the stream of life flows with absolute tranquillity, and ruffled by no
menace of a breeze--the azure overhead never dimmed by a passing cloud,
that in such circumstances the blood stagnates: life, from excess and
plethora of sweets, becomes insipid: the spirit of action droops: and
it is oftentimes found at such seasons that slight annoyances and
molestations, or even misfortunes in a lower key, are not wholly
undesirable, as means of stimulating the lazy energies, and disturbing
a slumber which is, or soon will be, morbid in its character. I have
known myself cases not a few, where, by the very nicest gradations, and
by steps too silent and insensible for daily notice, the utmost harmony
and reciprocal love had shaded down into fretfulness and petulance,
purely from too easy a life, and because all nobler agitations that
might have ruffled the sensations occasionally, and all distresses even
on the narrowest scale that might have re-awakened the solicitudes of
love, by opening necessities for sympathy, for counsel, or for mutual
aid, had been shut out by foresight too elaborate, or by prosperity too
cloying. But all this, had it otherwise been possible with my
particular mind, and at my early age, was utterly precluded by one
remarkable peculiarity in my temper. Whether it were that I derived
from nature some jealousy and suspicion of all happiness which seems
too perfect and unalloyed--[a spirit of restless distrust, which in
ancient times often led men to throw valuable gems into the sea, in the
hope of thus propitiating the dire deity of misfortune, by voluntarily
breaking the fearful chain of prosperity, and led some of them to weep
and groan when the gems thus sacrificed were afterwards brought back to
their hand by simple fishermen, who had recovered them in the
intestines of fishes--a portentous omen, which was interpreted into a
sorrowful indication that the deity thus answered the propitiatory
appeal, and made solemn proclamation that he had rejected it]--
whether, I say, it were this spirit of jealousy awaked in me by too