Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/341

 questioned whether the sum of happiness would not be increased to most of us by one hour of moderate pain in every twenty-four; and though few would directly ask for the increment of enjoyment so attained, there are perhaps still fewer who would desire to unlearn all the lessons they have been taught in the school of suffering, and find themselves with the gross, ox-like nature of many a farmer or publican, whose rubicund visage bears testimony to his vigorous appetite and to the small amount of pain, sorrow, or anxiety which his own or any body else's troubles have ever caused him. Taking it all in all, it seems doubtful then, whether the most invariably robust people are really much happier than those with more fluctuating health who have taken from the bitter cup the sweet drop which is always to be found by those who seek it at the bottom. For those unhappiest of all, whom disease has only rendered more selfish and self-centred and rebellious, there is of course no comparison possible.

And, secondly, is it thoroughly proved that country life is invariably healthier than the life of towns? The maladies arising from bad air, late hours, and that over-work and over-strain which is the modern black-death, are of course unknown in the calm-flowing existence of a rural squire and his family. But there are other diseases which come of monotonous repose, unvarying meals, and general tedium vitæ, quite as bad as the scourges of the town. Of all sources of ill-health, I am inclined to think lack of interest in life, and the constant society of dull and disheartening people, the very worst and most prolific. Undoubtedly it is so among the upper class of women, and the warnings of certain American physicians against the adoption by girls of any serious or earnest pursuit, seem painfully suggestive of a well-founded alarm, lest their own lists of hysterical and dyspeptic patients should show a lamentable falling-off under the new impetus given to women's work and study. In London, people have very much less leisure to think about their ailments, or allow the doctor's visits to become a permanent institution, as is so often the case in country houses. The result is that (whether or not statistics prove the existence of more sickness in town than in the country), at least we do not hear of eternally ailing people in London nearly so often as we do in the country neighbourhoods, where there are always to be found as stock subjects of local interest and sympathy old Mr. A.'s gout, and Lady B.'s liver-complaint; and those sad headaches which yet fortunately enable poor Mrs. C. to spend at least one day in the week in her darkened bedroom out of the reach of her lord's intolerable temper. Be it remarked also that the maladies which townsfolk mostly escape, namely, dyspepsia, hysteria, and neuralgia, are precisely those which exercise the most direct and fatal influence on human powers of enjoyment, whereas the ills to which flesh is heir in great cities — at least, among the upper and well-fed classes — are generally more remotely connected therewith.

But — pace the doctors and all their materialistic followers — I question very much whether bodily health, the mere absence of physical disease, be nearly as indispensable a condition of happiness, as certain peculiarities of the mental and moral constitution. The disposition to anxiety, for instance, which reduces many lives to a purgatory of incessant care — about money, about the opinion of society, or about the health and well-being of children — is certainly a worse drawback to peace and happiness than half the diseases in the registrar-general's list. This anxious temperament is commonly supposed to be fostered and excited in towns, and laid to sleep in the peaceful life of the country; and if it were certainly and invariably so, I think the balance of happiness between the two would well-nigh be settled by that fact alone. But again there is something to be said on the side of the town. An African traveller has described to me how, after months exposed to the interminable perils from man, and brute, and climate, he felt, after his first night on board a homeward-bound English ship, a reaction from the tension of anxiety, which revealed to himself the anguish he had been half-unconsciously enduring for many months. In like manner the city man or the statesman feels, when at last he takes his summer holiday, under what tremendous pressure of care he has been living during the past year, or session, in London; and he compares it, naturally enough, with the comparatively careless life of his friend, the country squire. But every one in London does not run a race for political victory or social success, and there are yet some sober old ways of business — both legal and mercantile — 