Evening at Home 80

Evening at Home 80

He saw, abroad as well as at home, a great deal of misery; he saw

wretchedness everywhere close in the train of splendour—indigence by the

side of prodigality—baseness under the foot of authority. He lamented

the evils of the world; but whatever might be their original source, he

saw that man had within himself the power of remedying many of them. In

exercising this power, all duty, all virtue seemed to consist. “This,

then,” said he, “must be the proper business of every man in this life.

It is then _mine_; and how shall I best perform it?”

 

Full of these meditations, he returned; and convinced that the great

inequality of rank and property is one principal cause (though a

necessary one) of the ills of life, he resolved, as much as it lay in

his power, to counteract it. “How few things,” thought he, “are

necessary to my external comfort! Wholesome food, warm clothing, clean

lodging, a little waiting upon, and a few books. This is all that even

selfishness asks of me. Whose, then, is the superfluity?”

 

That he might at once get rid of the craving and burdensome demands

which _opinion_ imposes, he took a house in a part of the town where his

name was unknown; and of all his former acquaintance, he only reserved

one or two congenial friends. He selected out of the number of his

former domestics one of each sex, steady and confidential, whose lives

he made as comfortable as his own. After all the expenses of his frugal,

but not scanty mode of living were discharged, there remained two thirds

of his income, which he never failed to bestow in secret charity. He

chose that his charities should be secret, not only as being utterly

averse to all ostentation, but also to avoid those importunities which

might lead his bounty to unworthy objects. He would himself know the

real circumstances of every case; and it was the chief employment of his

time, by hunting into obscure corners, and searching out the private

history of the indigent classes of the community, to obtain exact

information of the existence of misery, and the proper modes of

relieving it. He neglected no kinds of distress, but it was his great

delight to relieve virtuous poverty, and alleviate those keen wounds of

fortune which she inflicts on those who have once participated in some

share of her smiles. Hence the sums which he bestowed were often so

considerable as at once to retrieve the affairs of the sufferer, nor did

he think it right to withdraw his sustaining hand as long as its support

was needful.

 

With respect to his opinions on other subjects, his enlarged

acquaintance with men and books effectually preserved him from bigotry.

He well knew in what points mankind agreed, and in what they differed,

and he attached much superior importance to the former.

 

So he lived—so he died! injuring none—benefiting many—bearing with pious

resignation the evils that fell to his own lot—continually endeavouring

to alleviate those of others—and hoping to behold a state in which all

evil shall be abolished.

 

[Illustration:

 

Providence, or the Shipwreck, p. 377.

 

EVENING XXXI.

]

 

 

 

 

A GLOBE-LECTURE.

 

_Papa_—_Lucy_.

 

 

_Papa._ You may remember, Lucy, that I talked to you sometime ago about

the earth’s motion round the sun.

 

_Lucy._ Yes, papa; and you said you would tell me another time something

about the other planets.

 

_Pa._ I mean some day to take you to the lecture of an ingenious

philosopher, who has contrived a machine that will give you a better

notion of these things in an hour, than I could by mere talking in a

week. But it is now my intention to make you better acquainted with this

globe which we inhabit, and which, indeed, is the most important to us.

Cast your eyes upon this little ball. You see it is a representation of

the earth, being covered with a painted map of the world. This map is

crossed with lines in various directions; but all you have to observe

relative to what I am going to talk about, is the great line across the

middle called the _equator_ or _equinoctial line_, and the two points at

top and bottom called the _poles_, of which the uppermost is the

northern, the lowermost the southern.

 

_Lu._ I see them.

 

_Pa._ Now, the sun, which illuminates all the parts of this globe by

turns as they roll round before it, shines directly upon the equator,

but darts its rays aslant toward the poles; and this is the cause of the

great heat perceived in the middle regions of the earth, and of its

gradual diminution as you proceed from them on either side toward the

extremities. To use a familiar illustration, it is like a piece of meat

roasting before a fire, the middle part of which is liable to be

overdone, while the two ends are raw.

 

_Lu._ I can comprehend that.

