The halls resound with
mirth and revelry, and the eye grows dim with its glittering
splendour; but amid all this ostentatious brilliancy, poor human
nature refuses to be comforted with diamonds and pearls, or to
acknowledge that happiness consists in gilded galleries, gay
equipages, or fashionable parties. They are cold and artificial. The
heart longs to discard this joyless pageantry, to surround itself with
human affections, and only asks to love and be loved.
Still England is not wholly composed of castles and cottages, and
there are very many happy homes in it, and thousands upon thousands of
happy people in them, in spite of the melancholy climate, the
destitution of the poor, and the luxury of the rich. God is good. He
is not only merciful, but a just judge. He equalizes the condition of
all. The industrious poor man is content, for he relies on Providence
and his own exertions for his daily bread. He earns his food, and his
labour gives him a zest for it. Ambition craves, and is never
satisfied, one is poor amid his prodigal wealth, the other rich in his
frugal poverty. No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means;
and no one is poor whose incomings exceeds his outgoings. Barring such
things as climate, over which we have no control, happiness, in my
idea, consists in the mind, and not in the purse. These are plain
common truths, and everybody will tell you there is nothing new in
them, just as if there was anything new under the sun but my wooden
clocks, and yet they only say so because they can't deny them, for who
acts as if he ever heard of them before.
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