a
great deal to the forces of the system. All the facts confirm this high
estimate. An unusually copious supply of arterial blood to the brain is
an indispensable requisite, even although other organs should be
partially starved, and consequently be left in a weak condition, or else
deteriorate before their time. To support the excessive demand of power
for one object, less must be exacted from other functions. Hard bodily
labour and severe mental application sap the very foundations of
buoyancy; they may not entail much positive suffering, but they are
scarcely compatible with exuberant spirits. There may be exceptional
individuals whose _total_ of power is a very large figure, who can bear
more work, endure more privation, and yet display more buoyancy, without
shortened life, than the average human being. Hardly any man can attain
commanding greatness without being constituted larger than his fellows
in the sum of human vitality. But until this is proved to be the fact
in any given instance, we are safe in presuming that extraordinary
endowment in one thing implies deficiency in other things. More
especially must we conclude, provisionally at least, that a buoyant,
hopeful, elated temperament lacks some other virtues, aptitudes, or
powers, such as are seen flourishing in the men whose temperament is
sombre, inclining to despondency. Most commonly the contradictory demand
is reconciled by the proverbial "short life and merry".

Adverting now to the object that Helps had so earnestly at
heart--namely, to rouse and rescue the English population from their
comparative dulness to a more lively and cheerful flow of existence--let
us reflect how, upon the foregoing principles, this is to be done. Not
certainly by an eloquent appeal to the nation to get up and be amused.
The process will turn out to be a more circuitous one.

The mental conformation of the English people, which we may admit to be
less lively and less easily amused than the temperament of Irishmen,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch of our own
Teutonic race, is what it is from natural causes, whether remote
descent, or that coupled with the operation of climate and other local
peculiarities. How long would it take, and what would be the way to
establish in us a second nature on the point of cheerfulness?

Again, with the national temperament such as it is, there may be great
individual differences; and it may be possible by force of