It has been suggested with great truth that the habit of gaming, prevalent as it is among persons in the upper ranks of life, is not to be attributed exclusively to a feeling of avarice. The man who is surrounded by everything to make his condition in life happy, as far as wealth is concerned, does not fly to dice for the purpose of aggrandisement, but he does so to seek refuge from the miseries of indolence and vacuity; from the gnawings of his own mind; from an eager desire to expose himself to that mental agitation which nature tells him is so necessary to make life supportable. “A woman is happier than a man,” says Dr. Johnson, “because she can hem a pocket-handkerchief.” Our faculties, like the vulture of Prometheus, devour our souls, if they have no action beyond ourselves. “Real lassitude is always mingled with grief,” says an eminent female genius; and Madame de Staël considers the observation a profound one. “The man in the Spectator who hanged himself to avoid the intolerable annoyance of having to tie his garters every day of his life, is but a satire on the misery of many who, having no useful occupation, find the flight of time marked only by the swift repetition of petty troubles. “The restlessness of Rousseau, his discontented and morbidly irritable disposition, was closely allied to insanity; and the painful struggles of Lord Byron, when ‘came the fit again,’ are detailed in words which shew too plainly how they disturbed and threatened the integrity of his judgment. In such natures, every strong emotion, or the occurrence of disease, may destroy the delicate balance, and make a ruin of a mind which even in ruins continues to excite a mournful admiration. The diversion of social intercourse, which to other men is necessary to prevent mental torpor, becomes to them a source of irritation by impeding the workings of their imagination: they find that, when alone, all the nobler aspirations of the soul are free, and images of beauty, and virtue, and wisdom, occupy the mind. Society transforms them into a being they despise, deprives them of all their high and valued thoughts, and it enables them to feel what slight circumstances, acting on the man without, may affect the man within. But the pleasures of solitude are transient; their train is followed by baseless fancies, by fears undefined, by griefs unexpressed, and black despondency, from which society can alone relieve. We learn, from observing such effects, arising from such causes, the advantage of mixed and varied occupations, suited to a being not made solely for contemplation or for action; and we may gather rules from these observations, the application of which to minds in a morbid state is very direct.”[50]