taaa&MaBSSBm:: 
 
 I Library of Congress. * ' 
 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

* THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
THE 
 
 MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY TEA' MEL, _ 
 
 Engraved by Buttcrivorth and Heath. 
 
 LONDON: 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, 
 
 56. PATERNOSTER ROW; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD J 
 AND 164, PICCADILLY. 
 
- 
 
 
 
 Uf 
 
 ,61904 
 
 1 Oh for a heart magnanimous to know 
 Thy worth, poor world, and let thee go." 
 
 Jane Taylc 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MIRAGE II 
 
 THE MAN OF FASHION 23 
 
 THE MAN OF WEALTH 37 
 
 THE HERO 57 
 
 THE STATESMAN 73 
 
 THE ORATOR 89 
 
 THE ARTIST 103 
 
 THE MAN OF LITERATURE I 19 
 
 THE POET 133 
 
 THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR 151 
 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD 169 
 
 THE BEAUTY iSl 
 
 THE MONARCH 1 93 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS 209 
 
THE MIRAGE. 
 
THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 THE MIRAGE. 
 
 jo understand the natural object from 
 which the title of this little volume is 
 borrowed, let the reader imagine that, 
 after travelling for hours across a trackless waste 
 of burning sand, amidst the arid deserts of the 
 East, he has, when tormented by thirst, made 
 the discovery that his supply of water has failed. 
 The last muddy drops are eagerly drained, but 
 the sensation of pain is only aggravated by the 
 effort. Meanwhile, the eyes, the mouth, the 
 ears are gradually filled with the fine sand of 
 the desert, until it is felt that a cup of cold water 
 B 2 
 
12 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 from the spring would be cheaply purchased by 
 its weight in gold. At this moment, when such 
 is the traveller's tortured state of mind and body, 
 he suddenly beholds an object which, to his sur- 
 prise, has escaped his notice before. In the dis- 
 tance is seen a large lake ; its banks are fringed 
 with groves of verdant palm ; its bosom studded 
 with islets of refreshing green, while its water 
 seems tenfold more inviting when contrasted 
 with the burning solitudes around. Re-animated 
 by the prospect, he presses forward, eager to 
 quench his thirst. As he advances, a singular 
 spectacle is witnessed, a strange phenomenon 
 arises. The lake recedes as he approaches it. 
 Again and again does he advance, but again 
 and again does the object retire ; until at length, 
 exhausted with fatigue, tortured by thirst, and 
 overpowered by excitement, he sinks in despair 
 on the sand, discovering that all is deception, 
 and that he has been chasing the Mirage of the 
 desert. 
 
 This remarkable natural appearance is an 
 
THE MIRAGE, I 3 
 
 optical illusion, produced by the reflection of 
 objects on the oblique rays of the sun refracted 
 by the air, which is rarefied by the heat of the 
 burning soil. It is apparently alluded to in the 
 sacred Scriptures (Isa. xxxv. 6, 7) : " In the 
 wilderness shall waters break out, and streams 
 in the desert. And the parched ground shall 
 become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of 
 water." The word translated parched ground 
 is, in the original, of the same form as serab, 
 the term which the Arabs in the present" day 
 employ when speaking of the Mirage.* 
 
 This curious illusion has been frequently 
 witnessed by modern travellers. " In the dis- 
 tance," says one, " we observed the well-known 
 phenomenon of the Mirage. At one time it 
 appeared to be a calm flowing water, reflecting 
 on its unruffled surface the trees growing on its 
 banks ; while some object in the background 
 assumed the appearance of a splendid residence, 
 amidst a grove of trees. At another time 
 * See Gesenius in loc. 
 
14 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 there appeared a castle embosomed in a forest 
 of palms, with a lake of clear water stretched 
 between us and them." 
 
 It is, however, when the traveller, as repre- 
 sented above, is tortured by thirst, that the 
 deceptions of the Mirage prove most appalling. 
 A remarkable instance of this occurred during 
 the passage of the French army across the 
 desert at the time of Napoleon's expedition to 
 Egypt " When morning dawned," says the 
 historian who describes the scene, " the army 
 found itself traversing boundless plains of sand 
 without water or shade, and with a burning sun 
 over their heads. All the wells on the road 
 were either filled up or exhausted. Hardly a 
 few drops of muddy or brackish water were to be 
 found to quench their thirst. In the midst of 
 the general depression, a sudden gleam of hope 
 illuminated the countenances of the soldiers. 
 A lake appeared in the wilderness, with villages 
 and palm-trees clearly reflected on its glassy 
 surface. Instantly the parched troops hastened 
 
THE MIRAGE. I 7 
 
 to the enchanted spot, but it receded from their 
 steps ; again they pressed on with burning 
 impatience, but it for ever fled from their 
 approach ; and they had at length the mor- 
 tification of discovering that they had been 
 deceived by the Mirage of the desert." 
 
 Under the general term Mirage are also 
 comprehended various atmospherical illusions 
 of a very interesting character. In particular 
 climates, at certain seasons of the year, there 
 are seen in the ocean and the sky represen- 
 tations of cities, groves, mountains, rivers, 
 spacious plains, castles, arches, and rows of 
 superb pilasters. Like some splendid phan- 
 tasmagoria, they fill the spectator with asto- 
 nishment and delight, then vanish into air, or 
 assume, with the rapidity of a kaleidoscope, 
 new combinations, even more astonishing and 
 beautiful than those which preceded them. 
 Persons who have witnessed these phenomena 
 have declared that they would rather have 
 seen them than the most magnificent spec- 
 
[8 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 tacles of art. One writer, describing them, 
 states that the sea suddenly assuming the sem- 
 blance of a polished mirror, was then imme- 
 diately, as far as the eye could reach, covered 
 with a series of graceful arches, forming an 
 apparently interminable vista. Some English 
 voyagers, in the Arctic regions, were so en- 
 raptured with these splendid visions, as to 
 term the place w r here they were seen " the 
 enchanted coast." " The general aspect of 
 the coast," says an" eye-witness, " was that of 
 an extensive and ancient city, with ruined 
 castles, churches, hills surmounted by turrets, 
 battlements, spires, and pinnacles. Scarcely 
 was one particular object sketched than it 
 assumed a different shape. It was now a 
 castle, — then a cathedral or an obelisk — then, 
 with equal suddenness, it would form a bridge, 
 with an arch some miles in extent, presenting 
 an appearance of the utmost magnificence, but 
 of the most evanescent duration." 
 
 Such, in different aspects, is the Mirage of 
 
THE MIRAGE. 1 9 
 
 nature. With the last-mentioned species of it 
 this little work has but a passing connection. 
 Were poetical beauty, however, the object of 
 our illustration, we might dwell upon it, as 
 under a lively emblem portraying the transito- 
 riness of worldly things. As fades the Mirage 
 in the sky, so vanishes terrestrial glory, realizing 
 the words of a poet — 
 
 "Where is the world in which a man was born? 
 Alas ! where is the world of eight years past ? 
 'Twas there — I look for it — 'tis gone ; a globe of "glass, 
 Cracked, shivered, vanished, scarcely gazed upon 
 Ere a silent change dissolves the glittering mass/' 
 
 It is from the Mirage of the desert that we 
 propose to illustrate the Mirage of Life. Jour- 
 neying like a pilgrim across the wilderness of 
 this world, man thirsts for happiness. The 
 Almighty, in his word, proclaims himself the 
 living Fountain at which alone this thirst can 
 be gratified. Despising, however, his gracious 
 invitation, the majority of mankind pursue false 
 and illusive streams, which, promising as they 
 
20 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 appear in the distance, prove, when approached, 
 deceptive as the Mirage. One man is deceived 
 by the Mirage of Pleasure ; another, by the 
 Mirage of Ambition ; a third, by the Mirage of 
 Wealth. As each bubble bursts, a new one 
 emerges, until death steps in, and dissipates the 
 illusion for ever. 
 
 " In vain the erring world enquires 
 For some substantial good ; 
 While earth confines their low desires 
 They live on airy food. 
 
 Illusive dreams of happiness 
 
 Their eager thoughts employ ; 
 They wake convinced the boasted bliss 
 
 Was visionary joy." 
 
 Such is the Mirage of Life ; a title which 
 we have selected as calculated, under a striking 
 poetical emblem, to warn all, and especially the 
 young, against the allurements of the world. 
 The illustrations by which we propose to ex- 
 plain it will be a series of portraits of men of 
 eminence, in various walks of life, who sought 
 their happiness in worldly pursuits, without 
 
THE MIRAGE. 2 1 
 
 reference to the glory of God. Our aim, ac- 
 cordingly, will be to show — in some instances 
 from their own words, in others from facts more 
 striking than any language — that although these 
 individuals drew the highest prizes in the lottery 
 of life, yet, in forsaking the fountain of living 
 waters, they failed to gain permanent happi- 
 ness, and found their objects of pursuit, when 
 grasped, only vanity and vexation of spirit. 
 
THE MAN OF FASHION. 
 
THE MAN OF FASHION. 
 
 [midst the various objects which men 
 have pursued in search of happiness 
 the Mirage of Fashion may be first 
 named. In every age, a large portion of 
 mankind have fixed their affections on the 
 pleasures of dress, frivolous amusements, and 
 trifling gaiety. That man, formed with such 
 high capacities for moral and intellectual en- 
 joyment, should have narrowed his mind to 
 such pursuits, is indeed surprising : that he 
 should have expected happiness in them is still 
 more so. The illusion, it might have been 
 supposed, would at once have been detected, 
 and the pursuit abandoned. Experience has 
 shown, however, that the numbers are not 
 
26 THE MIRAGE OE LTEE. 
 
 small of those who have deliberately sought 
 to pervert life to this end. At this moment 
 there are multitudes whose sole aim is to 
 mix in what is termed " good society ; " who 
 leave the circle in which Providence has fitted 
 them to be useful, and vainly endeavour to 
 court the favour of those who secretly despise 
 them ; who are the slaves of etiquette ; who 
 dread what is vulgar much more than what is 
 sinful, and who sacrifice, to the cruel idol of 
 fashion, usefulness, self-respect, and peace. As 
 a terrible warning to all such stands forth 
 the career of George Brummell, or, The 
 Man of Fashion. 
 
 This remarkable man was born towards the 
 end of the last century ; and, at the early age 
 of sixteen, received a commission as officer 
 in a regiment of Hussars, in which his taste 
 fur dress found ample means of gratification. 
 He may be said to have entered life with 
 the full flowing tide of prosperity. He was 
 
THE MAN OF FASHION. 29 
 
 the favourite of his brother officers. Royalty 
 itself smiled upon him ; and he soon became 
 distinguished for his fashionable manners, 
 refinement of taste, a delicate vein of satire, 
 and a spirit of affectation blended with quaint 
 humour. At the age of twenty-one he suc- 
 ceeded to property of the value of 30,000/. 
 principally in ready money. Being now 
 master of his own time, he resolved to devote 
 himself wholly to a life of fashion. Unhappy 
 choice ! Could any one, with prophetic vision, 
 have unrolled the future before him, he 
 would have started back from the prospect 
 in horror. A taste in matters of dress was 
 that for which he first laboured to be dis- 
 tinguished; and that so successfully, that the 
 tailors of the metropolis soon learned to regu- 
 late the fashions by his decision. The Prince 
 Regent himself would occasionally attend his 
 dressing-room for an hour in the morning, to 
 watch the mysterious grace with which he 
 discharged the duties of the toilet. As Watt 
 
$0 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 was celebrated in the world of science for the 
 invention of the steam-engine, so was Brummell 
 in the world of fashion for the invention of 
 starched neckcloths. " Call you this nothing?" 
 observes a satirical writer ; " I have known 
 many a man with 10,000/. a year who never 
 did anything half so useful to his fellow- 
 creatures." 
 
 Brummell was, through his intimacy with the 
 Prince Recent, admitted to the highest circles 
 of the nobility. No party was complete with- 
 out him ; and the morning papers, in giving the 
 details of a rout, always placed his name first 
 on the list of untitled guests. He became 
 remarkable for his pretensions to extraordinary 
 refinement, and his freedom from everything 
 that could be termed vulvar. Beino- asked 
 what was a fair annual allowance to a young 
 man for clothes, he answered that 800/. a 
 year might do with strict economy. He 
 pretended to be ignorant of the exact geo- 
 graphical position of a place called "The 
 
THE MAN OF FASHION. 3 1 
 
 City;" and being asked if he were fond of 
 vegetables, answered, after a due pause for 
 recollection, that he believed he had once 
 eaten a pea. Not contented with being ad- 
 mitted to the world of fashion, Brummell 
 aimed at being its dictator; and in this he 
 effectually succeeded. For years he gave the 
 law to the highest fashionable circles. A 
 nobleman would think himself honoured by 
 having his arm during a stroll down St. 
 James's Street ; and a duchess would tremble 
 at his decision, as what would stamp her un- 
 fashionable or otherwise. Such was Beau 
 Brummell in the height of his glory as a 
 man of fashion: the leader of ton, the 
 patron of noblemen, the despot of the realms 
 of taste. What a poor and contemptible life ! 
 What a waste of existence ! But was he 
 happy ? Ah, no ! Proud and vain, he imagined 
 that his success would continue unbroken ; 
 but he was soon to discover that all was 
 evanescent as the Mirage. 
 
32 TIIK MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Leaving St. James's Street and its fashion- 
 able idlers, we must now ask our readers to 
 turn their attention to a provincial town in 
 France. Who is this old man, that, in ragged 
 clothes and with tottering steps, walks feebly 
 along the streets surrounded by children who 
 mock and jeer at him as he goes ? His 
 face is familiar to us, and his air, amidst his 
 w r retchedness and poverty, speaks of days 
 gone by when better times were his. It is 
 Brummell, the man of fashion, fallen from his 
 high estate ! Embarrassed by his extrava- 
 gance, he had to flee to the Continent, where, 
 deserted by hollow friends, he fell from one 
 degree of wretchedness to another. For 
 a while he pursued, on a diminished scale, his 
 former course; but was at last arrested for 
 debt. His agitation on this occasion was ex- 
 treme, and he gave way to a burst of tears. 
 Resistance was vain, however, and the gay 
 butterfly of fashion found himself the inmate 
 of a wretched and squalid jail. By some kind 
 
THE MAN OF FASHION. 33 
 
 individuals he was released from this abode 
 of misery ; but misfortune failed to teach 
 him reflection. He still retained the tastes of 
 his earlier years, though unable from circum- 
 stances to gratify them. When at the lowest 
 point of financial distress, he could with diffi- 
 culty be persuaded, although almost in want 
 of the common necessaries of life, to forego 
 the use of some fashionable blacking which 
 cost five shillings a bottle. Forsaken and for- 
 gotten by the sunshine friends of his "pro- 
 sperity, Brummell became to a considerable 
 extent dependent on the kindness of a grocer, 
 one from those humble classes at whose 
 vulgarity he had so often sneered. He who 
 had affected such great fastidiousness in his 
 culinary tastes was glad to obtain a meal at a 
 tradesman's board; and he, too, who had said 
 that it was possible for a man to dress on 
 800/. a year with strict economy, was indebted 
 to a compassionate tailor for mending the 
 holes in his garments, at which time, for lack 
 
34 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 of change of raiment, he was obliged to re- 
 main in bed until his clothes were returned 
 to him. " He had now," says his biographer, 
 " passed the point at which he was the per- 
 sonification of a broken gentleman." He be- 
 came a complete sloven. The last remnant 
 of self-respect abandoned him, and, unable to 
 obtain credit, he would beg at a shop for ar- 
 ticles for which he was no longer able to pay. 
 His mind was weakened by his misfortunes; 
 and, in his lonely apartment, he would at 
 times imagine that he was givinsr one of 
 his fashionable parties. His attendant, who 
 humoured him, would announce the arrival of 
 the Duchess of Devonshire, or some distin- 
 guished visitor. Rising up, the poor Beau 
 would salute the empty air with ceremonious 
 politeness; then, as if aware of his fallen posi- 
 tion, his eyes would fill with childish tears. 
 At ten o'clock the carriages of his imaginary 
 visitors were announced, and the farce was 
 at an end. 
 
THE MAN OF FASHION. 35 
 
 Such was Beau Brummell in his fall. Fur- 
 ther misfortunes, however, were yet to come. 
 Brummell's reason having partially failed, he 
 was conducted to a madhouse. An English 
 clergyman, who visited him when near his 
 death, tried to touch some chord of religion 
 to which his mind might vibrate. It was, 
 however, all in vain. " Never," says the visitor, 
 who was familiar with the treatment of the 
 insane ; " never did I come in contact with such 
 an exhibition of vanity and thoughtlessness. 
 In reply to my entreaties that he would pray, 
 he said, ' I do try ; ' but he added something 
 which made me doubt whether he understood 
 my meaning." Shortly after this visit, his 
 nurse observed him assume an appearance of 
 extreme anxiety. He fixed his eyes upon her 
 as if asking for assistance. She made him 
 repeat some form of prayer ; then, turning on 
 his side, he died. 
 
