l60 INTKODUCTION
The individual becomes of less consequence, and the sor- rows which he once deemed peculiar grow also of less value and become dissolved in the great tide of human suffering ; so that the man no longer says, " What will my father leave me ? " and, " How shall I enjoy myself when my own master?" nay, scarcely even, "What will be my fate?" His very disinthralment inthralls him, and he cannot even be his own master till he has enslaved his own sensi- bilities ; and many perish in the process. I deem him a happy man, therefore, whose sensitiveness becomes limited to conscience alone, and has little to do with moods. His moral and physical health will fare best who, not too anxious about his own prosperity, finds his conscience, like his stomach, easily moved, that each may throw off readily whatever offends it. I think that one great cause of the miseries of so-called "genius" is that reason and con- science are too little active, while vanity, imagination, and the desires that are begotten of them, are too much so.
But I change the subject. You may remember that, when at last you were all outgrowing me as pets, and passing into that state when great changes in our social relations commence, so that, as is usual in families, I found some of you advancing still nearer and others receding farther from me, I attempted to fix by a little poem the landmarks of former relations, and preserve to memory a picture of a group not likely to be collected in the future into a mass so entire or so congenial as before. In this poem [" The Unbroken Lawn "], the little plot in the graveyard was referred to with the expression of the hope that it might yet for long remain unbroken. You ex- pressed great pleasure in this poem. But at last the sod has been broken. I was finishing the second part of that poem in another, expressive of my esteem for your grand-
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