There are stars so distant that their light, though traveling 180,000 miles in a second, yet takes years to reach us; and beyond all these are other systems of stars which are so far away that they cannot be perceived singly, but even in our most powerful telescopes appear only as minute clouds or nebulae. It is, indeed, but a feeble expression of the truth to say that the infinities revealed to us by Science,--the infinitely great in the one direction, and the infinitely small in the other,--go far beyond anything which had occurred to the unaided imagination of Man, and are not only a never-failing source of pleasure and interest, but seem to lift us out of the petty troubles and sorrows of life. [1] Beattie. [2] Tennyson. [3] Thomas à Kempis. [4] Gray. [5] Shakespeare. [6] Tennyson. [7] Trench. [8] Thomson. [9] Ruskin. [10] Shelley. [11] Ruskin. [12] _Ibid_. [13] Wordsworth. [14] Swinburne. [15] Symonds. CHAPTER IX. THE TROUBLES OF LIFE. CHAPTER IX. THE TROUBLES OF LIFE. We have in life many troubles, and troubles are of many kinds. Some sorrows, alas, are real enough, especially those we bring on ourselves, but others, and by no means the least numerous, are mere ghosts of troubles: if we face them boldly, we find that they have no substance or reality, but are mere creations of our own morbid imagination, and that it is as true now as in the time of David that "Man disquieteth himself in a vain shadow." Some, indeed, of our troubles are evils, but not real; while others are real, but not evils. "And yet, into how unfathomable a gulf the mind rushes when the troubles of this world agitate it. If it then forget its own light, which is eternal joy, and rush into the outer darkness, which are the cares of this world, as the mind now does, it knows nothing else but lamentations." [1] "Athens," said Epictetus, "is a good place,--but happiness is much better; to be free from passions, free from disturbance." We should endeavor to maintain ourselves in "That blessed mood In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight, Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened." [2] So shall we fear "neither the exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but think virtue worthy our love even under such trials." [3] We should then be, to a great extent, independent of external circumstances, for "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage, Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage. "If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free; Angels alone that soar above Enjoy such liberty." [4]