To descend from the general proclivities of our age to those of individuals toward Pessimism, the same paradox may be observed. As it is by no means altogether a bad sign of the times that there is a keener consciousness afloat of the extent to which pain and wrong prevail in the world, so neither is it by any means an indication of a bad disposition when a man takes a dark view of human nature and of life. Timon may be a noble fellow, or very much the reverse. We must study him in both characters. The noble Timon has started with an unusual share of generosity and sympathy, and has become embittered because he has found other men less good and true than himself. There is a certain average sincerity, average unselfishness, average generosity and gratitude common among men. He who has a little above the average of such fine qualities meets on all sides disappointment. He finds people who display selfishness, where, as a matter of course, he would have sacrificed his own convenience or interest to theirs; people who are mean where he would have been liberal, and suspicious where he was as open as the day; and, finally, people who return his kindness with an ingratitude inexplicable to his generous mind, rich in its own benevolence. What, then, can happen to our Timon but to begin to mistrust those whom he finds so unlike himself, to shut himself from them (and so, perhaps, provoke their mistrust in turn), and very commonly to bestow much of his disappointed affections on animals, on whose fidelity he finds he can more surely depend, and whose wrongs at the hands of cruel men still further deepen his disgust of his own kind? All this time, another man, whose generosity and sincerity were, at starting, a little below rather than above the average, has been passing through life pleasantly astonished to find that his neighbors will show him more kindness than (he is conscious) he would in their places display, and rather more than less honest than he has reckoned to find them. Thus, by a curious contradiction, the nobler-natured man is much more liable than the baser to develop into the misanthrope; and it is the lofty kind of scorn and bitterness properly belonging to him which every Pessimist assumes, whether he truly feel it or not. It is always _sous entendu_, in all tirades against human nature, that the speaker is quite incapable of the weakness, folly, and wickedness he condemns; and that, if he refers to the “dark side of Providence,” _he_ would have managed the universe on better principles. But it is extremely questionable whether we ought to give unlimited credit to the genuineness of the indignation of those gentlemen who denounce the evils of the world, but never stir a finger to remove them; and whose personal enjoyment of the good things of life--fine houses, clothes, dinners, pictures, bric-à-brac, pleasant conversation, and favorable reviews of their books--has, manifestly, never been clouded by their