Among our easy gods, hath facile time
A touch so keen to wake such love of life
As stirs the frail and careful being of Man."

Such are the benefits of Melancholy, when she is only an occasional
guest, and is not pampered or made the object of devotion. But
Melancholy, though an excellent companion for an hour, is the most
exacting and depressing of mistresses. The man who gives himself up to
her, who always takes too long views, who broods on the future of this
planet when the sun has burned out, is on the high-way to madness. The
odds are that he does not travel all the way. He remains a
self-tormented wretch, highly profitable to his medical man, and a
frightful nuisance to his family. Now, there are, of course, cases in
which this melancholy has physical causes. It may come of indigestion,
and then the remedy is known. Less dining out (indeed, no one will ask
the abjectly melancholy man out) and more exercise may be recommended.
The melancholy man had better take to angling; it is a contemplative
pastime, but he will find it far from a gloomy one. The sounds and
sights of nature will revive and relieve him, and, if he is only
successful, the weight of a few pounds of fish on his back will make him
toss off that burden which poor Christian carried out of the City of
Destruction. No man can be melancholy when the south wind blows in
spring, when the soft, feathery March-browns flit from the alders and
fall in the water, while the surface boils with the heads and tails of
trout.

Perhaps, on the other hand, the melancholy one lives too much in the
country. Then let him go to Paris or Vienna; let him try the Palais
Royal, and spend a good deal of money in the shops. A course of this
might have cured even Obermann, whom there was nothing to check or divert