Pleasure is very reflective, and
if you give it you will feel it. The pleasure you give by kindness of
manner returns to you, and often with compound interest. The receipt for
cheerfulness is not to have one motive only in the day for living, but a
number of little motives; a man who, from the time he rises till
bedtime, conducts himself like a gentleman, who throws some little
condescension into his manner to superiors, and who is always contriving
to soften the distance between himself and the poor and ignorant, is
always improving his animal spirits, and adding to his happiness.
I recommend lights as a great improver of animal spirits. How is it
possible to be happy with two mould candles ill snuffed? You may be
virtuous, and wise, and good, but two candles will not do for animal
spirits. Every night the room in which I sit is lighted up like a town
after a great naval victory, and in this cereous galaxy, and with a
blazing fire, it is scarcely possible to be low-spirited; a thousand
pleasing images spring up in the mind, and I can see the little blue
demons scampering off like parish boys pursued by the beadle.
MRS. PARTINGTON
[Sidenote: _Sydney Smith_]
As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing ere long a
reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most absurd notion that ever
entered into human imagination.
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