 Such was the end of the man of fashion. 
 We pr.usc not to moralize on his melancholy 
 
36 
 
 THE MIRAGE OF I. IFF.. 
 
 career — on the exhibition of selfishness, wasted 
 time, and squandered powers, which it presents. 
 He had devoted himself to the slavery of 
 fashion, and in the end he discovered that he 
 had been deluded by the Mirage. 
 
 u Use this world, as not abusing it : for the fashion of this 
 world passeth away/' — i Cor. vii. 31. 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH, 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 
 
 far more general object of pursuit 
 than fashion is Wealth. This may be 
 almost termed the universal passion, 
 and it might appear at first sight bold to class 
 its votaries amongst those who are chasing 
 the Mirage. Yet true it is, that however 
 legitimate the possession of wealth, when em- 
 ployed as a talent for promoting the glory of 
 God and the good of our fellow-creatures, it 
 is, when sought without reference to these 
 ends, a snare and a delusion. 
 
 It is deceptive as regards the certainty of its 
 acquisition. A young merchant, intoxicated 
 
40 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 with success and full of worldly energy, was a 
 short time since boasting, in the presence of the 
 writer of these pages, that fortunes were to be 
 made in London, and that he had set his heart 
 on acquiring one. Within a few months after 
 he was in his grave. 
 
 Wealth is deceptive, also, as regards the en- 
 joyment which it promises to its possessors. 
 The writer was, at one time, in the habit of 
 meeting another merchant, who, almost in the 
 prime of life, had succeeded in realizing a for- 
 tune of more than 100,000/. by incessant toil. 
 The time for retiring to enjoy his hard-won 
 earnings at last came ; but a fit of paralysis, 
 brought on by excessive labour, shattered his 
 frame, and reduced him to a state of pitiable 
 helplessness. 
 
 Wealth is further deceptive when viewed 
 with reference to its vanity when acquired. 
 The great 1 Hike of Marlborough used to walk 
 through tlie rain at night to save sixpence, and 
 accumulated a fortune of a million and a half. 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 4 1 
 
 " Would he have taken all this pains/' asks a 
 writer, " could he have foreseen that after his 
 death his fortune would, in the course of a few 
 years, pass into the hands of a family which 
 he had always opposed and regarded as his 
 enemies ? " Dr. King, in the anecdotes of 
 his own times, speaks of a gentleman of his 
 acquaintance, who went back a long distance 
 to exchange a bad halfpenny which he had 
 taken from the waiter of a coffee-room. He 
 died worth more than 200,000/. ; but " his 
 fortune, from want of a will, was divided 
 amongst six day-labourers, for whom, when 
 living, he had no regard. He had heaped up 
 riches, without knowing who should gather 
 them. A late Scottish nobleman, accom- 
 panying a gentleman to the summit of a hill 
 which overlooked his lordship's estates, after 
 explaining that, as far as the eye could reach, 
 the country was his property, stated, in reply 
 to the remark, " Surely your lordship must 
 be a happy man," that he did not believe 
 
 D 
 
42 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 there was in all the vast circuit that met 
 their gaze an individual so unhappy as him- 
 self. The guilty Colonel Charteris found 
 that piles of wealth were a poor substitute 
 for a peaceful conscience ; when dying, he 
 said he would readily give 30,000/. to have 
 it proved to his satisfaction that there was 
 no such place as hell. Still more miserable 
 was the career of the well-known Elwes, the 
 miser. When worth more than half a million, 
 he wore clothes so ragged that many persons, 
 mistaking him for a common street beggar, 
 would put a penny into his hand as they 
 passed. He would pick up bones and rags. 
 He would glean with his tenants in his fields, 
 and complain bitterly of the birds robbing 
 him of so much hay with which to build 
 their nests. He, however, gained his end in 
 life. He accumulated nearly a million of 
 money, but found, when he had done so, 
 that the object of his search was full of 
 dissatisfaction. His last days, we are told, 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 43 
 
 were embittered by anxiety about the preser- 
 vation of his property. He would start from 
 his sleep, exclaiming, " My money ! my 
 money ! You shall not rob me of my 
 money." At the dead of night he was found 
 wandering through his house, bemoaning the 
 loss of a five-pound note, which he had hid 
 in a place that he could not remember; and, 
 although then a millionaire, protesting that 
 the note was nearly all he had in the world ! 
 His last hours were filled with gloom and 
 anxiety. He died wretched and unhappy, 
 possessing such extensive wealth, and yet 
 finding it unable to supply the wants of an 
 immortal spirit. 
 
 Leaving, however, various other forms in 
 which the Mirage of wealth might be exempli- 
 fied, we shall confine ourselves to one more 
 illustration, namely, the instability of riches, 
 and select for our type, William Beckford 
 of Fonthill, or, The Man of Wealth. 
 
 D 2 
 
44 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 William Beckford was born towards the 
 middle of the eighteenth century. He was 
 the only son of a wealthy West Indian pro- 
 prietor, who, dying when his child was ten 
 years of age, left an income of more than 
 100,000/. a year, to accumulate until the boy 
 should reach his majority. Young Beckford's 
 mental powers were good, and no pains were 
 spared in cultivating them by a refined edu- 
 cation. Sir William Chambers instructed 
 him in architecture, and the eminent Mozart 
 taught him music. At twenty-one, with the 
 income of a prince, and accumulations in 
 ready money to the amount of about a mil- 
 lion sterling, he launched upon the world. 
 How vast were the capacities of usefulness 
 placed before him! His income might have 
 banished penury from whole districts of his 
 country. The great talent of promoting human 
 happiness was placed within his reach ; but he 
 threw the golden opportunity away. Proud 
 and haughty, the youthful Beckford withdrew 
 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 45 
 
 from the active business of life ; and retiring 
 to the Continent, devoted himself to a life of 
 luxurious ease. Settling after a time in Por- 
 tugal, he there lavished his wealth upon a 
 charming villa, which a poet, who visited it 
 when in ruins, has described in the following 
 lines : — 
 
 " Here, too, thou, Beckford — England's wealthiest son— 
 Once formed thy paradise, as not aware 
 When wanton Wealth hter mightiest deeds hath done, 
 Meek Peace voluptuous snares was ever wont to shunt 
 Here didst thou dwell ; here schemes of pleasure plan, 
 Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow. 
 But now, as if a thing unblest by man, 
 Thy lonely dwelling is as lone as thou. 
 Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow 
 To halls deserted, portals gaping wide ; 
 Fresh lessons to unthinking mortals, how 
 Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied, 
 Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide." 
 
 During Beckford's residence in Portugal, he 
 visited, under the royal sanction, some of the 
 wealthy and luxurious monasteries of that 
 country. It is difficult to convey an idea of 
 the pomp and splendour of this journey, 
 
46 TIIF MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 which resembled more the cavalcade of an 
 eastern prince than the tour of a private 
 individual. " Everything," he himself says, 
 "that could be thought or dreamed of for our 
 convenience or relaxation was carried in our 
 train — nothing was left behind but care and 
 sorrow." " The ceiling of my apartment in 
 the monastery," he adds, " was gilded and 
 painted ; the floor spread with Persian carpets 
 of the finest texture ; the tables decked with 
 superb ewers and basins of chased silver." 
 The kitchen in which his dinner was pre- 
 pared is thus described : " A stream of water 
 flowed through it, from which were formed 
 reservoirs containing every kind of river-fish. 
 On one side were heaped up loads of game 
 and venison ; on the other side were v< 
 tables and fruit, in endless variety. Beyond a 
 long line of stores extended a row of ovens, 
 and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour, 
 tmer than snow; rocks of sugar, jars of the 
 purest oil, and pastry in various abundance." 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 47 
 
 The dinner which followed these preparations 
 was served in a magnificent saloon of the 
 monastery, covered with pictures, and lighted 
 up with a profusion of wax tapers in sconces 
 of silver. " The banquet," he adds, " con- 
 sisted of rarities and delicacies, of every sea- 
 son, from distant countries." Confectionery 
 and fruits awaited the party in a room still 
 more sumptuous, where vessels of Goa fili- 
 gree, containing the rarest and most fragrant 
 spices, were handed round. Such was Beck- 
 ford's mode of life during this journey. Pain- 
 ful recollections are awakened, when perusing 
 this narrative, of a certain rich man who was 
 clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared 
 sumptuously every day. 
 
 Returning, at the commencement of the pre- 
 sent century, to his native country, Beckford 
 again abandoned himself to an unwise enjoy- 
 ment of his wealth. Taking a capricious dis- 
 like to a splendid mansion on his estate, which 
 had been erected by his father at a vast cost, 
 
48 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 he ordered it to be pulled down. He re- 
 solved that, phoenix-like, there should arise 
 from its ruins a building which should surpass 
 in magnificence all that hitherto had been 
 known in English art. Fonthill Abbey, one of 
 the wonders of the West of England, was the 
 result of this determination. Whole galleries 
 of that vast pile were apparently erected 
 for the sole purpose of enabling Beckford to 
 emblazon on their windows the crests of the 
 families from whom he boasted his descent. 
 The wonder of the fabric, however, was a 
 tower of colossal dimensions and great height, 
 erected somewhat in the manner and spirit of 
 those who once reared a similar structure on 
 the plains of Shinar : " Go to, let us build us 
 a city and a tower whose top may reach unto 
 heaven ; and let us make us a name." 
 
 To complete the erection of Beckford's 
 princely pile, almost every cart in the county 
 was employed, so that at one time agricultural 
 labour was well-nigh suspended. Impatient oi 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 5 1 
 
 delay, night, at one period, was not allowed to 
 impose obstacles to the progress of the work. 
 Torch-light was employed ; fresh bands of 
 labourers relieving at evening those who 
 worked by day. In the dark nights of win- 
 ter, the distant traveller was startled by the 
 blaze of light from Fonthill, which proclaimed 
 at once the resources and the folly of the man 
 of wealth. Beckford's principal enjoyment 
 was in watching the erection of this structure. 
 At nightfall he would repair to some elevated 
 grounds, and there, in solitude, would feast his 
 eyes for hours w T ith the singular spectacle 
 presented by the dancing of the lights, and 
 the play of their light on the neighbouring 
 forest. The building seemed, indeed, Beck- 
 ford's idol — the object for which he lived. 
 He devoted the whole of his energies to 
 make it realize the most fascinating visions 
 of an excited imagination. 
 
 After the completion of the abbey, Beckford's 
 conduct was still more extraordinary. A wall, 
 
THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 twelve feet high, surrounded his mansion and 
 grounds, the latter of which were so arranged 
 as to contain walks and rides twenty miles in 
 extent. Within this mysterious circle scarcely 
 any visitors were allowed to pass. In stately 
 grandeur he dwelt alone, shunning converse 
 with the world around. Majesty itself, so ran 
 the rumour, was desirous of visiting this won- 
 derful domain, but was refused admittance. 
 Strangers would disguise themselves as ser- 
 
 o o 
 
 vants, as peasants, or as pedlars, in the hope 
 of catching even a transient glimpse at its 
 glories. Nor was its interior unworthy of this 
 curiosity. All that art and wealth could give, 
 to produce effect, w r ere there. M Gold and 
 silver vases and cups," says one who saw the 
 place, " are so numerous here that they dazzle 
 the eye ; and when one looks round at the 
 cabinets, candelabras, and ornaments which 
 decorate the room, we may almost imagine 
 that we stand in the treasury of some oriental 
 prince, whose riches consist entirely in vessels 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 53 
 
 of gold and silver enriched with precious 
 stones of every sort, from the ruby to the 
 diamond. "* 
 
 Such was Beckford of Fonthill. With an 
 income of more than 100,000/. per annum, he 
 seemed above the reach of fortune. Who 
 would have ventured to style all this splendour 
 evanescent as the Mirage ? And yet it was so. 
 A sudden depreciation of West Indian pro- 
 perty took place. Some lawsuits terminated 
 unfavourably, and embarrassments poured in 
 like a flood on the princely owner. The gates 
 which had refused admittance to a monarch 
 were rudely thrust open by a sheriff's officer. 
 
 * The grounds of Fonthill seem to have been almost as 
 beautiful as the interior. There were all varieties of surface ; 
 winding vale, steep ridge, hill, dell, knoll, and lake, clumps and 
 masses of oak and pine ; solitude for the poet and painter ; 
 terraces ; a flower garden unmatched in England ; American 
 plantations filled with the trees and flowering shrubs of North 
 America. Here were extent, repose, and majesty for the pencil 
 of Claude ; the rugged grandeur that would affect Ruysdael ; 
 and the deep and savage wildness which suited the genius of 
 Salvator Rosa. 
 
54 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 The mansion, erected at so vast an expense, 
 was sold. The greater part of the costly 
 treasures were scattered by the hammer of the 
 auctioneer; and Beckford driven, with the shat- 
 tered fragments of a fortune, to spend his old 
 age in a watering-place ; there to muse on the 
 instability of wealth ; there to feel how little 
 pleasure the retrospect of neglected talents can 
 give, and to point the oft-told moral of the 
 vanity of human pursuits. He fell, it is said, 
 unpitied. The noblest opportunities of con- 
 ferring happiness had been placed within his 
 reach, and had been thrown away. What 
 could he now show for the amount of wealth 
 intrusted to his stewardship ? Little more 
 than a heap of rubbish ! a dismantled mansion 
 in Portugal, and two ruined dwellings in 
 England. The tower, which he had erected 
 at so great a cost, fell to the ground, and 
 Fonthill Abbey was pulled clown by its new 
 owner. 
 
 Thus melted away, like frostwork before the 
 
THE MAN OF WEALTH. 
 
 55 
 
 sun, the extravagant productions of the man of 
 wealth. His whole life had been a sad misap- 
 plication of the talents committed to his care, 
 and in the end he discovered that he had been 
 cheated by the Mirage. 
 
 " Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not 
 high-minded, nor trust m uncertain riches, but in the living 
 God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." — I Tim. vi. 17. 
 
THE HERO. 
 

THE HERO. 
 
 JInother object of eager ardent pursuit to 
 a large number of our fellow-creatures 
 is Military Glory. Multitudes seek the 
 " bubble reputation " as the chief end of life, 
 indifferent to the scenes of misery with which 
 it is so closely connected. Few illusions, how- 
 ever, are in general more speedily dissipated 
 than this. The youth who, dazzled by a bril- 
 liant uniform, allured by the gaieties and dissi- 
 pation of the mess-room, or impelled by the 
 love of adventure, quits his native country in 
 search of " glory," soon finds his visions dis- 
 persed by the stern realities of a camp, and the 
 hardships of a military life. 
 
 In the journal of a soldier in the 72nd 
 
 E 2 
 
6o THE MI RACK OF LIFE. 
 
 regiment, published at the conclusion of the 
 last general continental war, an instance 
 of this occurs. The author of it had been 
 induced, in hopes of a life of pleasure, to 
 enlist in the army, and to forsake his home, 
 greatly to the grief of his parents. A few 
 years afterwards, he was, when serving in 
 the Peninsula, glad to be allowed to eat of 
 the biscuits which he was employed to break 
 for the hounds of the commander-in-chief, at 
 a time when provisions were scarce. " I ate 
 them with tears," he says, " and thought of 
 the Prodigal Son." 
 
 Full of self-confidence, the young soldiers 
 who attended Napoleon in his expedition to 
 Moscow shouted as they left Paris, " We shall 
 be back in six months !" They dreamed of 
 conquest; but it was only the Mirage. In a 
 few months the mighty host of Napoleon, 
 except a small remnant, was buried in the 
 snows of Russia. 
 
 In the life of Lord Nelson, it is striking to 
 
THE HERO. 6 I 
 
 observe that, nearly at the time when the 
 various potentates of Europe were showering 
 down upon this hero presents of diamond-hilted 
 swords, gold snuff-boxes, and crosses of honour, 
 he was himself unable to enjoy his greatness, 
 having for months been deprived of sleep by the 
 injury done to a nerve in the amputation of one 
 of his arms. Lally, a great French general in 
 the last century, was rewarded by an un- 
 grateful country with an ignominious death for 
 his reverses in India. Suwarroff, the brave 
 Russian general, after having served his em- 
 press and his country with great distinction, 
 was treated in his declining years with mortify- 
 ing neglect. 
 
 "On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, 
 How just his hopes let Swedish Charles decide ; . . . 
 His fall was destined to a barren strand, 
 A petty fortress, and a dubious hand ; 
 He left the name, at which the world grew pale, 
 To point a moral, or adorn a tale." 
 
