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 Rh standpoint of a wholly disinterested observer. If the test of happiness in the Arabian paradise be to hear the measured beating of one's own heart, Schopenhauer was certainly qualified for admission. Even in this world he was so far from being miserable, that an atmosphere of snug comfort surrounds the man whose very name has become a synonym for melancholy; and to turn from his cold and witty epigrams to the smothered despair that burdens Leopardi's pages is like stepping at once from a pallid, sunless afternoon into the heart of midnight. It is always a pleasant task for optimists to dwell as much as possible on the buoyancy with which every healthy man regards his unknown future, and on the natural pleasure he takes in recalling the brightness of the past; but Leopardi, playing the trump card of pessimism, demonstrates with merciless precision the insufficiency of such relief. We cannot in reason expect, he argues, that, with youth behind us and old age in front, our future will be any improvement on our past, for with increasing years come increasing sorrows to all men; and as for the boasted happiness of that past, which