but the Turks, as I have already said, are far from forming the majority of the people under our consideration. "Impatience, activity, and sanguine hope, are the habits of the European." The first consequence of this contrast is obvious; that we excel the Oriental in every kind of knowledge, except, perhaps, that of human nature. "His ideas are few in number and his sentiments equally rare; they are, however, generally correct, springing from the objects around him, and for the most part limited to those objects." The object most frequently presented to him is man, and hence that keenness in the penetration of character or design which forms so strange, and, at first sight, so unaccountable, a mixture with his general ignorance and seeming stupidity. Those avenues to knowledge, which he has not shut up, are more frequented, because they are few in number; and the touch, with which he discriminates the lines of countenance or the springs of action, has derived an acuter sensibility from his intellectual blindness.

It would be absurd to advance, that knowledge is not useful and honourable, and that ignorance is not disgraceful; and though a Turk should lay aside his pipe to convince us that there is nothing really contemptible except exertion and activity; and though a Greenlander should superciliously assure us, that seal-fishing is the only employment worthy of the dignity of human nature, yet a philosopher would still believe in the superiority of his own pursuits, and sincerely retort on his insensible adversaries the contempt which they feel as sincerely for him.

Our question here, however, is unluckily not the dignity, but the happiness of man; and it has been doubted whether that be increased by the possession of knowledge more than is required for the conduct and business of life. Now I had once a long, and tolerably dull, conversation with an Oriental on this very subject. He had passed some years in Italy, at Paris, and in London; and had returned to his

* One of the very few general remarks that I ever heard from a Mahometan may, perhaps, surprise some freaders as much as it astonished myself. “A studious man," said the Bey of Melawe, "is of all men the most afraid of death-because his habits lead him to meditation on a subject which is only not fearful when it is not thought of."

country, like many other travellers, immovably confirmed in "all his Turkish prejudices." We differed, of course, toto cœlo; and I must request my readers to attend as patiently as I did to the following edifying opinions (the result of his European researches) which proceeded amid volumes of oracular smoke from the forest which environed his shaggy lips.

"The mere possession of speculative knowledge," (thus began this same learned Theban), "to say nothing of the painful labour* bestowed on the acquisition of it, cannot increase the happiness of its possessor-because happiness depends on what we feel, and not on what we know, and has its seat in the heart and not in the head. If, indeed, a man be fond of display and much talking (as is very frequent in Frangutstan) he has occasional opportunities of gratifying his vanity; but this again leads to frequent disputes and jealousies; and, from what I have impartially observed, I do firmly believe, that a society of ignorant and unlearned persons is, under the same circumstances, more cheerful and more happy than a † college of professors..

"Nor have you greater reason to boast of the effect of the knowledge which you call useful. What ingenuity you show in multiplying your miseries! how indefatigably you labour to surpass each other! every man is at war with his next door neighbour. You live in a constant state of irritation and excitement. It is true that you thus easily satisfy your natural wants-but what have you gained then? Hurried away by that morbid restlessness, which you term the desire of improvement,' you are industrious in inventing for yourselves a thousand new wants, that you may again exert your industry and invention in supplying them. The Arab under his tent is happier than you-while you are in the whirlwind, he is in repose; while you hope, he enjoys; while you are disappointed, he is content; and if

* A Turk can hardly be brought to understand that there is pleasure in the acquisition of knowledge; every exercise of our faculties must, in his opinion, be painful in proportion to its severity.

+ This gentleman assured me that he had visited both our Universities.

He did not know, then, how frequently and how far the pleasure of hope surpasses that of enjoyment-how "glad is the light," and how sweet the air of futurity. It is, indeed, a sad truth, that we seem born to hope and to be

he drink not of the stream of knowledge, he is, at least, not tortured by his feverish thirst.

"The very existence of the paltry spectacles which you term amusements, proves your unhappiness-your luxuries, your excesses, your dances, the very struggle and laboriousness of your society, prove your unhappiness. I confine myself to the fruitlessness of your efforts after enjoymentI make no remark on their frivolity-for you will not yourself deny, that if we have not more grandeur than you, we have at least fewer littlenesses. We dwell in a land where the works of nature and of art are on a larger scale. Dromedaries traverse our deserts and vultures repose upon our pyramids-is it incredible, then-is it not natural,-that among us too should be found the perfection of man?

