This new whim of mine is partly a scheme of self-defence. Three neighbours have run music-mad lately--two of them fiddle-scrapers, the third a flute-tooter--and are perpetually annoying me with their vile performances, compared with which the gruntings of a whole herd of sows would be seraphic melody. Now I hope, by frequently playing myself, to render my ear callous. Besides, the evils of life are crowding upon me, and music is "the sweetest assuager of cares." It helps to relieve and soothe the mind, and is a sort of refuge from calamity, from slights and neglects and censures and insults and disappointments; from the warmth of real enemies and the coldness of pretended friends; from your _well wishers_ (as they are justly called, in opposition, I suppose, to _well doers_), men whose inclinations to serve you always decrease in a most mathematical proportion as their opportunities to do it increase; from the
"Proud man's contumely, and the spurns Which patient merit of th' unworthy takes;"
from grievances that are the growth of all times and places and not peculiar to _this age_, which authors call this _critical age_, and divines this _sinful age_, and politicians _this age of revolutions_. An acquaintance of mine calls it this _learned age_ in due reverence to his own abilities, and like Monsieur Whatd'yecallhim, who used to pull off his hat when he spoke of himself. The poet laureate calls it "_this golden age_," and with good reason,--
For _him_ the fountains with Canary flow, And, best of fruit, spontaneous guineas grow.
Pope, in his "Dunciad," makes it _this leaden age_, but I choose to call it without an epithet, _this_ age. Many things we must expect to meet with which it would be hard to bear, if a compensation were not found in honest endeavours to do well, in virtuous affections and connections, and in harmless and reasonable amusements. And why should _not_ a man amuse himself sometimes? _Vive la bagatelle!_
I received a letter this morning from my friend Allen. He is up to his ears in business, and I sincerely congratulate him upon it--occupation, I am convinced, being the great secret of happiness. "Nothing makes the temper so fretful as indolence," said a young lady who, beneath the soft surface of feminine delicacy, possesses a mind acute by nature, and strengthened by habits of reflection. 'Pon my word, Miss Evans, I beg your pardon a thousand times for bepraising you to your face, but, really, I have written so long that I had forgot to whom I was writing.