" Surely true philosophy, if we may call
so serene a state of mind by that hackneyed word, never reached,
unaided, a purer height!
There is one thing certain, which contains a poor comfort, but a strong
one--a poor one, because it reduces us all to the same level--it is
this: we may be sure that not one of us is without disappointment. The
footman is as badly off as his master, and the master as the footman.
The courtier is disappointed of his place, and the minister of his
ambition. Cardinal Wolsey lectures his secretary Cromwell, and tells him
of his disappointed ambition; but Cromwell had his troubles as well.
Henry the Eighth, the king who broke them both, might have put up the
same prayer; and the pope, who was a thorn in Harry's side, no doubt had
a peck of disappointments of his own. Nature not only abhors a vacuum,
but she utterly repudiates an entirely successful man. There probably
never lived one yet to whom the morning did not bring some disaster, the
evening some repulse. John Hunter, the greatest, most successful
surgeon, the genius, the wonder, the admired of all, upon whose words
they whose lives had been spent in science hung, said, as he went to his
last lecture, "If I quarrel with any one to-night, it will kill me." An
obstinate surgeon of the old school denied one of his assertions, and
called him a liar. It was enough. Hunter was carried into the next room,
and died. He had for years suffered from a diseased heart, and was quite
conscious of his fate.
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