 One of the most remarkable instances, how- 
 ever, of the Mirage of military glory, and its 
 
62 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 
 
 inability, even when enjoyed to its full extent, 
 to confer happiness on its possessor, is to be 
 found in the life of Lord Clive, the founder of 
 the British empire in India, whom we now 
 select as our type of The Hero. 
 
 Robert, afterwards Lord Clive, was born in 
 Shropshire, in the year 1729, of parents in no 
 way distinguished for opulence or rank. In 
 early life he displayed strong indications of 
 those remarkable qualities which developed 
 themselves in after years. The people of 
 Market Drayton, it is said, long remembered 
 stories told them by their parents of the future 
 conqueror of India terrifying the village by 
 climbing to the pinnacle of the church steeple, 
 and perching himself on a stone spout near the 
 summit. Clive, so runs the tradition, organized 
 a little regiment, composed of his schoolfellows, 
 and, in the true spirit of a military commander, 
 levied a tribute of halfpence from the shop 
 keepers, as a species of tax for protecting their 
 
THE HERO. 65 
 
 windows from being broken. It is related also, 
 by Clive's biographer, that on one occasion when 
 a dam broke (which the boys had made across 
 the street for the purpose of overflowing the 
 shop of a refractory tradesman, who had pro- 
 bably declined payment of the tribute just men- 
 tioned), Clive unhesitatingly threw his body 
 across the aperture in the work, and thus re- 
 mained until the breach was repaired. 
 
 At an early period of his life, Clive proceeded 
 as a mercantile clerk to India, having received 
 employment in the East India Company's ser- 
 vice. The possessions of that body were then 
 small and limited, and its troops scarcely nu- 
 merous enough to man a few batteries. Madras 
 was the point to which the youthful hero first 
 bent his steps. On his arrival there he soon 
 gave marks of his determined spirit and insen- 
 sibility to fear. He chastised a person who had 
 been the bully of his regiment, and gained a re- 
 putation for energy and decision of character. 
 Amongst the various requisites, however, for 
 
66 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 
 
 true success which he had taken with him to 
 India, one was forgotten — the fear of God was 
 not before his eyes. Dejected by some trifling 
 disappointment, he twice attempted to commit 
 suicide. Twice the pistol was raised to his 
 head ; but twice the trigger refused to move. 
 Shortly afterwards a friend came in, and Give 
 desired him to fire the same pistol out of the 
 window. He did so, and the weapon was dis- 
 charged with ease. Clive was. filled, not with 
 gratitude at the forbearing mercy of God, but 
 with selfish elation. " I see," he exclaimed, 
 "that I am reserved for something great." He 
 soon after this resigned his situation as a 
 clerk, and obtained an ensign cy in a regiment 
 of foot. 
 
 It would be impracticable, even if it were 
 desirable, to give in this work a sketch of his 
 wonderful career. When a mere youth, he 
 signalised himself by raising, with a handful 
 of men, the siege of an important city. The 
 whole of his force consisted of 200 Englishmen 
 
THE HERO. 67 
 
 and 300 native soldiers. Of the eight officers 
 who accompanied him only two had before been 
 in action. The weather was stormy ; but Clive 
 pushed on, through rain, lightning, and thunder, 
 to the gates of the city. The besieging party, 
 in alarm, withdrew on his approach, without 
 striking a blow. Afterwards, however, they 
 returned to the attack, and, with elephants 
 whose heads were armed with iron plates, en- 
 deavoured to batter down the gates of the city, 
 but in vain. They next tried to starve Clive 
 and his garrison ; and it was then that the 
 Hindoo soldiers under his command made their 
 memorable speech : "Give us," they said, 
 " as provisions are failing, give us the water in 
 which the rice is boiled : it is sufficient for our 
 support. Let the Europeans take the grain." 
 
 Such was the commencement of Give's mili- 
 tary career; and the remainder corresponded 
 with it. He laid the foundation of the British 
 empire in India ; and displayed, although un- 
 taught in the art of war, a genius equal to that 
 
68 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 
 
 of the most experienced commanders. Victory 
 succeeded victory. His history is one roll of 
 successes. No scruple of conscience, however, 
 was allowed to check him, when expediency 
 appeared to demand an opposite course. " He 
 no sooner," says Mr. Macaulay, " found himself 
 matched against an Indian intriguer, than he 
 became himself one, and descended to false- 
 hood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution 
 of documents, and to the counterfeiting of sig- 
 natures." He had aimed, however, at worldly 
 greatness, and he gained his end. Wealth was 
 heaped upon him in piles. One Indian prince 
 gave him a pension of 30,000/. a year ; and on 
 another occasion added to it a present of 
 300,000/. There was, indeed, no limit to his 
 acquisitions but his own moderation. u Had 
 you seen," said he, on one occasion, " the 
 treasury of the Nabob, and the piles of gold, 
 silver, and diamonds, amidst which I walked, 
 you would have thought me moderate in taking 
 the above sum." 
 
THE HERO. 69 
 
 He gained the highest honours also. When 
 a youth of twenty-seven, he received from the 
 East India Company a diamond-hilted sword ; 
 and was thrice appointed by it to the highest 
 offices at its disposal. His sovereign elevated 
 him to the peerage; and the great Earl of 
 Chatham praised him, in the British senate, as 
 a distinguished genius, and a master of the art 
 of war. " The whole kingdom," wrote his father, 
 "is in transports at the glory and success you 
 have gained. Come away, and let us rejoice 
 together." Laden with honours, with wealth, 
 which he used not ungenerously, and with glory, 
 Clive returned to England in the prime of life, 
 intending to devote himself to the enjoyment of 
 his immense fortune. Here, then, it may be 
 thought, was one, at least, whose acquisitions 
 were substantial — who had found the substance 
 and not the shadow. Alas ! it was only the 
 Mirage. The years of enjoyment to which he 
 had looked forward were filled with melancholy 
 and dissatisfaction. Some important reforms 
 
70 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 which he had introduced into the government 
 of India provoked opposition and raised up 
 bitter enemies. An impeachment against him, 
 contemplated in the House of Commons, threat- 
 ened to strip him of all his wealth. It was with 
 some difficulty quashed ; but Clive's spirits 
 never recovered the blow. Having sought pro- 
 sperity without reference to the favour of God, 
 his mind, in the retrospect of life, could find no 
 point of satisfaction on which it might repose. 
 Wedded to glory, and pluming himself on his 
 vast achievements, his pride was wounded and 
 his feelings lacerated by the ungrateful treat- 
 ment which he had received. Broken health, 
 too, began to afflict him. He, who had con- 
 quered so many provinces, was unable, ap- 
 parently, to subdue his own spirit ; and poor 
 amidst abundant wealth — wretched amidst a 
 load of honours — the soldier of fortune termi- 
 nated his life by his own hand. Such was the 
 end of a military career brilliant with success, 
 but uncontrolled by religious principle. He had 
 
THE HERO. 
 
 71 
 
 pursued "glory" as his end in life, and he 
 had found it the Mirage. 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his 
 wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let 
 not the rich man glory in his riches : but let him that glorieth 
 glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I 
 am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, and 
 righteousness, in the earth." — Jer. ix. 23, 24. 
 
THE STATESMAN. 
 
THE STATESMAN. 
 
 Irom the career of the military hero, let 
 us turn to that of the Statesman. He 
 seeks his enjoyment in the gratifica- 
 tion of ambition ; in administering the affairs 
 of nations, and in commanding by his pa- 
 tronage a crowd of adherents and dependants. 
 From its very nature, this object of pursuit 
 is necessarily limited to a few, and those 
 men of high intellectual capacity. With the 
 opportunity which it presents, however, of 
 conferring large and extensive benefits on 
 mankind, no career, when directed with an 
 
76 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 eye to the glory of God and the welfare of man- 
 kind, might be more satisfactory than that of the 
 statesman. There have been few in which the 
 Mirage of life has been more apparent. Cardinal 
 Wolsey, after climbing the highest round of 
 ambition's ladder, was, in the evening of life, 
 constrained to exclaim — that had he served 
 his God as faithfully as he had done his 
 king, He would not have abandoned him in 
 his old age. The closing words of Colbert, 
 the minister of Louis xiv., echoed the same- 
 sentiment. The dying hours of Cardinal 
 Mazarin, the ambitious French statesman, 
 were clouded with gloom and chagrin. He 
 wandered, we are told, along his splendid 
 picture-gallery, bidding his works of art a 
 mournful farewell, and exclaiming, " Must I 
 quit all these?"* Necker, the celebrated 
 minister of Louis xye, was such a favourite 
 with the French nation, that he was hon- 
 
 * Sec Lifts Last flours, published by the Religious Tract 
 Society. 
 
THE STATESMAN. 7 J 
 
 oured with this inscription on his door — 
 " The residence of the adored minister." He 
 was afterwards compelled to secure his safety 
 by flight from the fickle people who had 
 honoured him with almost idolatrous homage. 
 The career of Warren Hastings, governor- 
 general of India, is another apt illustration of 
 the Mirage of political ambition. After tasting, 
 for a series of years, the sweets of oriental 
 luxury, and enjoying uncontrolled authority 
 over millions of his fellow-creatures, he was at 
 last stripped of his power ; and at a time when 
 he reasonably anticipated honours from the 
 hand of his sovereign, was exposed to a trial of 
 nine years' duration, which left him deprived of 
 the wealth he had by very equivocal means 
 acquired. The late Lord Melville was likewise 
 a memorable instance of the unsatisfactory 
 character of worldly ambition. We speak not 
 here of the impeachment which embittered the 
 close of his life, but of the period of his un- 
 clouded political splendour. The late Sir John 
 
jS THE MIRAGE OF LIFE, 
 
 Sinclair had passed a few days with him at his 
 country villa, and on a new years morning 
 entered his apartment to offer him the custom- 
 ary compliments of the season. He found the 
 statesman perusing some important documents, 
 and wished him a happy new year. On 
 receiving the salutation, Lord Melville, after a 
 pause, replied, "It has need to be a happier 
 one than the last, for I scarcely remember a 
 happy day in it." Coining as this did from the 
 lips of a man envied by all for his greatness — 
 "My father," says the narrator of the anec- 
 dote, " would often quote it to us, as a proof of 
 the vanity of human wishes." As a still more 
 striking instance, however, of the cares and 
 perplexities which haunt the path of ambition, 
 we select as our leading illustration the cele- 
 brated William Pitt, or, The Statesman. 
 
 This remarkable man was the son of a no 
 less remarkable father, the great Karl of Chat- 
 ham, and was trained under his eye to public 
 
THE STATESMAN. 51 
 
 life. When a boy, he displayed remarkable 
 powers of mind, and gave prognostics of future 
 eminence. He entered parliament a mere 
 youth, but aided by everything which could 
 encourage hopes of a brilliant career. His 
 sovereign, the senate, and the people were alike 
 disposed to regard him with favour for his 
 parent's sake. His first speech confirmed their 
 anticipations. No sooner had he delivered it 
 than public opinion strongly declared itself, and 
 all parties confessed that the mantle o'f his 
 father had fallen upon him. At the age of 
 twenty-four, a period when the generality of 
 young men are discharging duties of a proba- 
 tionary character, he was made prime minister. 
 He was now first in position, as he was first in 
 intellectual power, among the commons of 
 England. Let a young man dwell upon his 
 lot, and he will be apt to think that it contained 
 all the elements of happiness. He was em- 
 phatically the favourite of his sovereign, to a 
 degree which it had been the privilege of few 
 
82 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 before him to enjoy. He was the idol of a 
 numerous party in the senate, and of a large 
 and influential body of supporters in the 
 kingdom. The mightiest intellects bent before 
 him, and the highest offices were in his patron- 
 age. Each morning when he rose, he was 
 entitled to assert that, in all the vast empire of 
 England, the sun shone on no one who was in 
 reality, however he might be in name, "more 
 powerful than himself. Add to all this the 
 possession of youth and the prospect of length 
 of days, and we have drawn, in the world's esti- 
 mation, a picture containing much to envy. 
 And yet even this was but the Mirage. 
 
 It was deception, as regarded his own 
 personal enjoyment during his career of great- 
 ness. In vain should we look for any proofs of 
 this in the biographies of Pitt, published by 
 his political admirers, shortly after his death. 
 There we meet chiefly a narrative of flattering 
 success.* A few years ago, however, an 
 
 * But sec Edinburgh Review^ July [862. 
 
THE STATESMAN. 03 
 
 account of his domestic life appeared in the 
 memoirs of the lady who had superintended the 
 arrangements of his household. " People," said 
 this writer, " little knew what Mr. Pitt had to 
 do. Up at eight in the morning, with people 
 enough to see for a week. Obliged to talk all 
 the time he was at breakfast; receiving first one 
 and then another, until four o'clock. Then 
 eating a mutton chop; hurrying off to the House, 
 and there badgered and compelled to waste his 
 lungs till two or three in the morning. Who 
 could stand it ? After this, heated as he was, 
 and having eaten nothing in a manner, he 
 would sup with Dundas, Huskisson, Rose, 
 Long, and such like, and then go to bed and 
 get three or four hours' sleep, to renew the 
 same thing the next day, and the next. During 
 the sitting of parliament, what a life he led ! 
 Roused from his sleep, with a despatch from 
 Lord Melville ; then down to Windsor ; then, if 
 he had half an hour to spare, trying to swallow 
 something. Mr. Adams with a paper ; Mr. 
 
84 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Long with another. Then, with a little bottle 
 of cordial confection in his pocket, off to the 
 House until three or four in the morning. Then 
 home for a hot supper for two or three hours 
 more, to talk over what was to be done next 
 day; and wine — and wine — and wine. Scarcely 
 up next morning, when, tat-tat-tat, twenty or 
 thirty people, one after another, and the horses 
 walking before the door from two till sunset, 
 waiting for him. It was murder." Such was 
 the private life of a prime minister, whose 
 position was the object of envy to numbers. 
 Alas ! how little was it to be coveted. 
 
 But the life of this great man was in other 
 respects also an exemplification of the vanity of 
 human pursuits. " During his long career of 
 office," says one of his warmest admirers, "he 
 could scarcely get a gleam of success to cheer 
 him." He was disappointed too in an attach- 
 ment which he had formed to a young lady of 
 rank and great personal attractions. Added to 
 this, his affairs gradually became embarrassed, 
 
THE STATESMAN. 85 
 
 and he found his spirits and energies depressed 
 by a load of debt. His weakened frame suc- 
 cumbed soon afterwards to an attack of disease. 
 His temper, also, was soured by the ingratitude 
 which he experienced. "All the peers," says 
 the writer above quoted, "whom he had made 
 deserted him, and half of those whom he had 
 served returned his kindness by going over to 
 his enemies." 
 
 The final stroke at last came. A brilliant 
 effort of his genius to crush the hydra-headed 
 power of Napoleon was defeated by the battle 
 of Austerlitz. Chagrined, disappointed, crowded 
 with anxieties, this blow was too much for the 
 statesman to bear, and he found the hand of 
 death upon him. Had he then the consola- 
 tions of religion to rest upon? Ah no! On 
 his dying bed he is stated to have exclaimed, 
 " I fear I have neglected prayer too much to 
 make it available on a death-bed." He soon 
 afterwards died. "In the adjoining room," 
 says a contemporary writer, "he lay a corpse in 
 
86 THE MIRAGE OE LIFE. 
 
 the ensuing week; and it is a singular and melan- 
 choly circumstance, resembling the stories told 
 of William the Conqueror's deserted state at 
 his decease, that some one in the neighbour- 
 hood having sent a messenger to enquire after 
 Mr. Pitt's state, the latter found the wicket 
 open, then the door of the house, and walked 
 through the rooms till he reached the bed on 
 which the minister's body lay lifeless, the sole 
 tenant of the mansion of which the doors a few 
 hours before had been darkened by crowds of 
 suitors, alike obsequious and importunate — the 
 vultures whose instinct leads them to haunt 
 only the carcases of living ministers."* He 
 died in his forty-seventh year, on the anniver- 
 sary of the day on which he had first entered 
 parliament. What a difference was there 
 
 * The author of the Life of Lady Hester Stanhope gives, but 
 as we think erroneously, the passage as an extract from Lord 
 Brougham's Lives of Eminent Statesmen. The incident carries 
 with it, however, internal evidence of its probability, from the 
 confused and disorderly manner in which the arrangements of 
 Mr. Pitt's household were managed by his niece. Lady Hester 
 Stanhope. 
 
THE STATESMAN. Sj 
 
 between the buoyant youth of twenty and the 
 careworn statesman of forty-seven! Before the 
 eyes of the one sparkled a long vista of political 
 enjoyments and honours; before the eyes of the 
 other were the anxieties and cares which had 
 attended them when grasped. He had too 
 much followed as his object in life unsanctified 
 ambition, and he had found it the Mirage. 
 
