To him, to him its rustling spoke: The silence of his soul it broke! It whispered of his own bright isle, That lit the ocean with a smile; Ay, to his ear that native tone Had something of the sea-wave's moan!
His mother's cabin home, that lay Where feathery cocoas fringed the bay; The dashing of his brethren's oar; The conch-note heard along the shore;-- All through his wakening bosom swept; He clasped his country's Tree--and wept!
Oh! scorn him not! The strength whereby The patriot girds himself to die, The unconquerable power, which fills The freeman battling on his hills-- These have one fountain deep and clear-- The same whence gushed that child-like tear!
There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one is _ennui_--that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the absence of all motives to exertion; and by which the justice of Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it may be fairly doubted whether, upon the whole, the race of beggars is not happier than the race of lords; and whether those vulgar wants that are sometimes so importunate, are not, in this world, the chief ministers of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects all indolent persons who can live on in the rank in which they were born, without the necessity of working; but, in a free country, it rarely occurs in any great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human felicity. Below this, there is room for ambition, and envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity and unresting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the full-blown flower of human felicity--the pestilence which smites at the bright hour of noon.
The other curse of the happy, has a range more wide and indiscriminate. It, too, tortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate; but is most active among the least distinguished; and abates in malignity as we ascend to the lofty regions of pure _ennui_. This is the desire of being fashionable;--the restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures a little more distinguished than we really are--with the mortification of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire," and are thus above the chief physical evils of existence, we do believe that this is a more prolific source of unhappiness, than guilt, disease, or wounded affection; and that more positive misery is created, and more true enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of passion, the desolations of war, or the accidents or mortality. This may appear a strong statement; but we make it deliberately; and are deeply convinced of its truth. The wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense; but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite dreadful, indeed, to think what a sweep of this pest has taken among the comforts or our prosperous population. To be though fashionable--that is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry. In this pursuit, their time, spirits, and talents are wasted; their tempers soured; their affections palsied; and their natural manners and dispositions altogether sophisticated and lost.