 

_Pa._ From this simple circumstance some of the greatest differences on

the surface of the earth, with respect to man, other animals, and

vegetables, proceed; for heat is the great principle of life and

vegetation; and where it most prevails, provided it be accompanied with

due moisture, nature is most replenished with all sorts of living and

growing things. In general, then, the countries lying on each side about

the equator, and forming a broad belt round the globe, called the

_tropics_, or _torrid zone_, are rich and exuberant in their products to

a degree much superior to what we see in our climates. Trees and other

plants shoot to a vast size, and are clothed in perpetual verdure, and

loaded with flowers of the gayest colours and sweetest fragrance,

succeeded by fruits of high flavour or abundant nutriment. The insect

tribe is multiplied so as to fill all the air, and many of them astonish

by their size and extraordinary forms, and the splendour of their hues.

The ground is all alive with reptiles, some harmless, some armed with

deadly poisons.

 

_Lu._ O, but I should not like that at all!

 

_Pa._ The birds, however, decked in the gayest plumage conceivable, must

give unmixed delight; and a tropical forest, filled with parrots,

macaws, and peacocks, and enlivened with the gambols of monkeys and

other nimble quadrupeds, must be a very amusing spectacle. The largest

of quadrupeds, too, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus,

are natives of these regions; and not only these sublime and harmless

animals, but the terrible lion, the cruel tiger, and all the most

ravenous beasts of prey, are here found in their greatest bulk and

fierceness.

 

_Lu._ That would be worse than the insects and reptiles.

 

_Pa._ The sea likewise is filled with inhabitants of an immense variety

of size and figure; not only fishes, but tortoises, and all the shelly

tribes. The shores are spread with shells of a beauty unknown to our

coasts; for it would seem as if the influence of the solar heat

penetrated into the farthest recesses of nature.

 

_Lu._ How I should like to ramble on the seaside there!

 

_Pa._ But the elements, too, are there upon a grand and terrific scale.

The sky either blazes with intolerable beams, or pours down rain in

irresistible torrents. The winds swell to furious hurricanes, which

often desolate the whole face of nature in a day. Earthquakes rock the

ground, and sometimes open it in chasms which swallow up entire cities.

Storms raise the waves of the ocean into mountains, and drive them in a

deluge to the land.

 

_Lu._ Ah! that would spoil my shell-gathering. These countries may be

very fine, but I don’t like them.

 

_Pa._ Well, then—we will turn from them to the _temperate_ regions. You

will observe, on looking at the map, that these chiefly lie on the

northern side of the tropics; for on the southern side the space is

almost wholly occupied by sea. Though geographers have drawn a boundary

line between the torrid and temperate zones, yet nature has made none;

and for a considerable space on the borders, the diminution of heat is

so gradual as to produce little difference in the appearance of nature.

But, in general, the temperate _zones_ or _belts_ form the most

desirable districts on the face of the earth. Their products are

extremely various, and abound in beauty and utility. Corn, wine, and

oil, are among their vegetable stores: the horse, the ox, and the sheep,

graze their verdant pastures. Their seasons have the pleasing

vicissitudes of summer and winter, spring and autumn. Though in some

parts they are subject to excess of heat, and in others of cold, yet

they deserve the general praise of a mild temperature compared to the

rest of the globe.

 

_Lu._ They are the countries for me, then.

 

_Pa._ You _do_ live in one of them, though our island is situated so far

to the north that it ranks rather among the cold countries than the warm

ones. However, we have the good fortune to be a long way removed from

those dreary and comfortless tracts of the globe which lie about the

poles, and are called the _frigid zones_. In these, the cheering

influence of the sun gradually becomes extinct, and perpetual frost and

snow take possession of the earth. Trees and plants diminish in number

and size, till at length no vegetables are found but some mosses and a

few stunted herbs. Land animals are reduced to three or four

species—raindeer, white bears, and arctic foxes. The sea, however, as

far as it remains free from ice, is all alive with aquatic birds, and

with the finny tribe. Enormous whales spout and gambol among the

floating ice-islands, and herds of seals pursue the shoals of smaller

fish, and harbour in the caverns of the rocky coasts.

 

_Lu._ Then I suppose these creatures have not much to do with the sun?