 "How do these events," wrote at the time 
 Mr. Wilberforce, the friend of Pitt ; " how do 
 these events tend to illustrate the vanity of 
 worldly greatness ! Poor Pitt, I almost believe, 
 died of a broken heart. A broken heart ! 
 What! was he like Otway, or Collins, or Chat- 
 terton, who had not so much as a needful com- 
 plement of food to sustain their bodies, while 
 the consciousness of unrewarded talents and 
 mortified pride pressed them within, and ate 
 out their very souls? Was he even like 
 Suwarroff, another most useful example, basely 
 deserted and driven into exile by the sove- 
 reign he had so long served? No; he was 
 
88 
 
 THE MIRAGE OF 1. 1 li- 
 
 the highest in power and estimation in the 
 whole kingdom ; the favourite, I believe, on 
 the whole, both of king and people. Yes ; 
 this man, who died of a broken heart, was First 
 Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer!" 
 
 " Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, 
 and on the labour that I had laboured to do : and, behold, all 
 was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under 
 the sun. 1 ' — Eccles. ii. u. 
 
THE ORATOR. 
 
THE ORATOR. 
 
 Ilosely connected with the pursuits of 
 the statesman are those of the Orator. 
 To shine in the senate, to dazzle by 
 brilliant talent, and to sway contending par- 
 ties by commanding intellect, constitute his 
 happiness. When directed to right ends and 
 influenced by right principles, the career of the 
 orator is not to be condemned. His office is 
 to denounce vice, and to shield virtue ; and, 
 like one who used this talent for Christian 
 purposes, — the eminent Wilberforce, — to aid 
 by eloquence the cause of evangelical truth. 
 As an illustration, however, of its inability, 
 G 2 
 
92 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 when unsanctified, to produce happiness, we 
 proceed, omitting minor examples, to sketch 
 the career of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 
 or, The Orator, 
 
 This remarkable man was early distin- 
 guished for mental ability. To use the lan- 
 guage of the poet — 
 
 " His mind was an essence, compounded with art 
 From the finest and best of all other men's powers : 
 He ruled like a wizard the world of the heart, 
 And could call up its sunshine or draw down its showers." 
 
 Like some other men of genius, he was 
 averse to application, and has been well de- 
 scribed as having, through life, acted upon two 
 rules : " Never do to-day what you can put off 
 till to-morrow;" and, " Never do yourself what 
 you can get another person to do for you." 
 His early course of frivolity and gaiety might 
 of itself have pointed a moral ; but it is with 
 his career as an orator that we have now to 
 
THE ORATOR. 93 
 
 do. Although sprung from the middle ranks, 
 and possessed only of slender means, he was 
 enabled ere long to obtain a seat in Parlia- 
 ment. Shortly after gaining this distinction, 
 the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, for 
 malversation in his office as governor-general 
 of India, took place. It was an occasion 
 which called forth the eloquence of Burke, and 
 which developed the highest powers of the 
 eminent statesmen who adorned that period 
 of English history. Westminster Hall was 
 the scene of the trial, and that place, at the 
 early stages of the proceedings, was crowded 
 with all that was great and intellectual in the 
 land. " The whole scene," says Sheridan's 
 biographer, " was one of those pageants in the 
 drama of life which show us what shadows we 
 are, and what shadows we pursue." On this 
 grand arena for intellectual display Sheridan 
 shone conspicuous above all competitors. A 
 speech which he delivered drew forth the 
 
94 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 following acknowledgment from one who lis- 
 ts o 
 
 tened to it : " All the various species of ora- 
 tory, every kind of eloquence that had been 
 heard either in ancient or modern times, what- 
 ever the acuteness of the bar, the dignity 
 of the senate, or the morality of the pulpit 
 could furnish, had not been equal to what the 
 house had that day heard in Westminster 
 Hall. From poetry up to eloquence there 
 was not a specimen of composition of which 
 some variety might not have been culled from 
 that speech." 
 
 Wonderful, however, as this oratorical effort 
 was, it fell short in its results of another, 
 which, in the course of the same cause, Sheri- 
 dan made on the floor of the House of Com- 
 mons. Not only did his speech draw forth 
 the applause of all parties in that house, but 
 it seemed to have entranced them, and bound 
 them with a magician's spell ; for they were 
 compelled to adjourn their deliberations to 
 
THE ORATOR. 97 
 
 another day, until the excitement produced 
 by it had disappeared. When Sheridan sat 
 down, Mr. Burke rose, and said it was the 
 most astonishing effort of eloquence, wit, and 
 argument united, which he had ever heard. 
 Mr. Fox stated that all that he too had ever 
 heard or read, when compared with it, dwin- 
 dled into nothing, and vanished like vapour 
 before the sun. Mr. Pitt acknowledged that 
 it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or 
 modern times, and possessed everything that 
 genius or art could furnish to agitate and 
 control the human mind. Sir William Dol- 
 ben immediately moved an adjournment of 
 the house, confessing that in the state of mind 
 in which Mr. Sheridan's speech had left him, 
 it was impossible to give any determinate opi- 
 nion. Nothing but a miracle, he thought, 
 could have determined him to vote against 
 Mr. Hastings ; but he had just felt the opera- 
 tion of such a miracle. 
 
98 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 Sheridan's fame as an orator was now the 
 great topic of public conversation. "What 
 my feelings are," wrote his brother, "you may 
 imagine. It is with some difficulty that I 
 can let down my mind to think of anything 
 else but your speech." His father, as he 
 walked the streets, was gratified by persons 
 turning round and pointing to him as the 
 parent of the great orator. Sheridan now 
 stood on the pinnacle of his glory. He was 
 the favourite of his political party, the in- 
 timate companion of his prince and of the 
 highest nobility. He had gained the most 
 flattering distinctions. But his talents were 
 unsanctified ; and he was destined to feel, by 
 bitter experience, that the objects which he 
 had so keenly pursued were deceptive as the 
 Mirage. 
 
 Unsustained by religious principle, he 
 plunged into pleasures and expenses which 
 left him a ruined man. Old age came upon 
 
THE ORATOR. 99 
 
 him, and found him impoverished and de- 
 serted by his friends. " His distresses/' says 
 his biographer, " increased every day. He 
 was driven to part with what he most 
 valued. His books, presented to him by 
 various friends, now stood in their splendid 
 bindings on the shelves of the pawnbrokers. 
 The handsome cup given him by the electors 
 of Stafford shared the same fate ; and the 
 portrait of his first wife, if not actually sold, 
 vanished away from his eyes into other 
 hands." One of the most humiliating trials 
 was, however, yet to follow. He was ar- 
 rested for debt, and carried to a sponging- 
 house. This abode formed a sad contrast to 
 the princely halls of which he had before been 
 the most brilliant and favoured guest. The 
 unhappy man burst into a flood of tears. He 
 was released ; but only to be exposed again to 
 similar trials. " Oh, let me see you," he wrote, 
 on another occasion of the same kind, to a 
 friend; "I find things so settled that 150/. 
 
 Lot. 
 
IOO THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 would remove every difficulty. ... I am 
 absolutely undone and broken-hearted." Mis- 
 fortunes crowded round his dying bed, and his 
 last moments were haunted by fear of a prison. 
 Forsaken by his gay associates, dispirited and 
 world-weary, he closed his eyes in gloom and 
 sorrow. 
 
 No sooner was he dead, however, than 
 many a titled and wealthy associate, who had 
 failed to minister to his sickness, flocked to 
 attend his funeral — conduct which drew forth 
 the indignant, though too indiscriminating, 
 remonstrance of his compatriot Moore : 
 
 " Oh ! it sickens the heart to see bosoms so hollow. 
 And friendships so false in the great and high-born ; 
 To think what a long line of titles may follow 
 The relics of him who died friendless and lorn : 
 How proud they can press to the funeral array 
 Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow ; 
 How bailiffs may seize the last blanket to-day, 
 Whose pall shall be held up by nobles to-morrow.'' 
 
 Such was the career of the orator. Fame, 
 popularity, and intellectual greatness had all 
 
THE ORATOR. 
 
 IOI 
 
 been his ; but, directed to the service of this 
 world, and animated by its spirit, they had 
 proved to their possessor false as the Mirage. 
 
 " Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
 have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 
 cymbal." — I Cor. xiii. I. 
 
THE ARTIST. 
 
THE ARTIST. 
 
 St may be said that the individuals 
 whose career we have noticed in the 
 preceding pages sought their happi- 
 ness in objects of a material and secular 
 character. Let us shift our 'sketches, there- 
 fore, and select, as our next examples, some 
 whose pursuits were of a more purely in- 
 tellectual order. First in this class we shall 
 place the Artist. His enjoyment lies in 
 indulging the conceptions of his genius, and, 
 by a subordinate species of creative power, 
 making them glow on the canvas or breathe 
 
 H 
 
106 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 in the marble. Although capable, when 
 rightly and religiously directed, of being 
 eminently profitable ; yet, when pursued, on 
 merely worldly principles, the career of the 
 artist has often furnished a painful illustration 
 of the Mirage of life. 
 
 Some years ago, a young artist, whose 
 death occurred under painful circumstances, 
 left as his closing testimony the mournful 
 sentence — " Life, they say, is sweet ; I have 
 found it bitter." The sentiment has been 
 echoed by many others. The biography of 
 the late David Scott, a gifted Scottish painter, 
 seems indeed a comment upon these words. 
 " The love of art," he wrote, " has become 
 to me a torment, an insatiable demon." He 
 plotted, we are told, with the sleeplessness of 
 a poet, and laboured with the energy of an 
 enthusiast. His pictures, however, in almost 
 unbroken succession, returned to him unsold, 
 and he died at the early age of forty- two, with 
 the dream and the hope of his life unfulfilled. 
 
THE ARTIST. IC>7 
 
 Proctor, a young British sculptor, may be 
 selected as affording another illustration of 
 the Mirage of art. His early essay in 
 marble — Diomede torn to pieces by wild 
 horses — was considered, by competent judges, 
 to approach, in grandeur of thought, the 
 Phidiac period of Greek design. It was 
 however, above the comprehension of ordinary 
 visitors. It was carried back, unsold, to the 
 young sculptor ; who, in the anguish of 
 disappointment, broke in pieces with his own 
 hand the work of sleepless hours, on which 
 he had exhausted his little means of support 
 He died, as brighter days were dawning on 
 him, from disease brought on by want and 
 agitated passions. 
 
 Another name, in connection with this part 
 of our subject, will occur to many readers 
 as a still more striking illustration — that of 
 Benjamin Robert Haydon, or, The Artist. 
 
 Haydon was born in one of the seaports 
 h 2 
 
108 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 in the West of England towards the close 
 of the last century. Meeting accidentally 
 with the lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 on painting, he read them through at a 
 single sitting, and determined from that 
 moment to be a painter. In vain did his 
 friends endeavour to alter his decision ; he 
 met all opposition with a torrent of sarcasm. 
 In 1802, at the age of eighteen, with only 
 twenty pounds in his pocket, he started for 
 London, full of enthusiasm and buoyant with 
 youthful hope. A portrait of him, painted 
 at this early period, has been preserved. 
 " There is," says a writer, when contrasting 
 it with another likeness of the artist, taken 
 only a few days before his death ; " there is 
 a melancholy interest in contemplating these 
 portraits; alike, and yet how different! In 
 the interval between them, forty-one years of 
 an anxious life had rolled over the head of 
 the ambitious and sensitive man of genius. 
 The buoyant hopes and bright prospects oi 
 
THE ARTIST. I 1 I 
 
 the youthful aspirant after fame had dis- 
 appeared in the strongly-marked lines and 
 careworn features of the world-weary and 
 disappointed man of sixty." 
 
 Haydon was not long in London before 
 his genius was discovered. Young as he was, 
 he was not contented with following the beaten 
 track, but aimed at founding a new school of 
 painting. The picture of the Judgment of 
 Solomon was, ere long, produced by him. It 
 brought the artist 800/. and obtained ' great 
 applause. The celebrated painter West was 
 so affected when looking at it, that he shed 
 tears. 
 
 Haydon's painting of our Saviour's entrance 
 into Jerusalem was at last produced. It 
 attracted a crowd of visitors, and yielded 
 the successful artist a rich harvest, both of 
 money and reputation. His fame was now at 
 its zenith. A writer of the day complimented 
 him by styling him the Raphael of his age. 
 Keats and Mitford composed verses in his 
 
112 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 honour, and Wordsworth conferred on him 
 the distinction of a sonnet. He had grasped, 
 then, the fame which as a youth he had so 
 eagerly longed for. Unlike many artists, he 
 had not been doomed to toil on in neglect, 
 but had had his merits recognised by the 
 age in which he lived. Had he then found 
 the secret of happiness, which so many had 
 missed ? Ah, no ! he, too, had only chased 
 the Mirage. 
 
 An unhappy disposition provoked enemies. 
 Embarrassments, too, in quick succession 
 flowed in upon him. His best works were 
 achieved under circumstances of privation : 
 one of them when he was a prisoner for debt. 
 He succeeded in educating his children only 
 by great exertions and extraordinary self- 
 denial. He was mortified, also, by seeing the 
 public manifest a distaste for his peculiar style 
 of art ; and each year he was doomed, with 
 sickening heart, to see the wave of popularity 
 recede farther and farther from his feet. He 
 
THE ARTIST. II3 
 
 at last determined to make one more effort to 
 woo back the favour he had lost, by an ex- 
 hibition of some of his most elaborate works 
 at the Egyptian Hall ; and no passage in 
 the history of neglected artists is more melan- 
 choly than this scene in his life. Having 
 made his preparations at some expense, and 
 earnestly appealed to the public, the poor painter 
 anxiously waited the result. 
 
 Let his diary, however, tell his story. It 
 is headed by this startling quotation from a 
 speech of Canning relative to the fall of 
 Napoleon : " All is but folly : his final de- 
 struction can neither be averted nor delayed ; 
 and his unseasonable mummeries will but 
 serve to take away all dignity from the 
 drama, and render his fall at once terrible 
 and ridiculous." 
 
 The opening entry in the journal is as 
 follows : "April 4. The first day of my 
 exhibition opened. It rained all day, and 
 no one came. . . . How different would it 
 
114 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 have been twenty-six years ago ! The rain 
 would not then have kept them away." A 
 few weeks afterwards he again writes : "My 
 receipts are only i/. $s. 6d. An advertisement 
 of a finer description could not have been 
 written to catch the public ; but not one 
 shilling more was added to the receipts. 
 They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb " 
 (the well-known dwarf of that name, who 
 was exhibited in an adjoining apartment) ; 
 " they push, they fight, they cry, ' help,' and 
 4 murder.' They see my bills and caravans, 
 but do not read them. Their eyes are 
 
 on them, but their senses are gone 
 
 My situation is now one of extreme peril. 
 Involved in debt, and mortified by the little 
 sympathy shown to me by the public .... I 
 have just received a lawyers letter. I sat 
 down to my palette under an irritable influ- 
 ence. My brain became confused, as I fore- 
 saw misery, ruin, and a prison before me." 
 It is not necessary to add much more, for 
 
THE ARTIST. I I 5 
 
 the result is well known. The mind of the 
 unhappy artist gave way ; and death, in one 
 of its most appalling forms, stepped in and 
 closed the scene. Not the least impressive 
 portion of Haydon's journal are its closing 
 words: "May 14. This day forty-two years ago 
 I left my native Plymouth for London. I have 
 closed my exhibition, with a loss of in/." 
 
 How different the concluding from the 
 opening scene of the artist's life! How 
 painful the contrast, between the youthful 
 aspirant of 1802 and the careworn painter of 
 1846! Where now were his ambitious hopes 
 and views ? All dissolved in empty air ; and 
 proved, by painful experience, to have been 
 unsubstantial as the Mirage. 
 
 "It is impossible," adds an able writer of 
 the day, when commenting on the melancholy 
 fate of Haydon, "to read, without feelings of 
 inexpressible pain, the notes which this un- 
 fortunate gentleman has left of his daily 
 hopes and emotions, his successive struggles 
 
I 1 6 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 and disappointments, through the last month 
 of a cheerless professional existence. With 
 exertions of the most exhausting kind he 
 had completed a laborious task, to which he 
 looked forward with the natural confidence of 
 his profession as a release from his per- 
 plexities and a recompense of his pains. He 
 offered to the public the first of a series of 
 paintings on a noble and national subject, 
 conceived with grandeur, and directed towards 
 the highest objects of his art. When the 
 day of trial came, he saw his hopes dashed 
 and his efforts spurned ; while the patronage 
 which would have ransomed his pencil and 
 restored his peace was lavished on an ex- 
 hibition of a most puerile and offensive 
 character. The display of a dwarf attracted 
 hordes of gaping idlers, who poured into the 
 yawning pockets of a showman a stream of 
 wealth, one tithe of which would have re- 
 deemed an honourable English artist from 
 wretchedness and death. It is terrible to think 
 
THE ARTIST. 
 
