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Untitled Article
carefully it collects the chaff , and how recklessly it scatter the corn—how deeply it id ingraimed by ingratitude f Tlte grattfitl appreciator of the good pertaining * to him , feeling the otftiifterpoise it presents , cannot bear to murmur at the ills of his lot ; afid even when they predominate , he knows that fretful disconfrerit is but writhing in chains , which makes them gall more sorely .
" Who would not have an eye To see the sun where others see a cloud ; A skin so temper e d as to feel the rain Which unto others gave the ague , him refresh ; A frame so vernal as in spite of snow To think it genial summer all year round , And bask himself in bleak December ' s scowl , While others sit and shiver o ' er a hearth . "
Ah ! it will be said , much goes to the making of a temper such as this , besides a bland philosophy and frequent reflection . Temper is never independent of temperament , and pleasures' for which we must search by the aid of thought , memory and gratitude , require a recondite act of the mind , whereas the sense of pain is an instantaneous impulse—hence the general m 6 dte of human action , the promptness to complaint , the avidity for revenge , in contradistinction to the feebleness and in frequency of thanksgiving ^ and the torpor of gratitude . In addition to all this , sensibility t 6 pleasure may become tame , or get obtunded ; sensibility to pain never : —thus , to turn immediately to ^ oWiestfc
life , the sweetness of a fine nature will often lose its p 6 wer to charm from the mere effects of habitual * association ; but the ^ cailsticity of a virulent disposition never from the same caiis& loses its power to annoy . These objections , while they prove that there is difficulty in cultivating the flowers of content among the thorns of l ? fe , *™^~ tate nothing against the advantages and expediency of tftaking the attempt , and but little against its almost universal pratttfGfcbility ; for , like most labour , the efforts grow easier in their pro * - gress , and the objects which were originally opposed to them , in the end often minister to them , overcome by quiet force and holy influence . Personal discontent is more common to women than to inert ,
simply because women have no large objects or great views 0 n which to expend the effervescence to which human nature fa prone . It makes them the goaders and the guides to those practices under which principle bends or breaks , and policy and ' fiiyc *!* - phant service thrive * Personal discontent not only aggravates ills , but blinds US to advantages . The fact is , we regard the good we enjby as a right , and the evil to which we are subject as a wrong . I have
Untitled Article
Political and PerbonaFDistiant&nt . 099
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 633, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/45/
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