GLEANINGS OF WIT. Selima; or, a Lesson for the Discontented. THAT universal discontent, or disquietude, which runs through every rank and degree of life, hath been deservedly condemned by philosophers of all ages, as one of the bitterest reproaches of human nature, as well as the highest affront to the divine author of it-if, indeed, we look through the whole creation, and remark the progressive scale of beings, as they rise into perfection, we shall perceive to our own. shame and confusion, that every one seems satisfied with that share of life and happiness, which its Maker hath appointed for it :-Man, alone excepted; who is pleased with nothing that his bounty imparts, unless blessed with every thing that his power can bestow perpetually repining at the decrees of Providence, and refusing to enjoy what he has, from a ridiculous and never-ceasing desire of what he has not. The object which is at a distance from us, is always the most inviting, and that possession, the most valuable which we cannot acquire. With the ideas of affluence and grandeur, we are apt to associate those of joy and pleasure; and because riches and power may conduce to our happiness, we hastily conclude that they must do so; that pomp, splendor, and magnificence, which attend the great, are visible to every eye, while the sorrows which they feel, and the dangers they are obnoxious to, escape our observation. "Hence it arises, that almost every condition and circumstance of life is con sidered, as preferable to our own; that we so often fall in love with ruin, and beg to be unhappy. We weep, in short, when we ought to rejoice; and complain, when we ought to be thankful. The sun was sinking behind the western hills, and with departing rays illumined the lofty spires and turrets of Golconda; when the captive Selima, from the window of the son of Nouraddin's seraglio, casting a mournful look at the country, which she saw at a distance, beyondthe boundary of her confinement, fixed her eyes on some cottages which she could distinguish by the thin smoke ascending from them, and seemed to envy the humble condition of the lowly inhabitants. She longed to exchange her own situation for that of innocent poverty, and cheerful tranquillity-little, by little, the envied prospect faded on her sight, and she listened to the crashing of iron bars, and the closing that surrounded her; 'till at length, all was hushed-all became quiet as the hours of night, and stillness advanced-She then burst into the following soliloquy : "And was I formed a reasonable being," she cried," for this? To be excluded for ever from society, and doomed to add one more to the slaves of the Monarch of the East. Have I deserved this at the hand of Providence, or exacted this unequal lot from the genius of distribution? Did I ever turn my eyes from the cries of the needy, or shut the open hand of mercy from the poor? Why then am I punished in this manner?-Why for ever denied the blessing of mutual love, and fated to weep in vain to the walls of a prison house? While I was a child, the angel of death closed the eyes of my parents, when as yet I knew not their loss; and a few months ago, the same minister of terror bore from my arms, a sister whom I loved, to the land of silence and shadows: the rest of those that were dear to me, groan under the bonds of servitude, in the mines of |