 117 
 
 that, in the midst of the London season, in 
 the heart of the greatest city, and under the 
 eyes of the wealthiest people in the world, 
 such should have been his lot." 
 
 " And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I 
 withheld not my heart from any joy ; for my heart rejoiced in all 
 my labour : and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I 
 looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the 
 labour that I had laboured to do : and, behold, all was vanity 
 and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." 
 — Eccles. ii. 10, 11. 
 
thp: 
 
 MAN OF LITERATURE, 
 
THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Ilosely allied with the pleasures of art 
 are those of Literature, and in these 
 perhaps we might, if anywhere, have 
 expected to find an exemption from that law 
 which has stamped on every unsanctified en- 
 joyment the mark of vanity and vexation of 
 spirit. But even here has that law been 
 found in operation ; and, amidst the mass of 
 persons who have been gifted with great 
 literary powers, it would be easy to adduce 
 illustrations of the solemn moral which it has 
 been the object of these pages to inculcate. 
 " If to know wisdom," says a popular living 
 I 
 
122 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 writer,* " were to practise it ; if fame brought 
 true dignity and peace of mind ; if happiness 
 consisted in surrounding the imagination with 
 ideal beauty, a literary life would be the most 
 enviable which the lot of this world affords. 
 But the truth is far otherwise. Look at the 
 biography of authors ! Except the Newgate 
 Calendar, it is the most sickening chapter in 
 the history of man." As one of the most 
 striking instances of the Mirage of literature 
 in modern times — -as a convincing evidence 
 of the inefficacy of the highest genius to 
 secure permanent happiness to its possessor — 
 we select, as our next type, Sir Walter 
 Scott, or, The Man of Literature. 
 
 All influences which could promise hap- 
 piness or success were crowded around this 
 remarkable man. His professional pursuits 
 furnished him with ample leisure and an 
 income bordering on affluence. His natural 
 
 * Thomas Carlyle. 
 
THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 1 25 
 
 disposition, which was singularly amiable and 
 generous, and accompanied by a chivalrous 
 sense of honour, procured him the attach- 
 ment of numerous friends. He enjoyed, too, 
 in a remarkable degree, the sweets of a happy 
 home. Thus, on grounds entirely indepen- 
 dent of his literary powers, he was in posses- 
 sion of many of the elements of worldly com- 
 fort. In addition, however, to the blessings we 
 have enumerated, he was gifted with a genius 
 of the highest order. Much as the Christian 
 must deplore the misapplication, in many 
 respects, of that genius, he must acknowledge 
 the appropriateness of the eulogium : 
 
 " Brother of Homer, and of him 
 Who struck the lyre by Avon's stream, 
 Time shall through many a cycle be 
 Ere he shall see a fourth like thee." 
 
 Never, perhaps, in any period of the world's 
 history, did literary talent receive a homage 
 so universal as that of Scott. His reputation 
 
126 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 was coextensive, not only with the English 
 language, but with the boundaries of civiliza- 
 tion. It has been the lot of many meritorious 
 authors to be unable to procure a profitable 
 return for their writings. In one year, however, 
 Scott's productions yielded him the enormous 
 revenue of 15,000/. Other writers have been 
 condemned to wait a lifetime before they saw 
 their works approved ; but Scott's sprang into 
 popularity the first day they issued from the 
 press, and procured their author an admiration 
 that was almost idolatrous. The king con- 
 ferred on him a baronetcy, accompanying that 
 dignity with special marks of royal favour. 
 When he travelled abroad, his appearance 
 created an enthusiasm, and attracted a crowd of 
 spectators, more like that which attends the 
 passage of a monarch than the movements of 
 a private individual. "If his carriage," says 
 his biographer, describing Scott's visit to 
 Ireland, "was recognised, the street was sure to 
 
THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 12 J 
 
 be crowded before he came out again, so as to 
 make his departure as slow as a procession. 
 When he entered a street, the watchword was 
 passed down like lightning on both sides, and 
 the shopkeepers and their wives stood bowing 
 all the way down ; while the mob and boys 
 huzzaed as at the chariot-wheels of a conqueror." 
 All the good things, as they are termed, of 
 this life were in Scott's possession. His 
 mansion at Abbotsford realized the highest 
 conceptions of a poetical imagination. "It 
 seems," says one w T ho visited, " like a poem in 
 stone." " This house," said another distin- 
 guished writer, " is like places that we dream 
 about." The company which crowded around 
 the man of genius was no less wonderful. The 
 highest nobleman felt honoured in being allowed 
 to take a place at his board, around which were 
 collected from every part of the kingdom 
 persons eminent in the various walks of life. 
 Each day produced some novelty. Now a 
 
128 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 traveller recounted the wonders he had wit- 
 nessed in foreign lands. Now a philosopher, 
 like Sir Humphry Davy, detailed recent dis- 
 coveries in science. Now a poet, or a painter, 
 gave animation to the conversation by his 
 genius. All sources of intellectual enjoyment 
 were crowded together. It was worldly plea- 
 sure in its most concentrated form ; and well 
 might one of the visitors exclaim, " Surely Sir 
 Walter Scott is, or ought to be, a happy man." 
 And yet all this was but the Mirage. Feelingly 
 does one, who was a witness of the pleasures of 
 this man of genius in his palmiest days, exclaim, 
 " Death has laid a heavy hand on that happy 
 circle. Bright eyes long since closed in dust, 
 gay voices for ever silenced, seem to haunt me 
 as I write." A shock of commercial adversity 
 ruined Sir Walter, and dispersed for ever the 
 brilliant assemblies which had gathered round 
 his board. The death of one who was dearest 
 to him followed close upon this blow. What 
 
THE MAN OF LITERATURE. T2Q, 
 
 consolation could literature then afford him in 
 the hour of trial ? Let Sir Walter's own touch- 
 ing words reply : " When I think," he writes, at 
 a time when leaving Abbotsford apparently for 
 ever ; " when I think what this place now is, 
 with what it has been not long ago, I think my 
 heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of all 
 my family, I am an impoverished and em- 
 barrassed man." At another time he writes, 
 " Death has closed the dark avenue of love and 
 friendship. I look at them as through the 
 grated door of a burial-place, filled with monu- 
 ments of those who once were dear to me, and 
 with no other wish than that it may open for 
 me at no distant period." Not long after, he 
 writes in the strain, " Some new object of 
 complaint comes every moment. Sicknesses 
 come thicker and thicker; friends are fewer 
 and fewer. The recollection of youth, health, 
 and powers of activity, neither improved nor 
 enjoyed, is a poor strain of comfort. The best 
 
130 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 is, the long halt will arrive at length, and close 
 all." Such was the confession of one who had 
 drunk so largely of the world's cup of enjoyment. 
 Oh, how emphatically does it warn those whose 
 hearts are still set upon similar vanities ! 
 
 The closing scene at last came, and is not 
 less touching than the preceding passages. A 
 most honourable attempt to pay off his creditors 
 had, by overtaxing his energies, brought on 
 incurable disease. Sir Walter requested, we 
 are told, to be wheeled to his desk. His 
 daughter put his pen into his hand, but his 
 fingers refused to do their office. Silent tears 
 rolled down his cheeks. " Take me back to 
 my own room," he said. " There is no rest for 
 Sir Walter but in his grave." A few days after- 
 wards he died. In such gloomy clouds did 
 the sun of the man of literature set. Otway 
 died of starvation ; Voltaire, in the height of 
 his literary glory, wished that he had never 
 been born : but none of these instances pro- 
 
THE MAN OF LITERATURE. 
 
 131 
 
 claim so touchingly as the career of Sir Walter 
 Scott, that the highest genius, when not sanc- 
 tified by being devoted to the glory of God, 
 is, in its results, illusive as the Mirage. 
 
 " The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry ? All 
 flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of 
 the field : the grass withereth, the flower fadeth : because the 
 Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it : surely the people is grass. 
 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth : but the word of our God 
 shall stand for ever." — Isaiah xl. 6-8. 
 
 
THE POET. 
 
THE POET. 
 
 JImidst other intellectual pursuits in 
 which happiness has been sought, the 
 career of the Poet may be next ad- 
 verted to. His delights lie in the cultivation of 
 a creative imagination, and in the enjoyment 
 of those pleasures which can only be tasted 
 by a mind of a refined order and delicate 
 structure. When the poet's gifts have been 
 devoted to the glory of God, they have 
 proved to be eminently profitable and delight- 
 ful. When cultivated in an irreligious and 
 worldly spirit, however, experience has shown^ 
 by more than one painful instance, that a 
 highly gifted bard may be a miserable man. 
 
1 .V 
 
 6 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 The life of Savage, the friend of Johnson, will 
 be familiar to the student of English literature. 
 The course of Chatterton is not less mournful. 
 Full of youthful promise, he repaired to 
 London, to commence, as he expected, a suc- 
 cessful literary career. " What a glorious 
 prospect awaits me !" he wrote on his arrival ; 
 yet within a few months he was buried as a 
 common pauper from Shoe Lane workhouse. 
 Equally sad associations are connected with 
 the poet Burns. " Save me from the horrors 
 of a jail," were almost his last words. "It 
 will be some time," he wrote in his final 
 illness, " before I tune my lyre again. I have 
 of late only known existence by the pressure 
 of the heavy hand of sickness, and have 
 counted time by the repercussions of pain. 
 I close my eyes in misery, and open them 
 without hope. Pale, emaciated, and feeble, 
 you would not know me if you saw me ; and 
 my spirits fled — fled 1" In the biography of 
 the poet Campbell, who had in early youth 
 
THE POET. 137 
 
 sung " The Pleasures of Hope," a touching 
 instance occurs of the emptiness of poetic 
 fame. In the evening of life, the poet thus 
 spoke to a circle of friends : " I am alone 
 in the world. My wife and the child of my 
 hopes are dead. My only surviving child is 
 consigned to a living tomb " (he was the 
 inmate of a lunatic asylum). "My old friends, 
 brothers, and sisters are dead — all but one, 
 and she too is dying. My last hopes are 
 blighted. As for fame, it is a bubble that 
 must soon burst. Earned for others, shared 
 with others, it was sweet ; but, at my age, 
 to my own solitary experience it is bitter. 
 Left in my chamber alone with myself, is it 
 wonderful my philosophy at times takes fright; 
 that I rush into company ; resort to that 
 which blunts but heals no pang ; and then, 
 sick of the world, and dissatisfied with my- 
 self, shrink back into solitude ?" 
 
 As a far more striking instance, however, 
 of the vanity of poetical genius and the empti- 
 
 K 
 
1$8 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 ness of mere worldly fame, when ennobled 
 by no divine aim or purpose, we select, as 
 our type, Lord Byron, or, The Poet. 
 
 Upon this remarkable man were heaped 
 many of those gifts, of nature and of fortune, 
 which are, by the world, so highly prized. 
 He was by birth noble, tracing his descent 
 from a line of ancestors which stretched 
 back to a remote period of English history. 
 Although not wealthy, he was left in 
 possession of an income which, to a well- 
 regulated mind, would have secured indepen- 
 dence. His manners, when he wished to 
 please, are stated to have been singularly 
 winning and attractive. His smile disarmed 
 opposition, and invited friendship. His exter- 
 nal appearance harmonized with the order of 
 his mind. He not only was, but looked the 
 poet. The pencil of the artist and the chisel 
 of the sculptor were alike employed to de- 
 lineate his countenance as a model of classic 
 
THE POET. 141 
 
 grace. The talents intrusted to his steward- 
 ship were great : how melancholy, in surveying 
 his short career, to observe their misapplica- 
 tion ! And how different would have been the 
 result, had they been guided by the wisdom 
 that is from above, instead of that which " is 
 earthly, sensual, devilish !" 
 
 His poetical genius was of a high class, 
 capable of describing external nature, and the 
 play of human passions, in a manner which 
 stirred the deepest emotions of the heart. 
 Byron early felt within himself aspirations 
 after literary eminence. When a mere youth 
 he wrote— 
 
 " The desire in my bosom for fame 
 Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise: 
 Could I soar with the phoenix, on ashes of flame, 
 With it I would wish to expire in the blaze." 
 
 These desires were speedily gratified. After 
 a passing disappointment, caused by the 
 failure of some minor poetical effusions, he 
 published his first great poem. " The effect 
 
142 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 of it," says a writer, " was electric. His fame 
 had not to wait for any of the ordinary gra- 
 dations, but seemed to spring up, like the 
 palace of a fairy tale, in a single night." His 
 work became the theme of every tongue. At 
 his door many of the leading men of the day 
 presented themselves. From morning till night 
 the most flattering testimonies of success 
 crowded his table. " He found himself," says 
 Mr. Macaulay, " on the highest pinnacle of 
 literary fame. There is scarcely an instance 
 in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an 
 eminence. Everything that could stimulate, 
 everything that could gratify the strongest 
 propensities of our nature, were at once 
 offered to him : the gaze of a hundred draw- 
 ing-rooms, the acclamations of the whole 
 nation, and the applause of applauded men." 
 " In place of the desert," continues his bio- 
 grapher, " which London had been to him a 
 few weeks before, he not only saw the whole 
 splendid interior of high life thrown open to 
 
THE POET. I43 
 
 him, but found himself the most distinguished 
 object among its illustrious crowds." A short 
 time before the publication of his poem, 
 Byron had taken his seat amidst the hereditary 
 legislators of his country. With genius, with 
 popularity, and with rank, how brilliant the 
 prospect which now lay before him ! Yet it 
 proved but the deception of the Mirage. 
 
 In that with which, above all other points, 
 true happiness is so essentially connected — 
 religious principle — his mind was singularly 
 deficient : it had been darkened by scepticism. 
 When a youth, some passing religious convic- 
 tions appear to have agitated him ; for he 
 wrote at that season a poem containing the 
 following lines : — 
 
 " Father of light, on Thee I call ; 
 Thou seest my soul is dark within ; 
 Thou, who canst mark the sparrows fall, 
 Avert from me the death of sin." 
 
 If spiritual anxiety did for a moment cross 
 his mind, it was soon obliterated by the irre- 
 
144 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 gularity of his moral conduct. The memorials 
 of his early years are full of those records of 
 wasted seasons of usefulness and squandered 
 talents which lay up such a store of reproach 
 for after-life. " The average hour of rising," 
 says one of his companions at Newstead Abbey, 
 " was one o'clock. It was two before break- 
 fast was concluded." Frivolous amusements 
 consumed the remaining hours, until the com- 
 pany, at seven, sat down to an entertainment, 
 which was prolonged till two or three in the 
 morning. The finest wines were abundantly 
 supplied ; a cup, fashioned out of a human 
 skull, forming an unhallowed chalice out of 
 which the guests were occasionally expected to 
 drink. The result of this life was such as 
 might have been anticipated — inward dissatis- 
 faction. To use the poet's own language — 
 
 "He felt the fulness of satiety," 
 
 and he quitted his native shores for foreign 
 travel, in the hope of supplying his weary 
 
THE POET. 145 
 
 spirit with fresh excitement ; but all in vain. 
 Though he carried with him a genius deeply 
 imbued with poetical power, he returned to 
 England chagrined and sick at heart. When 
 his travels were concluded, he thus wrote : — 
 " Embarrassed in my private affairs, indifferent 
 to public ; solitary, and without the wish to 
 be social ; I am returning home without a 
 hope, and almost without a desire." 
 
 Fresh literary triumphs failed to secure 
 the happiness which he sought ; nor was he 
 more successful in finding it in a marriage 
 which he soon afterwards contracted. He saw, 
 to use his own language, his household gods 
 shivered around him. Nine executions for 
 debt entered his dwelling within a twelve- 
 month, and, at the end of that period, a separa- 
 tion ensued between his wife and himself. 
 Retiring abroad, he plunged afresh in streams 
 of sinful pleasure. His life became a miserable 
 animal existence — the source of wretchedness 
 to himself. He was, indeed, sick of it. " If 
 
I46 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 I were to live over again," he writes, " I do 
 not know what I would change in my life, 
 except not to have lived at all." Similar senti- 
 ments were expressed in his poetry : — 
 
 " Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 
 Count o'er the days from anguish free ; 
 And know, what ever thou hast been, 
 ; Tis something better not to be." 
 
