Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
hesitate to utter" the dullest and most obvious commonplaces, would sit
down to the perusal of a work entitled, "On the Government of
Dependencies," or "Sermons on the Functions of Archdeacons and Rural
Deans," though never so deficient in learning, vigour, and originality,
who will reject with the supercilious ignorance of incurable stupidity,
these volumes, in which the habits, the interests, the inalienable rights,
the sacred duties of one half of the species, (and of that half to which,
at the most pliant and critical period of life, the health, the
disposition, the qualities, moral and intellectual, of the other half must
of necessity be confided,) are discussed with exemplary fairness, and
placed in the most luminous point of view. But we have detained our
readers too long from the admirable work which it is our object to make
known to them. It opens in the following manner:--
"It was once suggested by an eminent physiologist, that the
greatest enjoyments of our animal nature might be those which,
from their constancy, escape our notice altogether.
"His investigations had led him to think, that even the
involuntary motions carried on in our system, were productive of
pleasure; and that the act of respiration was probably attended
by a sensation as delightful as the gratifications of the palate.
It is certain that every sense is a source of unnoticed
pleasures. Sound and light are agreeable in themselves, before
their varied combinations have produced music to our ear, or
conveyed the perceptions of form to our mind. Innumerable are the
emotions of pleasure conveyed to the imagination and the senses,
by the endless diversities of form, colour, and sound; and the
unbought riches poured upon us from these sources, are more
prolific of enjoyment, than any of the far-sought distinctions
which stir the hopes and rivalries of men. Yet, on these and
other spontaneous blessings, no one reflects, or even enumerates
them among the sources of happiness, till some casual suspension
of them revives sensibility to the delight they afford.
"Such are the lamentations, though rarely so eloquently uttered,
which we daily hear on the loss of some possession, which, while
held, was scarcely noticed; and could preserve its owner, neither
from the gloom of apathy, nor the irritation of discontent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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