still spread on the remotest hill, if the distant sky is still invested with the delicate hues of promise, and the gentle radiance of hope, pursuit remains a pleasure; and the pilgrim, ever lighthearted, passes heedlessly over the barren wastes, and climbs with cheerful ardour each rugged mountain. But suppose that brilliant star to be blotted out of the sky; suppose the lustre of the horizon to have faded into the dank and gloomy shades of a cloudy evening; suppose the pursuit to be now without an object, and the blood which hope had sent merrily through the veins, to gather and curdle round the desponding heart. Then it is, that life is abandoned to persecuting fiends, and the springs of joy are poisoned by the demons of listlessness. The scholar and the Christian have theirs guarantied against despair. The desire for intelligence is never satisfied but with the attainment of that wisdom which passes all understanding; and the eye discerning the bright lineaments of its perfect exemplar, can set no limits to the sacred passion, which recognises the connexion of the human mind with the divine, and places before itself a career of advancement, to which time itself can never prescribe bounds. But it is not with these high questions that we are at present engaged. We have thrown open the book of human life; we are to read there of this world and its littleness, of the springs of present action, of the relief of present restlessness. We have said, that the pursuit of a noble object is in itself a pleasure. It is to the mind which holds up no definite object to its wishes, that the universe seems deficient in the means of happiness, and joy becomes a prey to the fiend of ennui. Let us develop this principle more accurately. Let us examine into the nature of ennui, and fix with exactness its true signification. Let us see if it be a principle of action widely dif fused. Let us ascertain the limits of its power; let us trace its influences on individual character. Perhaps the investigation may lead us to a more intimate acquaintance with our nature. Ennui is the desire of activity without the fit means of gratifying the desire. It presupposes an acknowledgment of exertion as a duty, and a consciousness of the possession of powers suited to making an exertion. It is itself a state of iddleness, yet of disquiet. It is inert, yet discontented. Such is ennui in itself. In its effects, it embraces a large class of human actions, and its influences are widely spread throughout every portion of mental or physical effort. To trace these effects, and to prescribe their limits, will be a part of our object; at present we would observe, that wherever a course of conduct is the result of physical want, of a passion for intelligence, a zeal for glory, or to sum up a great variety of theories in one, of a just and enlightened self-love, there there is no trace of ennui. But when the primary motives of human conduct have failed of their effect, and the mind has become a prey to listlessness, the career, then pursued, let it be what it may, is to be ascribed to the pain of ennui. When the mind gnaws upon itself, we have ennui; the course which is pursued to call the mind from this self-destructive process, is to be ascribed to the influence of that passion. Are our definitions indistinct? Let us attempt illustration. When the several powers and affections of man are, in the usual course of existence, called into healthy exercise, on objects sufficient to interest and satisfy them; this is happiness. When those powers and affections are exercised by objects sufficient to excite them in their highest degree, but where, being thus excited, there exists no harmony between the mind and its pursuits, where the affections are aroused without being soothed, where the chime is rung, but rung discordantly, there is misery. Where the powers of the mind are vigorous but unoccupied; where there exist a restless craving, an inquiet mobility, yet without any definite purpose or commensurate object, there is ennui. The state of mind is strongly delineated in the language of the sacred writer.— "I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do; and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly; for what can the man do that cometh after the king? Even that which hath already been done. Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness. The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness; and I perceived also, that one event happeneth to them all. Then I said in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? As the fool. Therefore, I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me; for all is vanity and vexation of spirit." Or, to take an example from the earliest monument of Grecian genius. Achilles, in the pride of youth, engaged in his favourite profession of arms, making his way to an immortality secured to him by the voice of his goddess mother, sure to gain the victory in any contest, and selecting for his reward the richest spoils and the fairest maid, Achilles, the heroic heathen, was then fully and satisfactorily employed, and according to his semi-barbarous notions of joy and right, was happy within his own breast, and was happy in the world around him. When the same youthful warrior was insulted by the leader under whose banners he had rallied, when the private recesses of his tent were invaded, and his domestic peace disturbed, his mind was strongly agitated by love, anger, hatred, the passion for strife, and the intense effort at forbearance; and though there was here room sorrow, full of thought and full of longing, feeling the sentiment of rapture yield to the faintness of uncertain hope, is half his time a true personification of ennui. That ennui is a principle of action widely diffused, will hardly be denied by any careful observer of human nature. No individual can conscientiously claim to have been always and wholly free from its influences, except where there has been a life springing from the purest sources, sanctified by the early influence of religious motives, and protected from erroneous judgments by the constant exercise of a healthful understanding. For the rest, though few are constantly afflicted with it as an incurable evil, there are still fewer who are not at times made to suffer from its influence. It stretches its heavy hand on the man of business and the recluse; it makes its favourite haunts in the city, but it chases the aspirant after rural felicity, into the scenes of his rural listlessness; it makes the young melancholy, and the aged garrulous; it haunts the sailor and the merchant; it appears to the warrior and to the statesman; it takes its place in the curule chair, and sits also at the frugal board of old fashioned simplicity. You cannot flee from it; you cannot hide from it; it is swifter than the birds