 The whole of his poetry, indeed, continued to 
 bear the impress of his morbid spirit. " Never 
 had any writer," says a critic, " so vast a com- 
 mand of the whole eloquence of scorn, misan- 
 thropy, and despair. That Marah was never 
 dry. No heart could sweeten, no draughts 
 exhaust, its perennial waters of bitterness. 
 From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, 
 there was not a single note of human anguish 
 of which he was not master. He always de- 
 scribed himself as a man whose capacity for 
 happiness was gone, and could not be re- 
 stored." Restless and dissatisfied, he pursued 
 new objects, and betook himself to a visionary 
 
THE POET. 147 
 
 scheme for the political regeneration of Greece 
 — a country which had attracted his poetical 
 sympathies. Fresh disappointments awaited 
 him in this scene of action, and his heart's 
 aspirations after enjoyment were again blasted. 
 On the last birthday which he was destined to 
 see, he thus described, in touching lines, his 
 own lonely and miserable condition : — 
 
 " My days are in the yellow leaf, 
 The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
 The worm, the canker, and the grief 
 Are mine alone. 
 
 The fire that in my bosom plays 
 Is lone as some volcanic isle ; 
 Xo torch is kindled at its blaze, 
 A funeral pile." 
 
 The life of the poet was now, however, draw- 
 ing to a close. Shortly after composing these 
 verses he was arrested by the hand of disease, 
 and his illness terminated fatally. The death- 
 bed of this highly-gifted man was a painful 
 spectacle. " I had never before felt," says an 
 eye-witness of it, " as I felt that evening. 
 
I48 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 There was the gifted Lord Byron — who had been 
 the object of universal attention, who had even 
 as a youth been intoxicated with the idolatry 
 of men — gradually expiring, and almost for- 
 saken, without even the consolation of breath- 
 ing out his last sigh in the arms of some dear 
 friend. His habitation was weather-tight ; but 
 that was all the comfort his deplorable room 
 afforded him." No gleam of joy, of peace, or 
 hope, rose upon that melancholy scene ; no 
 prayer for forgiveness ascended. The Divine 
 Redeemer was but once mentioned, and then 
 only in an exclamation wrung forth by pain. 
 The dying poet murmured some broken and 
 inarticulate sentences, in which occurred the 
 names of his wife and child, and falling into 
 a troubled slumber, he soon afterwards died : 
 
 "His high aims abandoned — his good acts undone — 
 Aweary of all that is under the sun." 
 
 Such was the termination of the Poet's 
 career. The world and the glory thereof had 
 
THE POET. 
 
 149 
 
 been his ; but, unsanctified and unblessed by 
 God, all his rich intellectual enjoyments had 
 proved illusive as the Mirage. 
 
 " Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer 
 thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine 
 heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all 
 these things God will bring thee into judgment." — Eccles. xi. 9. 
 
MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 
 
 [he next illustration which we select of 
 the Mirage of life, is the man of Wit 
 and Humour. Here at least, it may 
 be presumed, that the search after happiness 
 will be successful. It may be thought that 
 they who promote mirth so much in others, 
 and who treat life as if it were a jest, have 
 themselves found . out the true secret of 
 enjoyment. Very different, however, is the 
 result. There is a mirth in the midst of 
 which the heart is sad, and a laughter the 
 end whereof is heaviness. Not that there is 
 anything sinful in mirth ; not that it is not a 
 
 L 
 
I 54 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 quality which, when rightly directed, may be 
 turned to useful purposes : but that when 
 unsanctified, it is, as a source of happiness, 
 a delusion and a Mirage. Cervantes, at a 
 time when all Spain was laughing at the 
 humorous nights of his pen, was overwhelmed 
 with a deep cloud of melancholy. Moliere, 
 the first of French comic writers, carried into 
 the domestic circle a sadness which the greatest 
 worldly prosperity could never dispel. Samuel 
 Foote, a noted wit of the last century, died 
 of a broken heart. D' Israeli mentions, that 
 one morning meeting, in a bookseller's shop, 
 a squalid and wretched-looking man, the very 
 picture of misery, he was astonished to learn 
 that he was a person who was amusing 
 the metropolis by his humorous effusions. 
 The anecdote is well known of the physician 
 recommending a man, who was pining under 
 melancholy, to attend, as a means of cure, 
 the performances of a noted comic actor, 
 and of being informed that his patient was 
 
THE MAX OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 55 
 
 the actor in question — himself wretched, while 
 amusing others. Captain Morris, a witty 
 writer of considerable reputation at the com- 
 mencement of the present century, when aged, 
 deserted, and well-nigh impoverished, de- 
 scribed in the following lines the little satis- 
 faction which the retrospect of his life of 
 folly could afford him : — 
 
 " My friends of youth, manhood, and age, 
 At length are all laid in the ground ; 
 A unit I stand on life's stage, 
 With nothing but vacancy round. 
 I wander bewildered and lost, 
 Without impulse or interest in view ; 
 And all hope of my heart is, at most, 
 Soon to bid this cold desert adieu." 
 
 As one of the most striking examples, in 
 modern times, of the unsatisfactory nature 
 of a life of frivolity, we select, as our next 
 illustration, Theodore Hook, or, The Man 
 of Wit mid Humour. 
 
 He was the son of a musical com- 
 
156 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 poser of considerable eminence in his day. 
 He was, by death, early deprived of the 
 training of his mother, a circumstance to 
 which much of the unhappiness of his future 
 career may be attributed. His father, return- 
 ing home one evening, was astonished at his 
 son, then a mere child, producing two ballads, 
 which, with appropriate music, he had him- 
 self composed : the one plaintive, the other 
 humorous. The prognostics of future dis- 
 tinction thus afforded were verified by the 
 event. At the age of sixteen, a time when 
 other youths are just leaving school, he 
 was, from his powers of dramatic com- 
 position, in the receipt of a considerable 
 income, and enjoying great popularity. His 
 name was blazoned as a youthful genius in 
 the newspapers ; his portrait was taken, and 
 he had free admission to the places of public 
 amusement. Many a young man in the 
 present day would have envied his position 
 as containing all that was desirable ! Life lay 
 
THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 59 
 
 . before him like a smooth ocean ; and, in- 
 toxicated by success, he launched his bark 
 fearlessly upon it : Youth stood at the prow, 
 Mirth trimmed the sails, Folly took the helm ; 
 while the pennon which streamed in the air 
 bore the words, " Rejoice, O young man, in 
 thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee in 
 the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of 
 thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes." 
 
 At this time, a taste for coarse practical 
 joking had seized young men. To pull off 
 knockers and bell-handles, to carry away trades- 
 men's signs, and to overturn the boxes of 
 sleeping watchmen, w r ere considered the marks 
 of a generous and manly spirit. Hook plunged 
 into these amusements, and kept a private 
 museum containing abstracted bells, knockers, 
 and signboards. We feel some scruple in 
 making allusion to such disgraceful follies ; 
 but it is necessary, for our illustration, that, 
 the gay as well as the grave side of the 
 picture should be shown. On one occasion 
 
l6o THE MIRAGE OF LIEE. 
 
 Hook's friend pointed out to him, as an ap- 
 propriate specimen of natural history for his 
 museum, a new-gilt eagle of large dimensions, 
 which had just been erected over a grocer's 
 shop. A few weeks afterwards, the same 
 friend happening to be dining with Hook, 
 the latter, towards the close of the entertain- 
 ment, ordered " the game to be served up." 
 Immediately, to the astonishment of the visitor, 
 the servant entered the room, staggering under 
 the burden of a dish of unusual size. On 
 uncovering it there was produced the identical 
 eagle which Hook, as a practical joke, had 
 contrived to carry off. Such w r ere the con- 
 temptible frivolities in which the man of 
 humour wasted his youthful prime. 
 
 Among other accomplishments for which he- 
 was distinguished, was a remarkable power of 
 producing extempore poetry. At a dinner 
 party he would, without premeditation, compose 
 a verse on every person in the room, full of 
 point and w it, and with true rhyme. Sheridan 
 
THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. l6l 
 
 the orator, who was present upon one of these 
 occasions, declared that he could not have 
 imagined such a talent possible, had he not 
 witnessed the exhibition of it. 
 
 So confident was Hook in his powers of 
 humour, that, passing, with a friend, a house 
 in which a party was assembling for dinner, he 
 undertook, although quite unacquainted with 
 the owner of the house or any of the guests, 
 to join them, and instructed his friend to call 
 for him at ten o'clock. Knocking at the door 
 accordingly, he gave his hat confidently to the 
 servant, and was ushered up-stairs. Entering 
 the drawing-room, he affected to have for 
 the first time discovered his mistake, and 
 poured out such sallies of wit, that, as he 
 had anticipated, the host, although ignorant 
 even of his name, pressed him to stay to 
 dinner. When his friend Mr. Terry called, 
 ignorant whether he should find him there or 
 in the neighbouring watch-house, he was aston- 
 ished, on being shown into the drawing-room, 
 
1 62 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 to see the man of humour seated at the 
 pianoforte, delivering some extempore poetry, 
 which, upon perceiving the entrance of his 
 friend, he wound up with the following 
 stanza : — 
 
 " I'm very much pleased with your fare, 
 Your cellar's as good as your cook. 
 My friend's Mr. Terry the player. 
 And I'm Mr. Theodore Hook." 
 
 The fame of the man of wit reached 
 even royalty itself. The Prince Regent was 
 so fascinated with him, that he appointed 
 him treasurer to the island of the Mauritius, 
 with a salary of 2,000/. a year. He here 
 gave himself up to every enjoyment. " This 
 island," he wrote home to his friends, " is 
 fairyland. The mildness of the air, the clear- 
 ness of the atmosphere, the liveliness of the 
 place itself, all combine to render it fascination. 
 Every hour seems happier than the last." 
 Here, then, was Hook at the pinnacle of his 
 
THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 63 
 
 glory. Rich, popular, witty, and full of friends, 
 he had surely found the secret of happiness ! 
 No ; he had only followed the Mirage. 
 
 Business and pleasure, in the worldly sense 
 of the latter term, are rarely compatible. A 
 deficiency of 12,000/. arising not from fraud 
 but from gross carelessness, was found in the 
 treasury. He was suddenly arrested in a ball- 
 room, and sent home a prisoner for debt to 
 England, stripped of all his honours, and penni- 
 less. Happy would it have been for him had 
 this blow awakened him from his dream of 
 folly ; but, alas ! as one delusion was dissipated, 
 another took its place. By his pen he soon 
 achieved literary eminence, and an income of 
 4,000/. a year. Seated at the tables of the 
 great, he became again, from his wit and 
 humour, the life of every party. His versa- 
 tile genius sparkled more brilliantly than ever, 
 and he was the admired of all admirers. In 
 the midst of his gaiety, however, he had an 
 
164 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 aching heart. From the brilliant saloon, he 
 would retire to his lonely apartment ; and 
 there, with jaded spirits, sit down to write for 
 his bread some work of humour, racking, as has 
 been well observed, his imagination for mirth 
 with anguish at his heart. " We may venture," 
 says one who appears to have known him 
 intimately ; " we may venture to supply by way 
 of specimen a sketch, by no means overcharged, 
 of one of those restless life-exhausting days in 
 which the seemingly iron energies of Hook 
 were prematurely consumed. A late break- 
 fast — his spirits jaded by the exertions of 
 yesterday, and further depressed by some 
 pecuniary difficulty — large arrears of literary 
 toil to be made up — the meal sent away 
 untasted — every power of his mind forced 
 and strained for the next four or five hours 
 upon the subject that happens to be in 
 hand — then a rapid drive to town, and a visit 
 first to one: club, where, the centre of an ad- 
 
THE MAN OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 65 
 
 . miring circle, his intellectual faculties are again 
 upon the stretch, and again aroused and sus- 
 tained by artificial means — the same thing 
 repeated at a second club — a ballot or a general 
 meeting at a third — a chop in the committee 
 room, and then a tumbler of brandy-and-water, 
 or two ; and, we fear, the catalogue would not 
 always close here. Off next to take his place 
 at some lordly banquet, where the fire of wit 
 is to be again stirred into a blaze, and fed 
 by fresh supplies of potent stimulants. Lady 
 A. has never heard one of his delightful ex- 
 tempores — the pianoforte is at hand — fresh 
 and more vigorous efforts of fancy, memory, 
 and application are called for — all the wondrous 
 machinery of the brain taxed and strained to 
 the very utmost — smiles and applause reward 
 the exertion, and perhaps one more song is 
 craved as a special favour. ... He retires at 
 last ; but not to rest — not to home. Half an 
 hour at Crockford's is proposed by some gay 
 
1 66 THE MIRAGE OF LIKE. 
 
 companion as they quit together. We need 
 not continue the picture. The half-hour is 
 quadrupled, and the excitement of the pre- 
 ceding part of the evening is as nothing to 
 that which now ensues. By the time he 
 reaches home the reaction is complete ; and 
 in a state of utter prostration, bodily and 
 mental, he seeks his pillow, to run perhaps 
 precisely a similar course on the morrow." 
 
 Such was the daily life of the man of wit 
 and humour ! Hook has left behind him a 
 journal, some extracts from which appeared 
 in the Quarterly Review a few years ago. It 
 is a harrowing description of splendid misery 
 — of the life of one who, while in the world's 
 opinion full of enjoyment, was in truth 
 thoroughly wretched. Let a few brief ex- 
 tracts suffice: " To-day I am forcing myself, 
 against my inclination, to write. The old 
 sickness and faintness of heart came over me, 
 and I could not go out. No; it is only to 
 
THE MAX OF WIT AND HUMOUR. 1 67 
 
 the grave that I must be carried. If my 
 poor children were safe, I would not care. . . . 
 Another year opens upon me with a vast 
 load of debt, and many encumbrances. I am 
 suffering under a constant depression of spirits, 
 which no one who sees me in society ever 
 dreams of." 
 
 The close was, however, approaching. One 
 day, at a dinner party, all were struck with 
 his ghastly paleness. Turning round to a 
 mirror, he himself exclaimed, " Ah ! I see 
 how it is. I look just as I am — done up in 
 mind, in body, and purse." Returning home, 
 he took to his bed. A friend calling on him 
 found him in an undress. " Here you see 
 me," he said. " All my buckling, and pad- 
 ding, and washing dropped for ever ; and I a 
 grey-headed old man." A few days afterwards 
 he died. 
 
 Such was the end of the man of wit and 
 humour. His noble powers had all been 
 
1 68 
 
 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 wasted in the service of the world. He had 
 followed mirth and folly as his grand object 
 in life. Oh, how emphatically had they 
 proved to him — only the Mirage ! 
 
 " There is a way which secmeth right unto a man, but 
 the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter the 
 heart is sorrowful ; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' — 
 Prov. xiv. 12, 13. 
 
THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 fJHERE is another character resembling 
 in many points those which we have 
 previously sketched, but differing from 
 them in some particular shades — we, mean the 
 Man of the World. He prides himself on 
 his knowledge of life, on his acquaintance 
 with its maxims, and on his thorough de- 
 votion to its pursuits. It is not our inten- 
 tion to draw this character at full length ; but, 
 as an illustration of our meaning, briefly bring 
 before our readers the name of the celebrated 
 Lord Chesterfield, as a type of The Man 
 of the World. 
 
 M 2 
 
I J2 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 This nobleman emphatically deserved this 
 title, so much so, that he has been well 
 termed by some the high priest of the world's 
 vanities. Born to rank, wealth, and talent, he 
 enjoyed all the requisites which are commonly 
 supposed to constitute happiness. He started 
 in life with the determination of gaining the 
 applause and favour of the world, making that 
 the supreme object of his existence. Selfish- 
 ness was the key-stone of his system. The 
 maxim of a great statesman — Lord Somers — 
 had been, "Aim at being useful, rather than 
 at appearing to be so." Lord Chesterfield 
 reversed the motto, and read it, M Aim at 
 appearing to be, rather than at being, useful." 
 To adapt himself to the humours and pecu- 
 liarities of all he met; to study their passions 
 and weaknesses, that he might play upon 
 them for his own advantage ; such were his 
 principles of action. lie aimed at being 
 thought the most polite man in England, if 
 not in Europe. "Hand the gentleman a 
 
THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 1 75 
 
 chair," were almost his dying words, when a 
 friend entered his room during his last illness ; 
 thus showing the ruling passion strong in 
 death. His popularity was very great. He 
 attained a high position in the state. He 
 possessed a large and magnificent mansion, 
 which, even in the present day, commands 
 admiration as a monument of his classic taste.* 
 
 * " In the magnificent mansion which he erected in Audley- 
 street, you may still," says_ a writer in the Quarterly Review, 
 " see his favourite apartments furnished and decorated as he 
 left them; among the rest, what he boasted of as the finest 
 room in London, (and perhaps, even now, it remains unsur- 
 passed,) his spacious and beautiful library looking on the finest 
 private garden in London. The walls are covered half-way up 
 with rich and classical stores of literature ; above the cases are, 
 in close series, the portraits of eminent authors, French and 
 English, with most of whom he had conversed. Over these, 
 and immediately under the massive cornice, extend all round in 
 foot-long capitals the Horatian lines — 
 
 ' Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis 
 Ducere solicitae jucunda oblivia vitas.' 
 
