| Citation |
PP-P.781.016
13 Feb 1781:12 (10/707)
Happiness in a great measure, dependant upon Constitution.
[Philosophical article on happiness and usefulness]
I find age and knowledge only contribute to sour our
dispositions. My present enjoyments may be more refined,
but they are infinitely less pleasing. The pleasure Garrick
gives, can no way compare to that I received from a country
wag, who imitated a quaker's sermon. The music of Mattei is
dissonance, to what I felt when our old dairy maid sung me
into tears, with Johnny Armstrong's last good night, or the
cruelty of Barbara Allen.
. . . I remember to have once seen a slave, in a
fortification in Flanders, who appeared no way touched at
his situation. He was maimed, deformed, and chained,
obliged to toil from the appearance of day, till night fall;
and condemned to this for life; yet, with all these
circumstances of apparent wretchedness, he sung, would have
danced, but that he wanted a leg; and appeared the merriest
and happiest man in all the garrison. What a practical
philosopher was here !
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