says he to Lady Hesketh, 'you must always understand, my dear, that
a poet means a house with six sashes in front, comfortable parlors,
a smart staircase, and three rooms of convenient dimensions.' As I
have looked sometimes down a mountain glen, and seen the most
picturesque huts upon its sides, I have thought how little the
painter could dispense with them. But, then, how easily the
philosopher can: for, alas! I have taken wing from my station, and
looked in through the miserable easement, and seen, not only what
is disgusting to the senses,--which is a small matter,--but ignorance
and disease, and fear, and guilt, and racking pain, and doubt, and
death; and I have not been able to help saying, in pity, 'O for
absolute solitude!--how much nature would be improved if the human
race were annihilated!'"

"The human race," said I, laughing, "is very much obliged to the
pity which would thus exterminate them; but as one of them, I should
decidedly object to so sweeping a mode of improving the picturesque.
Besides, I suppose you make an exception in favor, yourself, otherwise
the picturesque would vanish just when it was brought to perfection.
I am often inclined to say with Paley, though I remember well having
sometimes felt as you do, 'It is a happy world after all.' I admit,
however, that a buoyant, cheerful, habitual conviction of this will
depend on the constitution of the mind, and even vary with the same
in its different moods. But I am sure it may be a really happy world,
whatever its sorrows, to any one who will view it as he ought."

"I wish you could teach me the art."

"It is," said I, "to exercise the faith and the hope of a Christian,
humbly to regard this life as what it is,--a scene of discipline and