 1 Let us drown in sweet oblivion the anxious cares of life — by 
 alternate study, slumber, or grateful indolence." 
 
176 THE MIRAGE OF ! 
 
 He had a mind cultivated and enriched with 
 stores of learning and general information. 
 The prize, therefore, for which he started in 
 life was gained ; but, unsanctified and un- 
 blessed by God, his success proved wormwood 
 to the taste, and illusive as the Mirage. The 
 word of God had said, " Love not the world ; " 
 but Lord Chesterfield had in effect declared, 
 14 The w r orld I will love." Let his own 
 words, penned in the evening of life, tell 
 what he had found the result of his decision 
 to be. 
 
 " I have run," says he, " the silly rounds of 
 business and of pleasure, and have done with 
 them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of 
 the world, and consequently know their futility, 
 and do not regret their loss. I appraise them 
 at their real value, which is in truth very low ; 
 whereas those who have not experienced them 
 always overrate them. They only see the gay 
 outside, and are dazzled with their glare ; but I 
 
THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 1/7 
 
 have been behind the scenes, and have seen all 
 the coarse pulleys and dirty ropes which 
 exhibit and move the gaudy machine. I have 
 seen and smelt the tallow candles w T hich 
 illuminate the whole decorations, to the aston- 
 ishment and admiration of an ignorant audi- 
 ence. I look back on all that is passed as 
 one of those romantic dreams which opium 
 commonly produces, and I have no wis'h to 
 repeat the nauseous dose. I have been as 
 wicked and as vain as Solomon ; but am 
 now at last able to feel and attest the truth of 
 his reflection, that all is vanity and vexation 
 of spirit. Shall I tell you that I bear this 
 situation with resignation and constancy ? 
 No ; I bear it because I must, whether I will 
 or no. I think of nothing but killing time 
 the best way I can, now that it has become 
 my enemy. It is my resolution to sleep in 
 the carriage during the rest of life's journey." 
 Such was the confession of the man of the 
 
I 78 THE MIRAGE OF I 
 
 world. Selfishness had been the mainspring 
 
 of his conduct. The result had been, dis- 
 satisfaction of spirit, the illusion of the Mirage. 
 
 " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. 
 If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 
 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of 
 the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the 
 world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but 
 he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." — 1 John ii. 15-17. 
 
THE BEAUTY. 
 
THE BEAUTY. 
 
 hese pages may meet the eye of seme 
 who are exulting in all the gladness 
 of youthful Beauty. To such we 
 address a few words of warning against con- 
 fiding in this most alluring yet most illusive 
 Mirage. Yes ! even beauty, so much prized, 
 has often proved only a mockery and a 
 snare ; and, when unaccompanied by the fear 
 of God, been a source of sorrow to its 
 possessors. 
 
 What suggestions illustrative of the truth 
 of this remark are called forth by the name 
 of Mary, Queen of Scots ! If ever the 
 possession of beauty and female charms could 
 
[82 THE MIRAGE OF I II £ 
 
 have guaranteed happiness, she might with 
 justice have expected it. " All contemporary 
 authors," says Robertson the historian, "agree 
 in ascribing to Mary the utmost beauty of 
 countenance and elegance of shape of which 
 the human form is capable. No one ever 
 beheld her without admiration." Yet this 
 very beauty proved one of the causes of her 
 ruin. " Ah ! what a life were this, gay ladies. 
 could it only last for ever ! " said the Scottish 
 reformer Knox, when he visited her court 
 and glanced at its brilliant circle. Truly was 
 this warning given. Behind the deceptive 
 scene was lurking the scaffold, and an igno- 
 minious death. A few years more saw the 
 once young and beautiful queen bending 
 beneath the executioner's axe, and closing her 
 career in shame and sorrow. 
 
 The life of Marie Antoinette, Queen o\ 
 France, is another illustration of the Mir 
 of brant). Distinguished by her personal 
 charms, she ascended, when very young, the 
 
THE BEAUTY. 1 83 
 
 throne of one of the most powerful countries 
 in Europe, and gave herself up to a life of 
 worldly enjoyment. All that art and luxury 
 could contribute to make life happy were 
 hers. Yet, in the end, it proved baseless as 
 the Mirage. . Time rolled on, and saw the 
 once youthful and romantic queen, with locks 
 turned prematurely gray by sorrow, conducted 
 by a yelling mob to the guillotine. 
 
 Josephine, the wife of Napoleon, was also 
 distinguished for her personal charms, and, 
 her devotion to the pleasures of the world. 
 She, too, found them all delusive ; saw her 
 regal power dissolve like a vision, and died 
 of a broken heart. 
 
 Descending from the circle of royalty, we 
 find a similar lesson conveyed in recent times 
 in the career of the celebrated Lady Hamil- 
 ton, or, The Beauty. 
 
 The name of this woman will be familiar 
 to all who have read the Life of Lord Nelson. 
 
184 THE MI RACK OF ! 
 
 His unhappy connection with her casts a 
 deep shade on his character, and was the 
 cause of the chief blot which rests upon his 
 fame, in the execution of Caraccioli at 
 Naples. Lady Hamilton was distinguished 
 above almost every woman of her age for 
 personal beauty. A poetical writer, when 
 sketching her character, thus speaks : — 
 
 " I've seen thy bust in many lands: 
 I've seen the stranger pause with lifted hands. 
 In deep mute admiration — while his eye 
 Dwelt sparkling on its peerless symmetry. 
 I've seen the poet's, painter's, sculptor's gaze 
 Speak with rapt glance the eloquence of praise/' * 
 
 Her accomplishments were scarcely inferior 
 to her beauty. " She was skilled," says her 
 biographer, " in music and painting. She 
 had exquisite taste, and her features could 
 express every emotion by turn." By her 
 fascinating manners, she soon acquired a 
 
 * A similar impression was made on the writer when looking 
 ;it an original portrait by Romne> of Lady Hamilton in her 
 youthful days. From whatever part of the room it was 
 approached, the picture fixed and fascinated the eye. 
 
THE BEAUTY. 187 
 
 great influence over Nelson, and her friend- 
 ship was eagerly sought by crowds of 
 aspirants for court favour. The letters of 
 Lord Nelson, recently published, contain 
 several addressed to her by persons in the 
 upper classes of society, who in the hour of 
 prosperity fawned upon her, and were ready 
 to do her abject homage. These letters com- 
 mence, " My dear Lady Hamilton ; " N My 
 esteemed Lady Hamilton." The world lay 
 at her feet, and nothing seemed to forebode 
 that what she was following was but as the 
 Mirage. The only occasion on which Beck- 
 ford of Fonthill threw open his splendid 
 mansion to company was when Lady Hamil- 
 ton, along with Lord Nelson, visited it. All 
 that the wealth of the princely owner could 
 furnish was provided to give splendour to 
 the scene. The grounds were illuminated by 
 lamps and torches, and the interior of the 
 apartments was a blaze of jewellery and gold 
 and silver. " Spiced wine," says the Gentle- 
 
 N £ 
 
1 88 THE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 man's Magazine of the daw " and confec- 
 tionery in golden baskets, were handed round 
 to the company." A numerous party was 
 assembled, and Lad)' Hamilton shone the 
 envy of them all. Attired in a rich costume, 
 she entered with a golden urn in her hands, 
 and recited some verses, which the company 
 was far too politic not rapturously to applaud, 
 spoken as they were by one who had such in- 
 fluence over the hero of the hour. No one was 
 there to tell her that all this was but decep- 
 tion ; that sin surely carried its own punishment 
 with it, and the pleasures she was pursuing were 
 merely the Mirage. And yet it was even so. 
 
 Thirteen years after the banquet at Font- 
 hill had taken place, a lad)-, buying some 
 meat for her dog at a butcher's stall in 
 Calais, was thus accosted by the butcher's 
 wife : " Ah, madam ! you seem a benevolent 
 lady; and upstairs there is a poor English- 
 woman, who would be glad o[ the smallest 
 piece of meat which you are buying (or your 
 
THE BEAUTY. I 89 
 
 dog." Who was the grateful recipient of 
 such humble alms? Alas! Lady Hamilton, 
 the beauty! After the death of Lord Nelson, 
 deserted by those who fawned upon her in 
 prosperity, she gradually became impoverished, 
 and died in a wretched lodging in Calais. 
 Her property consisted only of a few pawn- 
 broker's duplicates. Her body was put into 
 a common deal box, without any inscription. 
 A pall was made, by the hand of charity, 
 out of an old silk gown belonging to the 
 deceased, stitched upon a white curtain ; and, 
 over the praised of statesmen, warriors, poets, 
 and artists, the funeral service was read by 
 an Irish officer on half-pay. " Her remains 
 lie buried," says Rae Wilson, the traveller, 
 " in the ditch of Calais." By others, the 
 spot of her interment is said now to be used 
 as a common wood-yard ; nothing indicating 
 where her ashes repose. Such was the end 
 of the beauty. How emphatically had her 
 career been only the Mirage ! 
 
190 THE MIRAGE OF III I.. 
 
 If any confirmation were needed of the 
 melancholy truth conveyed in the above les- 
 son, it would be found in the life of the well- 
 known Lady Hester Stanhope. Few women 
 entered life with greater opportunities <>f 
 enjoying it than she did; and seldom was an 
 elevation so dazzling as hers. The niece of 
 Mr. Pitt, the favourite minister of George 
 III., she was flattered by royalty, and made 
 a theme for the illustration of poetry, painting, 
 and sculpture. Sated, however, with worldly 
 greatness, she retired to the solitudes oi the 
 East, and there attempted to establish her 
 reputation as Queen of the Desert. Her 
 lofty visions all faded, however; and in the 
 evening of lite, forsaken by her friends and 
 burdened with pecuniar) difficulties,* the once 
 
 * Dr. Thomson, who performed the funeral service over the 
 remains of Lad] Stanhope, wrote : " What a death ! Without 
 i European attendant, without .1 friend, male or female— alone 
 on the top of this bleak mountain, her lamp o\ life grew dimmer 
 and more dim, until it went quite out in hopeless, rayless night. 
 Such was the end of the one gay and brilliant niece of Pitt. 
 
THE BEAUTY. I9I 
 
 youthful beauty thus confessed how she had 
 proved the vanity of life : — " She began," says 
 her biographer, " to cry and to wring her 
 hands, presenting a most melancholy picture 
 of despair. She then spoke thus : ' Look on 
 me ; what a lesson I am against vanity ! 
 Look at this arm, all skin and bone — so thin 
 that you may see through it. It was once, 
 without exaggeration, so rounded that you 
 could not pinch the skin up. My neck was 
 once so fair, that a pearl necklace scarcely 
 showed on it ; and men — men who were no 
 fools, but sensible men — would say to me : 
 You have a neck of which you may really be 
 proud. You are one of nature's favourites, and 
 may be excused for admiring that beautiful 
 skin. What would they say if they could 
 behold me now ; with my teeth all gone, and 
 
 presiding in the saloons of the master spirit of Europe, and 
 familiar with the intrigues of kings and cabinets. Alas ! she 
 must have drained to the dregs many a bitter cup. Let those 
 who are tempted to revolt against society, and war with nature, 
 God, and man, sit on the fragments of this broken tomb." 
 
192 
 
 l !M. MIRAGE OF I.I! I.. 
 
 long lines on my face?'. ... In this mourn- 
 ful strain," adds her biographer, " she went on. 
 Everything around her presented so affecting 
 
 a picture, that, unable to restrain my emotions, 
 I burst into tears." Such were the confes- 
 sions of a beauty. How completely had she 
 found all her youthful charms illusive as the 
 Mirage ! 
 
 •' Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain : but a woman that 
 feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."— Prov. xxxi. 30. 
 
THE MONARCH. 
 
THE MONARCH. 
 
 Jhe cares and annoyances incidental to 
 power and elevated rank have proved a 
 frequent theme of declamation to the 
 moralist and the poet ; and, as appropriately 
 concluding our sketches of the Mirage of Life, 
 we propose to select our next illustration from 
 the highest point of human greatness — the 
 throne of the Monarch. As to no individual 
 is given in a higher degree the capacity of 
 promoting human happiness, and advancing 
 the Divine glory, so nowhere do we find 
 more thrilling lessons than in the career of 
 the monarch, as to the vanity and worthlessness 
 
I 9-6 I HE MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 <>t the world, when the heart has been devoted 
 
 to its worship. Charles the Fifth, after a life 
 spent in military exploits, and the active 
 and energetic prosecution of ambitious pro- 
 jects, resigned, as is well known, his crown, 
 sated with its enjoyment. The Emp 
 Catherine of Russia endeavoured to find 
 happiness in gratifying, to the utmost, ex- 
 pensive tastes, and heaping up a costly col- 
 lection of works of art. She was so pressed, 
 however, we are informed, by the torments 
 of a guilty conscience, as to be at times 
 compelled to leave her chamber at night, 
 and rush from her palace, scourged by the 
 lashes of her inward tormentor. Beckford 
 <>f Fonthill, when in Portugal, at the close 
 of the last century, met with a similar spec 
 tacle of misery in the circles of royalty, 
 during his visit to the palace of the queen 
 dowager of that country. Her conscience, it 
 is supposed, was burdened with some unre 
 pented guilt. She imagined, by night and 
 
THE MONARCH, I 97 
 
 . by day, that she beheld her father a mass 
 of calcined cinder enveloped in flame and 
 fastened to a pedestal of molten iron. At 
 the very time that Beckford was listening 
 to the narrative of her sufferings, in an ad- 
 joining apartment, the most agonizing shrieks, 
 such as he had hardly conceived possible to 
 be uttered, rang through the palace, inflicting 
 upon the visitor a sensation of horror which 
 he had never experienced before. These were 
 the cries of the unhappy queen, surrounded 
 by everything that could minister to her 
 comfort, and yet profoundly miserable. Many 
 other examples might be produced, illustrative 
 of the truth that often " uneasy lies the head 
 that wears a crown." But as one of the 
 most striking instances, in modern or in 
 ancient times, of the unsatisfactory career of 
 a king, when devoid of Christian principle, 
 we select, as appropriately concluding these 
 sketches, the life of Napoleon Bcnaparte, or, 
 The Monarch. 
 
MjS iiii; MIRAGE OF LIFE, 
 
 This extraordinary man was born at Corsica 
 in the year 1769. Although signs of genius 
 
 were noticed in him when a boy, yet none 
 could have anticipated that the quiet and 
 studious youth was afterwards to play so re- 
 markable a part on the stage of life. Having 
 chosen the military profession, he remained 
 for some years in the ranks of the arm), 
 noticed only as an attentive and intelligent 
 officer. The great outburst of the first French 
 Revolution, however, soon took place, and cir- 
 cumstances arose which called into action his 
 wonderful powers. Toulon witnessed the first 
 marked display of his great military talents. 
 
 Stepping from one post to another, he 
 found himself ere long, from being an ob- 
 scure officer, appointed to the command oi 
 the army of Italy. Had the spectacle 
 been such as could have awakened the re- 
 spect of our moral faculties, his position at 
 this time would have deserved admiration. 
 Young and enterprising, he displayed qualities 
 
! 
 
THE MONARCH. 201 
 
 of ardour, energy, and perseverance worthy 
 of a better cause. Victory followed victory. 
 The skill of the oldest and most experienced 
 generals failed when brought into contact 
 with him, and he was soon placed at the head 
 of an army flushed with success, and became 
 the master of a large country, with potentates 
 anxiously suing for peace. This was but the 
 commencement of his onward career. Re- 
 turning home, he was consumed with a pas- 
 sion for military glory, and, with a bold but 
 unscrupulous genius, he designed his expedi- 
 tion to Egypt. Here, too, success accom- 
 panied him. The decayed energies of the 
 country received an impulse from his hands ; 
 and Egypt, long sunk under oppression, was 
 made, under his rule, to bear some resem- 
 blance to the bustling and prosperous land 
 which it had been in the days of the Pharaohs. 
 Egypt served but as the vaulting-board from 
 which he sprang, under circumstances that 
 would have crushed a less determined spirit, 
 o 
 
202 THE MIRAGE 01 LIFE. 
 
 t<> the post of supreme rule. He was made 
 first consul of France. Having gained this 
 power, he was not slow to augment it. The 
 fortunes of the country, which had long de- 
 clined, began, under his hand, to rail}-. Even 
 the physical barriers imposed by nature did 
 not present obstacles too great lor his per- 
 severance to overcome. The Alps themselves 
 were scaled by him. The disasters and 
 dangers which had threatened France were 
 turned into victories. The crown, for which 
 he had SO long panted, was at last placed 
 upon his brow. The pontiff oi the Roman 
 Catholic Church travelled to Paris to preside 
 at the ceremony of his coronation; and art 
 lent all its aid to make the spectacle gorgeous. 
 
