where through life the
same: the mind of man has an unwearied activity,
that keeps it in perpetual motion : if we stop its pro-
gress in one place, it will burst out in another; and
if we bar its access to things, it will of necessity fall
upon persons. For the same reason, wherever there
is the greatest dearth of popular information, there
will always be the greatest tendency to this odious
habit ; and in proportion as a place is small, and in-
sulated from general communication; in proportion
as, by its situation, it is dependent on its own inter-
nal harmony for its happiness and its amusement, it
manifests a disposition to abuse and calumny.
I hope I shall not experience the displeasure of
the ladies for what I have said of their propensity to
scandal, in which I have produced a cause that vin-
dicates the constitution of their minds, and throws
the whole blame upon the circumstances in which
they are placed. If, however, the general accusa-
tion be founded on truth, it is a truth sorely to be
lamented, since nothing is so inimical to beauty as
the shadow of ill-nature ; and the lips from which
harsh animadversions are perpetually flowing do
their own cause a more serious injury than that of
those they are traducing. Tims I would not desire a
N66. LOOKER-ON. 169
more ample revenge upon a fair calumniator, than
that which she executes upon herself. It would be