Year: 1860




Notices for Political Meetings to be charged in all


Marriages. Notices of Funerals and announcement
of Sermons so cents each. nov11'59


EXTRA LEAF ON CONsOLATION.
Tselected for the Int gencer from Flower Fruit and
Thorn Priccs.l


JEAN PAUL RICHTER.


A time will come, that is, must come,
when we shall be commanded by morality


not only to cease tOrmenting others, but
also ourselves. A time must come when
man. even on earth, shall wipe away most
of his tears, were it only from pride
Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the
eyes, and sighs out of the breast, so
quickly, that the wise man can never
wholly lay aside the garb of mourning
from his body; but let his soul wear none.
For if it is ever n merit to bear a small
suffering with chcerfulness, so must the
calm and patient endurance of the worst
be merit, and will only differ in being
greater one; as the same reason which Is


valid for the forgiveness of small injuries
is equally valid for the forgiveness of the


greatest The first thing that we have to
contend against and despise, in sorrow rs
in anger, is its poisonous enervating
sweetness, which we are so loath to cX-
change for this labor of consoling our
selves, and to drive away by the effort of
reason. We must not exact of philosophy,
that with one stroke of the pen it
shall reverse the transformation of
Rubens, who, with one stroke of his
brush, changed laughing child into


weeping one. 1t is enough if it change
the full mourning of the soul into half


mourning; it is enough if can say to


myself will be content to endure the


sorrow that philosophy has left me; with


out it, it would be greater and the gnots


bite would be W&sp's sting. Even ply


sical pain shoots its sparks upon us out of
the electrical condenser of the imagina-
ton. We could endure the most acute


pnngs calmly, if they only lasted the six
tieth part of second; but, in fact, we
never have to endure an hour of pain, but
only succession of the sixtieth parts of q
second, the sixty hours Of which are col


lected into the burning focus of a second,
and directed upon our nerves by the imag-
ination alone. The most painful part of
yout bodily pain is that which is bodiless,
or immaterial, namely, our impatiencc,


and the delusion that it will last for ever.
There is many loss over which we all


know for certain that We shall no longer
grieYe in twenty-ten-twO years. Why
do we not say to ourselves; l will at once


there, to-day, throw away an opinion


which shall abandon in twenty years?-
! Why should be able to abandon errors
of twenty years standing, and not of
| twenty hours? When I awake from
dream which an Otaheite has painted for


me on the dark ground of the night, and
! find the Towering land melted away, l


scarcely sigh, thinking TO myself, 1T was
only DREAM" Why is it that if had
| really possessed this island while awake,
| and it had been swallowed up by an earth
quake, why is it that | do not then ex-
claim. :tThe island was only dream. -
Therefore am | more inconsolable at the


loss of a longer dream than ut the loss of


shorter-fOr that is the difference; and


why does man find q great loss less proba.


BILE and less matter of necessity, where


it occurs, than n small one2 The reason is


that every sentiment and every emotion is
mad, and exacts and builds its own world.


A man can we're himself that it is already,


or only, twelve o'clock. What folly! The
mood not only exncts its own world, its
own individual consciousness, but its own
time. beg every one to let his passions,
| for once, speak out plainly within himself,


and to probe and question them to the


bottom, as to what they really desire. He


will be terror-struck at the enormity of
these hitherto only half-muttered wishes.
| Anger wishes that all mankind had only


one neck; love, that it had only one heart;
grief, two tear-glands; and pride, two bent
| knees When ] read in Widman's "Court
| Chronicle" of the terrible bloody times of
the thirty years war, and as it were, lived


them over again; when heard once more


the cries of the tortured for help, as they


struggled in the DNnube-whirlpool of
their age, and again behold the clnsping of


hands, and the delirous wandering to and


fro on the several pillars of the crumbling
bridges, against which struck foaming


billows and fiercely-driven fields of ice
and thus reflected, GAIL the waves have


subsidized, the ice has melted the storm is


mute, and the human beings also with


their sighs, 81 was filled with peculiar


melancholy feeling of consolation for all


times; and asked, Was and is, then, this


hceting misery beneath the churchyard


gate of life, which three steps into the


nearest cavern could put an end to, worth


all this cowardly lamentation? Verify, If


there be, as believe there is, true con-
stancy under an eternal sorroW, there is
patience under a heeting one scarcely
worthy of the name. When the long,


heavy sword of war falls upon humanity,


and when thousand pale hearts are riven


and bleeding; or when, on blue serene
| evening, the hot, smoky cloud of city,


cast on the fuperal pyre, hangs darkly on
the sky,-Rs though it were the cloud of


ashes of q thousand consumed hearts and
! ijoys.-then be thy spirit lifted up in pride,
| and let it contemn the tear, and that for
which it falls, saying, "Thou art mnch
too insignificant thou everyday life, for the
! inconsolnblenesS of an immortNi,-thou
! tattcred. misshapcn, wholesale existence!
Upon this sphere, which is rounded with
! the ashes of thousands of years, amid the
"a