he weight of life upon my soul. It is
impossible that I can bring up such a family of children; my sons and
daughters will be beggars! I shall live to see those whom I love exposed
to the scorn and contumely of the world!--But stop, thou child of
sorrow, and humble imitator of Job, and tell me on what you dined. Was
not there soup and salmon, and then a plate of beef, and then duck,
blanc-mange, cream cheese, diluted with beer, claret, champagne, hock,
tea, coffee, and noyeau? And after all this you talk of the _mind_ and
the evils of life! These kinds of cases do not need meditation, but
magnesia. Take short views of life. What am I to do in these times with
such a family of children? So I argued, and lived dejected and with
little hope; but the difficulty vanished as life went on. An uncle died,
and left me some money; an aunt died, and left me more; my daughter
married well; I had two or three appointments, and before life was half
over became a prosperous man. And so will you. Every one has uncles and
aunts who are mortal; friends start up out of the earth; time brings a
thousand chances in your favour; legacies fall from the clouds. Nothing
so absurd as to sit down and wring your hands because all the good which
may happen to you in twenty years has not taken place at this precise
moment.

The greatest happiness which can happen to any one is to cultivate a
love of reading. Study is often dull because it is improperly managed. I
make no apology for speaking of myself, for as I write anonymously
nobody knows who I am, and if I did not, very few would be the
wiser--but every man speaks more firmly when he speaks from his own
experience. I read four books at a time; some classical book perhaps on
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. The "History of France," we will
say, on the evenings of the same days. On Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday, Mosheim, or Lardner, and in the evening of those days,
Reynolds's Lectures or Burns's Travels. Then I have always a standing
book of poetry, and a novel to read when I am in the humour to read
nothing else. Then I translate some French into English one day, and
re-translate it the next; so that I have seven or eight pursuits going
on at the same time, and this produces the cheerfulness of diversity,
and avoids that gloom which proceeds from hanging a long while over a
single book. I do not recommend this as a receipt for becoming a learned
man, but for becoming a cheerful one.