 Even this elevation, however, did not mark 
 
 the zenith Of Napoleon's power. It seemed 
 K)ar afresh from those points at which 
 
 other minds would have paused for repose. 
 
 In a series of battles he defeated every army 
 
 which opposed him. No weapon formed 
 
THE MONARCH. 203 
 
 against him seemed to prosper. Kingdoms 
 were broken up by him, and ancient bound- 
 aries altered at his pleasure. As he grew 
 in power, however, he grew also in pride. 
 His levees and ante-rooms were crowded, not 
 only with courtiers, but with princes and 
 kings, longing for his smiles or a glance of 
 approbation. Never, perhaps, had mortal risen 
 before to such a point of elevation. With 
 the majority of the countries of Europe 
 tributary to him, he seemed above the reach 
 of reverses. But, unfounded in equity, based 
 on unrighteousness, even this mighty empire 
 was to pass away like the Mirage. 
 
 Blinded by pride, he was tempted to in- 
 vade Russia. The result is well known. 
 Amidst the snows of that vast empire, he 
 saw entombed an army surpassing in magni- 
 tude any which had ever been led forth by 
 a conqueror in modern times. His power 
 was sapped by this disaster. The combined 
 monarchs of Europe rose, in the hope of de- 
 
204 nil- MIRAGE OF LIFE. 
 
 liverance from the oppression which had so 
 long weighed them down. One by one, he 
 saw the fragments of his authority pass away. 
 Like a desperate gambler, he risked his all 
 upon the die, and found himself at last a 
 captive on the barren rock of St. Helena. 
 
 And now was to be exemplified, the vanity 
 of worldly ambition. The mighty monarch's 
 train was reduced to a few attendants, and 
 his territory to a plot of garden ground. 
 He, who had made so many widows and 
 orphans, was himself deprived of his wife 
 and son. The schemes to which his active 
 mind turned for recreation proved abortive. 
 " Let us live on the past," he exclaimed. 
 Hut the retrospect exhibited only a course 
 of selfish aggrandizement. He sickened, and 
 pined for death. "Why," he would ask, "did 
 the cannon balls spare me to die in this 
 manner? I am no longer the Great Na 
 poleon." "How fallen 1 am!" he would at 
 other times exclaim, "I, whose activity was 
 
THE MONARCH. 205 
 
 . boundless, whose mind never slumbered, am 
 plunged in lethargic stupor, and must make 
 an effort even to raise my eyelids. I some- 
 times dictated upon different subjects to four 
 or five secretaries, who wrote as fast as 
 words could be uttered ; but then I was 
 Napoleon. Now I am no longer anything. 
 My strength, my faculties forsake me. I do 
 not live ; I merely exist." 
 
 At other times his reflections took a reli- 
 gious turn : " Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, 
 and myself, founded empires upon force. Jesus 
 Christ alone founded his empire upon love, 
 and at this hour millions of men would die 
 for Him. I die before my time, and my body 
 will be given back to the earth to become 
 food for the worms. Such is the fate which so 
 soon awaits him who has been called the Great 
 Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep 
 misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, 
 which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and 
 which is extending over the whole earth ! " 
 
206 I 111. MIRAGE l '1 IN E. 
 
 With the failure of his health his spirits 
 also drooped. Some fishes in a pond in 
 his garden had attracted his notice; a d 
 terious substance happened to mix with the 
 water ; they sickened and died. " Every- 
 thing that I love," says Napoleon; "every- 
 thing that belongs to tne y is stricken. Heaven 
 and mankind unite to afflict me." Fits of long 
 silence and profound melancholy were now 
 frequent. His health became weaker and 
 weaker, his weariness of life more apparent; 
 but at length the final scene in his eventful 
 
 course drew nigh. His disorder reached its 
 
 height. In his last hours, his thoughts min- 
 gled with the battle strife : "Steingell, Dessaix, 
 
 Massena," he exclaimed, in the midst ^\ his 
 wanderings of mind, "victory is declaring 
 itself. Run 1 hasten! press the charge! they 
 ar<- ours." Soon afterwards he died. A narrow 
 grave, overhung by a weeping willow, long 
 marked the spot where the remains o\ the 
 mighty conqueror reposed. 
 
THE MONARCH. 
 
 207 
 
 Such was Napoleon Bonaparte ; the pos- 
 sessor of talents of the highest order, of 
 power the most unbounded, of opportunities of 
 usefulness the most varied. Every element 
 of human happiness had been within his 
 reach ; but all, without the Divine blessing, 
 had proved unsubstantial as the Mirage. 
 
 " What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, 
 and lose his own soul?'' — Matt. xvi. 26. 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
In the preceding pages have been given 
 the outlines of the career of various 
 individuals, who, drinking deeply of 
 the world's enjoyments, yet found in the end 
 that all which they had followed had been 
 but vanity and vexation of spirit. The list 
 of examples furnished might have been en- 
 larged by others belonging to a more remote 
 period ; but it has been our desire to sustain 
 the interest of the subject by selecting the 
 illustrations from modern times. 
 
 By way of brief addition, however, to the 
 characters previously delineated, we may point, 
 as The Successfid Lawyer, to Lord Keeper 
 North, panting for years to grasp the great 
 
2 I 2 THE MIRAGE 01 III B. 
 
 seal of England, but confessing, when he- 
 had actually gained the object of pursuit. 
 that he scared)' enjoyed one minute of 
 peace. " The king/ 1 says his biographer, de- 
 scribing his appointment, " lifted up the purse 
 containing the seal, and putting it into his 
 hands, said, ' Here, my lord, take it. You will 
 
 find it heavy. 1 Thus his majesty acted the 
 prophet as well as the king; lor, shortly 1>< 
 his lordship's death, he declared, that since he 
 had had the seal he had not enjoyed an i 
 <»r contented minute." As '/ho Scholar, G 
 ii i > will occur to recollection, envying «>n his 
 deathbed a poor but pious peasant, who had 
 devoted much of his time to prayer and the 
 perusal of the Scriptures, while he himseli 
 he confessed, had lost a lifetime in laborious 
 trifling. As Vho Philosopher, BaCOM ma\ be 
 
 appropriately pointed t«>. lie explored all the 
 heights, and sounded all the depths of phi- 
 losophy, \et dosed his days in dishonour, a 
 chagrined and disappointed man. As The 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 2 15 
 
 Man of Enterprise, how touching it is to 
 find Columbus, discovering a new world, yet 
 dying of the sickness of hope deferred, and 
 declaring that he could not have served the 
 monarch who neglected him more faithfully 
 had it been to obtain paradise. Turning to 
 the pages of Scripture, we find Solomon sur- 
 passing in wisdom and glory all the princes 
 of the earth, and yet confessing in the end, 
 that, with the exception of the fear of God 
 and keeping his commandments, all else was 
 vanity and vexation of spirit.* " I said in 
 mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with 
 
 * " It may be vanity to pursue pleasure and gratify appetite, 
 to hunt after renown. It may be vanity to buy fine houses, pre- 
 serve pheasants, plant trees, acquire an estate, with the hills 
 from the lighthouse to Weybourne for a boundary ; but it is not 
 vanity, it is excellent good sense, to serve with all the heart, and 
 soul, and might, and main, the Master and Creator of these 
 heavens. It is not vanity to conquer evil passions, and stifle 
 unholy repinings ; it is not vanity to be patient, submissive, and 
 gentle and cheerful ; and in seasons of trial and privation to 
 spread around a loving and holy influence, so that the sufferer 
 becomes the teacher and the comforter ?— Memoirs of Sir 
 Thomas Fowell Buxton. 
 
2 I 6 THE MM 
 
 mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure : ami, behold, 
 this also is vanity. 1 said of laughter, It is 
 mad : an^l of mirth. What doeth it ? . , 
 
 I made me great works; I builded me hou 
 I planted me vineyards : I made me gardens 
 
 and orchards, and I planted trees in them of 
 all kind of fruits: 1 made me pods of water. 
 to water therewith the wood that bringeth 
 
 forth trees I I got me servants and maidens, 
 and had servants horn in my house; also 1 
 
 had great i ns of great and small 
 
 cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before 
 me; 1 gathered me also silver and gold, and 
 the peculiar treasure (A kings and ^i the 
 provinces: 1 gat me men singers and women 
 singers, and the- delights of the sons ^( men. 
 musical instruments, and that of all sorts. 
 
 I was great, and increased more than all 
 
 that were before me in Jerusalem : also my 
 wisdom remained with me. Ami whatsa 
 mine eyes desired I kept not from them. 1 
 
 withheld not my heart from any joy; for my 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 217 
 
 heart rejoiced in all my labour : and this was 
 my portion of all my labour. Then I looked 
 on all the works that my hands had wrought, 
 and on the labour that I had laboured to do : 
 and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of 
 spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."* 
 What lesson, then, are we to draw from these 
 solemn attestations of the vanity of human 
 pursuits, and the Mirage of Life ? That hap- 
 piness is nowhere to be found ? No ! Such a 
 conclusion would be at variance with experience, 
 and a libel on the bounty of that great Being 
 who has given us all things richly to enjoy, and 
 who has multiplied with a lavish hand the ma- 
 terials of pleasure for the gratification of his 
 creatures. Is this then the lesson taught, — 
 that wealth, art, fame, eloquence, power, were 
 in themselves sinful ? No : it is possible 
 to be a man of wealth, and yet a John 
 Thornton ; a hero, and yet a Gardiner or 
 a Havelock ; an orator, and yet a Jeremy 
 
 * Eccles. ii. 1-11. 
 P 
 
THE IIIF \«.i. "l I 
 
 ;• a Robert Hall; a man of wit, and 
 a Wilberforce ; an artist, and 
 >n the sculptor; a beauty, and 
 have persona] charms eclipsed by th< 
 of holiness. The truth to be drawn I 
 the examples cited is, not that ther 
 happiness in life, but that in a life unsanctified 
 by religion no real, or at lea rmanent 
 
 bliss is to be found. It is no want of charity 
 to assert, that the individuals whose chanu 
 
 have drawn sought their chief enjoyment 
 in the world. In the i-m\, it proved to them 
 a broken cistern which could hold n^ water. 
 Such ever has been, and ever must be, the 
 result of all attempts to find pleasure in the 
 ; ure apart from the ( Y< at< >r. " Thou 
 shah love the Lord tin God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy strength, and with all thy mind," was the 
 ; law originally engraven by the Almight) 
 i «n the heart i >f a man ; and \\ hile it is n< 
 all expectations of solid or abiding enjoyment 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 2IO, 
 
 are a chimera and a delusion. The faculties of 
 the soul, in their fallen condition, have lost their 
 original centre, and are restless and dissatisfied, 
 each seeking its own selfish gratification. It is 
 only when the heart, under the drawing of the 
 Holy Spirit, returns to God in the way He has 
 pointed out, through the Redeemer, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, by a true faith and cordial ac- 
 ceptance of him as the Saviour of sinners, that 
 it finds its rest. All the powers of the soul 
 become then obedient to their lawful Head, 
 and peace and harmony enter where before 
 were confusion and disorder. 
 
 Nor let it be supposed that the reverses 
 and disappointments, which we have described 
 as incidental to human life, are peculiar to 
 men of elevated station or distinguished genius. 
 By fixing the glass at a lower range, we 
 should doubtless have been enabled to present 
 numerous instances of the Mirage of Life in 
 humbler classes of society, though not pos- 
 sessing interest enough to form the subject 
 
THE MIRAGE 01 
 
 In all 
 
 ty, how different are the closing i 
 ning scenes of life! The youth, who 
 
 has started \n the wealth, fi 
 
 himself too often a disappointed old man, 
 struggling with embarrassments and mi 
 
 tunc. He who had looked forward to length 
 pines perhaps in sickne is cut 
 
 off in his prime. Another, who had pictured 
 an ideal paradise of domestic enjoyment. 
 the object of his affections laid \n t; 
 
 and the children of early promise cut ofl 
 
 or blasting by misconduct the fond 
 hopes which parental love had entertained. 
 Multitudes will join, from painful ev 
 
 in the following sad retrospect of life: 
 
 I be made of youthful hope was v.. 
 
 'l h " ling* red long and la( 
 Ambition .ill dissolved in .iir 
 
 With phantom ide. 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 221 
 
 When we turn, however, to the pages of 
 Christian biography, do we find any instances 
 of individuals who had truly devoted them- 
 selves to the service of God, complaining that 
 they had found that the Mirage ? No : God 
 is the fountain of living water, at which man 
 may supply all his wants, while still the 
 supply is inexhausted, because inexhaustible. 
 His gospel meets the cravings of man's 
 heart for happiness. Faith in the great 
 atoning sacrifice of Christ gives peace to the 
 troubled conscience ; the renewing and sanc- 
 tifying influences of the Holy Spirit restore 
 health and happiness to the soul which they 
 enter ; the service of Christ calls into vigorous 
 and harmonious action all the mental powers ; 
 while trust in God's providence, if it does 
 not give exemption from the vicissitudes to 
 which life is subject, sanctifies them and 
 turns them into a source of blessing. Let 
 the honoured lives of Wilberforce, Simeon, 
 and many other pious men of modern times, 
 
::: THE MIRAG1 
 
 bte appealed to. Sec them drawing 
 
 to their latter end full < 
 honours, and with a hope bright with immor- 
 tality. See Payson on his death-bed acknow- 
 ledging after a life devoted to the- servi 
 God, that he swam in a sea of glory, and 
 was tilled, in the prospect of eternity, with a 
 joy beyond the power of uiurar. 
 
 By these bright examples on the one hand. 
 
 and by tile instances of worldly failure aln 
 
 adduced on the other, we would affectionately 
 
 entreat our reader solemnly to a^k him 
 what is his great object in life, and to take 
 
 heed that he is not chasing the Mirage. The 
 ts which he is following may he of a 
 dignified nature than those pursued by 
 the characters we have sketched; hut if un- 
 sanctified, if pursued without reference to the 
 glor) I I, sooner or later, in eternity \\ 
 not in time, they will he found to have 1 
 hut vanity and vexation of spirit 
 
 the young do we moi illy appeal. 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 223 
 
 Before their eyes the Mirage is apt to expand 
 in all its false and treacherous hues. Oh, let 
 them be persuaded now, ere it is too late, to 
 cease from its vain pursuit ; to detect the 
 hollowness of the world's attractions, and to 
 take up the light and easy yoke of Christ. 
 Repent, and believe the gospel. Flee, while 
 it is yet time, to the Saviour. Seek in 
 earnest prayer for the teaching of the Holy 
 Spirit, to create Avithin you a new and a 
 contrite heart, and to enable you to cleave to 
 Christ, with full purpose to devote yourselves 
 to his service, henceforth leading a new life, 
 and following the commandments of God. 
 
 To any weary-hearted wanderer who has 
 long chased the Mirage, we would tender 
 the Saviour's gracious invitation : " Come 
 unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
 yoke upon you, and learn of Me ; for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find 
 rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy 
 
-- I THE MIRAGE OF I 
 
 and My burden is light" Justified thr 
 faith in the Son of God, and d by 
 
 his Spirit, you will find that r which 
 
 you have so long unsuccessfully sought in 
 an ensnaring world. Thr Saviour's i 
 mandments you will discover to be not 
 grievous, his service to be perf dont 
 
 rhe el.»se of life, which, to so many, rei 
 only the illusions they have followed, shall to 
 you furnish matter for adoring and grateful 
 retrospection. Death itself will be strip 
 of its sting. It shall ],n»ve the j^rtal through 
 Which you shall enter u\Hm joys infinite in 
 degree, and everlasting in duration; while 
 through eternity you shall bless that If 
 
 • which first led you to abandon for ever 
 
 Vain pursuit of i in MIR \<.r 01 ] ii i . 
 
 1 1 '• ei r) one thai thirsteth, 
 
 to the U.H 
 And he thai hath no moncj : come ye, bit) and 
 oroe, bu) irine and milk 
 none] and without pri 
 Uh nd in.. ii, \ for that which ia n< 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 
 And your labour for that which satisfieth not? 
 
 Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is 
 
 And let your soul delight itself in fatness. 
 
 Incline your ear and come unto me : 
 
 Hear, and your soul shall live." — Isaiah lv. 1-3. 
 
 22 ^ 
 
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