ly less severe than the severest winter will give us leave
to be. With our united love, we conclude ourselves yours and Mrs
Newton's affectionate and faithful

W. C.
M. U.

(_Letters_.)

{93}

EDWARD GIBBON 1737-1794

YOUTH

At the conclusion of this first period of my life, I am tempted to
enter a protest against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness of
our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the
world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never
regretted; and were my poor aunt still alive, she would bear testimony
to the early and constant uniformity of my sentiments. It will,
indeed, be replied that _I_ am not a competent judge; that pleasure is
incompatible with pain, that joy is excluded from sickness; and that
the felicity of a school-boy consists in the perpetual motion of
thoughtless and playful agility, in which I was never qualified to
excel. My name, it is most true, could never be enrolled among the
sprightly race, the idle progeny of Eton or Westminster, who delight to
cleave the water with pliant arm, to urge the flying ball, and to chase
the speed of the rolling circle. But I would ask the warmest and most
active hero of the play-field whether he can seriously compare his
childish with his manly enjoyments. . . . A state of happiness arising
only from the want of foresight and reflection shall never provoke my
envy; such degenerate taste would tend to sink us in the scale of
beings from a man to a child, a dog and an oyster, till we had reached
the confines of brute matter, which cannot suffer because it cannot
feel. The poet may gaily describe the short hours of {94} recreation;
but he forgets the daily, tedious labours of the school, which is
approached each morning with anxious and reluctant steps. Degrees of
misery are proportioned to the mind rather than to the object; _parva
leves capiunt animos_; and few men, in the trials of life, have
experienced a more painful sensation than the poor school-boy with an
imperfect task, who trembles on the eve of the black Monday. A school
is the cavern of fear and sorrow; the mobility of the captive youths is
chained to a book and a desk; an inflexible master commands their
attention, which every moment is impatient to escape; they labour like
the soldiers of Persia under the scourge, and their education is nearly
finished before they can apprehend the sense or utility of the harsh
lessons w