“Elinor struggled in vain for the renewal of this life of cold mediocrity,--she thirsted for it as one who, in the deserts of Afric, expiring for want of water, would wish for the moment to be an inmate of Lapland, to drink of their eternal snows,--yet at that moment wonders how its inhabitants can live among SNOW. She saw a being far inferior to herself in mental power,--of feelings that hardly deserved the name--_tranquil_, and wondered that she herself was wretched.--Alas! she did not know, that the heartless and unimaginative are those alone who entitle themselves to the comforts of life, and who can alone enjoy them. A cold and sluggish mediocrity in their occupations or their amusements, is all they require--pleasure has with them no meaning but the exemption from actual suffering, nor do they annex any idea to pain but the immediate infliction of corporeal suffering, or of external calamity--the source of pain or pleasure is never found in their _hearts_--while those who have profound feelings scarce ever look elsewhere for either. So much the worse for them,--the being reduced to providing for the necessities of human life, and being satisfied when that provision is made, is perhaps the best condition of human life--beyond that, all is the dream of insanity, or the agony of disappointment. Far better the dull and dusky winter’s day, whose gloom, if it never abates, never increases,--(and to which we lift up an eye of listlessness, in which there is no apprehension of future and added terrors),--to the glorious fierceness of the summer’s day, whose sun sets amid purple and gold,--while, panting under its parting beams, we see the clouds collecting in the darkening East, and view the armies of heaven on their march, whose thunders are to break our rest, and whose lightnings may crumble us to ashes. * * * * *