of passage, and swifter than the breezes that scatter clouds. It climbs the ship of the restless who long for the suns of Europe; it jumps up behind the horseman who scours the woods of Michigan; it throws its scowling glances on the attempt at present enjoyment; it scares the epicurean from his voluptuousness, and when the ascetic has finished his vow, it compels him once more to repeat the tale of his beads. To the influence of ennui must be traced the passion for strong excitement. When life has become almost stagnant, when the ordinary course of events has been unable to excite any strong interest, ennui assumes a terrific power over the mind, and clamours for emotion, though that emotion is to be purchased by scenes of horror and of crime. "What a magnificent spectacle, said the Parisian mob, "how interesting a spectacle to see a woman of the wit and courage of Madame Roland on the scaffold!" And it is precisely the same power, which excites the sensitive admirer of works of fiction to ransack the shelves of a library for works of thrilling and "painful" interest. To the same kind of restless curiosity we have to ascribe the passionate declamations of the tragic actor, and the splendid music of the opera; the cunning feats of the village conjuror, and the lascivious pantomime of the city ballet-dancers; the disgusting varieties of bull-fights, and the celebrated feats of pugilism; the locomotive zeal of the great pedestrians, and the perfect quiescence of the "pillar saints." The habits of ancient Rome illustrate most clearly the extent to which this passion for strong sensations may hurry the pub lic mind into extravagances, and repress every sentiment of sympathy and generosity. Ambition itself is not so reckless of human life as ennui; clemency is the favourite attribute of the former; but ennui has the tastes of a cannibal, and the sight of human blood, shed for its amusement, makes it greedy after a renewal of the dreadful indulgence. No one need be informed, that the shows of ancient gladiators were attended by an infinitely more numerous throng than is ever gathered by any modern spectacle. And let it not be supposed, that the life of one of these combatants was the more safe, because it depended on the interposition of the Roman fair. The fondness for murderous exhibitions finally raged with such vehemence, that they were at length introduced as an attraction at a banquet, and the guests, as they reclined at table in the luxury of physical ease, have been wet by the life-blood from the veins of the wounded gladiators. Quinetiam exhilarare viris convivia cæde Time would fail us were we to illustrate the various horrors which attended these amusements, designed to entertain the most refined population of Rome. Time would fail us were we to enumerate the various classifications in the art of murder on the stage, the signals which were made by the multitude in token of relenting clemency, the more usual signal, made by virgins and matrons, demanding the continuance of the combat unto death. Do we not call Titus the delight of the human race? Do we not praise his commonplace puerility, perdidi diem, the exclamation of conceit, rather than of manliness? And yet it was this philanthropist, this favourite of humanity, who caused the vast amphitheatre to be erected, as it were a monument to all ages of the barbarous civilization of the capital of his empire. And as to the numbers who appeared on these occasions, do we suppose it was a pair? or a score? We will not ask after the horrors commended and consummated by a Tiberius or a Caligula. Was not Trajan a moderate prince? Was he not disposed to introduce habits of a reasonable industry? Yet the active Trajan kept up a succession of games to cheat the population of Rome of ennui, during a hundred and twenty-three days, in which time ten thousand gladiators were decked for sacrifice. Thus the vehemence of this passion is evident from the atrocity of the resources by which its cravings are satisfied. We may also remark, that superstition itself, interwoven as it is with all the fears and weaknesses of humanity, subjects the human mind to a bondage less severe and less permanent than that of the terrific craving after something to dissipate the weariness of the heart. At Rome the sacrifices to the heathen deities were abolished before the games of the gladiators were suppressed; it was less difficult to take from the priests their spoils, from the altars their victims, from the prejudices of the people their religious faith, than to rescue from ennui the miserable wretches whose lives were to be the sport of the idle. The laws already forbade the offering the bull to Jove, when the poet still had to pray that none might perish in the city under the condemnation of pleasure, Nullus in urbe cadat, cujus sit pœna voluptas. Philosophy itself offers no guarantee against the common infirmities of listlessness. Many a stoic has resisted the attacks of external evils with an exemplary fortitude; and has yet failed in his encounters with time. Strange indeed that time should be an encumbrance to a sage! Strange indeed, that, when life is so short, and philosophy boundless, and time a gift of the most precious nature, dealt out to us in successive moments, a possession which is most coveted, and can the least be hoarded, which comes, but never returns, which departs as soon as given, and is lost even in the receiving,-strange indeed that such a gift, so precious, so transient, so fleeting, should ever press severely upon a philosopher! And yet wisdom is no security against ennui. The man who made Europe ring with his eloquence, and largely contributed to the spirit of republican enthusiasm, wasted away for months in a state of the most foolish languor, under the idea that he was dying of a polypus at his heart.* Nay, this philosopher, who presumed to believe himself skilled in the ways of man, and an adept in the character of women, who dared to expound religion and proposed to reform Christianity, who committed and confessed the meanest actions, and yet, as if in the presence of the Supreme Arbiter of life and before the tribunal of Eternal Justice, arrogated to himself an equality with the purest in the innumerable crowd of immortal souls,-he, the proud one, would so far yield to ennui, as to put the final and eternal welfare of his soul at issue on the throw of a stone. La Harpe, no correct writer, nor sound critic, affirms, that Rousseau undertook to decide the question of a Superintending Providence by throwing stones at a tree. That would have been not merely an imbecile but a blasphemous act. As the case stood, Jean Jacques must be acquitted of any charge worse than that of excessive and even ridiculous weakness. "Je m'en vais," he says to himself, "je Jean Jacques Rousseau. Confessions, p. 1. l. vi. |