MISANTHROPY AANCE
August 3d, Nine Oclock P.M.
There are days whehing appears gloomy to us; the world, like thesky, is covered by a dark fog. Nothing seems in its place; we see onlymisery, improvidence, and cruelty; the world seems without God, and givenup to all the evils of ce.
Yesterday I was in this unhappy humor. After a long walk in thefaubs, I returned home, sad and dispirited.
Everything I had seen seemed to accuse the civilization of which we areso proud! I had wandered into a little by-street, with which I was notacquainted, and I found myself suddenly in the middle of those dreadfulabodes where the poor are born, to languish and die. I looked at thosedeg walls, which time has covered with a foul leprosy; thosewindows, from which dirty rags hang out to dry; those fetid gutters,which coil along the fronts of the houses like venomous reptiles!
I felt oppressed with grief, and hastened on.
A little farther on I was stopped by the hearse of a hospital; a deadman, nailed down in his deal coffin, was going to his last abode, withoutfuneral pomp or ceremony, and without followers. There was not here eventhat last friend of the outcast--the dog, which a painter has introducedas the sole attendant at the paupers burial! He whom they werepreparing to it to the earth was going to the tomb, as he had lived,alone; doubtless no one would be aware of his end. In this battle ofsociety, what signifies a soldier the less?
But what, then, is this human society, if one of its members thusdisappear like a leaf carried away by the wind?
The hospital was near a barrack, at the entrance of whien, women,and children were quarrelling for the remains of the coarse bread whichthe soldiers had given them in charity! Thus, beings like ourselvesdaily wait iution on our passion till we give them leave tolive! Whole troops of outcasts, in addition to the trials imposed on allGods children, have to ehe pangs of cold, hunger, andhumiliation. Unhappy human oh! Where man is in a worsedition than the bee in its hive, or the ant in its subterranean city!
Ah! what then avails our reason? What is the use of so many highfaculties, if we are her the wiser nor the happier for them? Whichof us would not exge his life of labor and trouble with that of thebirds of the air, to whom the whole world is a life of joy?
How well I uand the plaint of Mao, in the popular tales of theFoyer Breton who, when dying of hunger and thirst, says, as he looks atthe bullfinches rifling the fruit-trees:
"Alas! those birds are happier than Christians; they have no need ofinns, or butchers, or bakers, ardeners. Gods heaven belongs tothem, ah spreads a tinual feast before them! The tiny fliesare their game, ripe grass their fields, and hips and haws theirstore of fruit. They have the right of taking everywhere, without payingor asking leave: thus es it that the little birds are happy, and singall the livelong day!"
But the life of man in a natural state is like that of the birds; heequally enjoys nature. "The earth spreads a tinual feast before him."
What, then, has he gained by that selfish and imperfect association whis a nation? Would it not be better for every oain tothe fertile bosom of nature, and live there upon her bounty in peadliberty?
August 20th, four oclock A.M.--The dawn casts a red glow on my bed-curtains; the breeze brings in the fragrance of the gardens below. HereI am again leaning on my el