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Page 78
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
THE LANDSCAPE GARDEN
The garden like a lady fair was cut
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut;
The azure fields of heaven were 'sembled right
In a large round set with flow'rs of light:
The flowers de luce and the round sparks of dew
That hung upon their azure leaves, did show
Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the ev'ning blue.
-- GILES FLETCHER
NO MORE remarkable man ever lived than my friend, the young Ellison.
He was remarkable in the entire and continuous profusion of good
gifts ever lavished upon him by fortune. From his cradle to his
grave, a gale of the blandest prosperity bore him along. Nor do I use
the word Prosperity in its mere wordly or external sense. I mean it
as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak, seemed born
for the purpose of foreshadowing the wild doctrines of Turgot, Price,
Priestley, and Condorcet -- of exemplifying, by individual instance,
what has been deemed the mere chimera of the perfectionists. In the
brief existence of Ellison, I fancy, that I have seen refuted the
dogma -- that in man's physical and spiritual nature, lies some
hidden principle, the antagonist of Bliss. An intimate and anxious
examination of his career, has taught me to understand that, in
general, from the violation of a few simple laws of Humanity, arises
the Wretchedness of mankind; that, as a species, we have in our
possession the as yet unwrought elements of Content, -- and that even
now, in the present blindness and darkness of all idea on the great
question of the Social Condition, it is not impossible that Man, the
individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions,
may be happy.
With opinions such as these was my young friend fully imbued; and
thus is it especially worthy of observation that the uninterrupted
enjoyment which distinguished his life was in great part the result
of preconcert. It is, indeed evident, that with less of the
instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the
stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself
precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into
the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent
endowments. But it is by no means my present object to pen an essay
on Happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words.
He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles,
of Bliss. That which he considered chief, was (strange to say!) the
simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The
health," he said, "attainable by other means than this is scarcely
worth the name." He pointed to the tillers of the earth -- the only
people who, as a class, are proverbially more happy than others --
and then he instanced the high ecstasies of the fox-hunter. His
second principle was the love of woman. His third was the contempt of
ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held
that, other things being equal, the extent of happiness was
proportioned to the spirituality of this object.
I have said that Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion
of good gifts lavished upon him by Fortune. In personal grace and
beauty he exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order to which
the attainment of knowledge is less a labor than a necessity and an
intuition. His family was one of the most illustrious of the empire.
His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. His
possessions had been always ample; but, upon the attainment of his
one and twentieth year, it was discovered that one of those
extraordinary freaks of Fate had been played in his behalf which
startle the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom fail
radically to alter the entire moral constitution of those who are
their objects. It appears that about one hundred years prior to Mr.
Ellison's attainment of his majority, there had died, in a remote
province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentlemen had amassed a
princely fortune, and, having no very immediate connexions, conceived
the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after
his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of
investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of
blood, bearing the name Ellison, who should be alive at the end of
the hundred years. Many futile attempts had been made to set aside
this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them
abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and
a decree finally obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This
act did not prevent young Ellison, upon his twenty-first birth-day,
from entering into possession, as the heir of his ancestor,
Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of
dollars. {*1}
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