Yet he had
somehow failed to fulfil himself, and was adrift like a dead thing
among external circumstances, without hope or lively preference or
shaping aim. And further, there seemed a tendency among many of
his fellows to fall into the same blank and unlovely opinions. One
thing, indeed, is not to be learned in Scotland, and that is the
way to be happy. Yet that is the whole of culture, and perhaps
two-thirds of morality. Can it be that the Puritan school, by
divorcing a man from nature, by thinning out his instincts, and
setting a stamp of its disapproval on whole fields of human
activity and interest, leads at last directly to material greed?
Nature is a good guide through life, and the love of simple
pleasures next, if not superior, to virtue; and we had on board an
Irishman who based his claim to the widest and most affectionate
popularity precisely upon these two qualities, that he was natural
and happy. He boasted a fresh colour, a tight little figure,
unquenchable gaiety, and indefatigable goodwill. His clothes
puzzled the diagnostic mind, until you heard he had been once a
private coachman, when they became eloquent and seemed a part of
his biography. His face contained the rest, and, I fear, a
prophecy of the future; the hawk's nose above accorded so ill with
the pink baby's mouth below. His spirit and his pride belonged,
you might say, to the nose; while it was the general shiftlessness
expressed by the other that had thrown him from situation to
situation, and at length on board the emigrant ship.
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