"There are in Europe, and more especially in your own country, a number of people whom I was taught to call melancholy-persons, as I was told, of acute sensibility, worked up and refined by education; they are to be distinguished by their physiognomy, which is serious without being tranquil, and has in its gravity more of feeling than of thought-the expression is wild, but it is sorrowful. I recollect that a young man of that description once took great pains to persuade me that, in spite of appearances, he was in reality extremely happy; and I recollect that I pitied him. This melancholy' does not exist here; it is a disease to which your refinement and knowledge have given birth, but which they have no power to heal.

"You have another and a severer calamity, which is very rare, if not quite unknown, in the East; which, though not always the consequence of melancholy. is yet very frequently connected with it; and it tells sadly against the happiness of your own country, that it is there said to be the least uncommon. However, though it be a sorrowful distinction, I almost envy you the possession of it; and be it weakness or be it virtue, I cannot but revere that preternatural courage which can dare to despise life and

disappointed—and yet unexpected blessings so often fall in, that they turn the scale in favour of happiness.

* 1 never heard of the commission of an act of suicide in the East, except for the purpose of avoiding some more painful death.

volunteer to depart from it. You have a savage law on that subject, but are humane in the execution of it. A madman with us is an object of compassion and superstition; he has many liberties and many privileges; with you he has only that of suicide. The effects of your boasted knowledge are no where more conspicuous than in the nature and execution of your laws. How heavy, and how complicated is the machine which you have laboured to erect; and how irregular are its operations, and how tardy its effects! How many guilty break daily through the clumsy meshes that are spread for them, and how many innocent are caught in the snares that are intended for the guilty;→→→ but it cannot be otherwise in a constitution, where the practice of law is the science of quibbling. I am not ig norant, however, that with you such a system of law is truly necessary-because, in your attempts to augment your enjoyments, you have multiplied your vices; and simple laws have no longer the force to obviate the monstrous variety of your crimes.

"It appears to me from these considerations, that you have chosen the wrong road to happiness-that instead of struggling to increase the number of your pleasures, you would, with more reason, endeavour to diminish that of your miseries-if you felt less, you would suffer less; and, be assured, every care that is crushed in its birth, and every throb that is quelled as it rises, is an offering made to tranquillity, which is grateful and acceptable to happiness."

This harangue was delivered with great animation, and accompanied, in parts, with that dignity and gracefulness of action, for which a well-bred Turk is remarkable; and the reply, by which I attempted to prove its absurdity, produced so little effect on its impatient hearer, that I will not repeat it now, lest it should find readers equally impenetrable. Our argument appeared to me to turn chiefly on this single point, whether man was intended for a state of exertion or of indolence-of action or of apathy,-whether our miseries be more poignant and durable than our enjoyments;-and whether it be better to vegetate or to live.

This is a melancholy inquiry into which every man will carry feelings of his own, that can never be influenced by

any argument. For my own part, I am happy in the belief, that we are not born either to slumber or to suffer that we possess energies and capabilities, whose efforts are not meant to be bounded by mere animal contentment-and that the sources of our sorrows, though numerous, are limited-while our joys may be multiplied and varied to infinity.

The presuming ignorance of philosophy never prescribed to the diseased mind so cold and so stupid a remedy as the celebrated" nil admirari." If it be of any use in keeping man happy, it has certainly no power to make him so. The feeble and irritated patient has neither strength nor calmness to obey the insulting order-a severe train of metaphysical reasoning has seldom been effectual in composing the fury of madness.

The only art of lengthening life is that of calling into action our faculties and our sensibilities-a single day, spent in the exertion and under the influence of the best feelings of our nature, is longer than an age of Oriental tranquillity; and the heart that has been warmed by refinement and imagination can communicate by a single throb more keen and genuine happiness than glimmers through the short existence of a gloomy Mussulman.

It would be endless to enumerate the variety of enjoyments which have been rendered peculiar to Europe by the energy of her inhabitants, whose nature is unintelligible, as their very existence is incredible, to an Oriental.Indeed, of all our tastes, that for poetry seems to be almost the only one which he possesses in common with ourselves. The love of poetry is as universal as our passions and our appetites; it is the most certain and invariable of our blessings, as it can never be the cause of misery-and it is so intimately connected with the better part of humanity, that, when heightened and refined by study and education, it amounts almost to a virtue; its encouragement is a duty, and its exercise is happiness.

The waters of poesy have ever freshened the gardens of the East; and the Persian and Arabian have never been insensible to their musical murmurings. But, alas! the simoom of Turkish ignorance has blown upon them-the