HAPPINESS OF THE PEOPLE ESTIMATED.

I trust my reader is by this time sufficiently acquainted with the general outline of Fashionable life: it would only be accumulating observations unnecessarily to enter further into the subject: I shall therefore devote the present chapter to a brief investigation of the state of happiness among a people who, it must be observed, claim to be considered—the happiest of their species.

Happiness is, as moralists agree, a relative expression; and indicates the excess of the aggregate of good over that of evil in any given condition. The foundation of happiness therefore must be traced to the ideas which those, upon whose condition the question turns, are accustomed to entertain, of good and evil. So that if we wished to ascertain the amount of happiness in a life of Fashion, we must make our calculation out of those things, which constitute respectively good and evil in a Fashionable estimation. I have had occasion to observe before, that a Fashionable life is a life of sense; consequently all the sources of happiness in such a condition must be confined to the pleasures of sense. Now, it must be considered, that the pains of sense are at least as numerous as its pleasures; and that, by a law of Providence subject to very few exceptions, those who will have the one, must take their proportion of the other with them.

This observation is abundantly confirmed by what occurs in the experience of the parties under consideration. The pleasures which men of Fashion derive from the gratification of their animal appetites at the table, the gaming-house, and the brothel, have a very ample set-off in the inconveniences which they suffer from arthritic, nervous, and a thousand other, painful and retributive complaints. Nor are the gay and dissipated of the other sex exempted from the same contingency of constitutional suffering. Beside the common lot of human nature, they have a class of evils of their own procuring; and, by excesses as imprudent as they are immoral, they bring upon themselves a variety of diseases, for which neither a name nor a remedy can be found. There are those, it is true, who avoid much of this inconvenience, by mixing some discretion with their folly, and setting some bounds to their favourite gratifications: but then it is to be remembered, that these are restraints which render persons of licentious minds singularly uneasy; and they may therefore be considered as administering to pain, nearly in proportion as they abridge indulgence.

But supposing that we were to throw these severer items out of the calculation: there would still remain evils enough in a Fashionable condition, to keep the scale from preponderating on the side of pleasure. To shine in a ball-room, is, no doubt, a high satisfaction; but then to be outshone by another, (which is just as likely to happen,) is at least as great a mortification: to be invited to many modish parties, is really delightful; but then to know those who are invited to more than ourselves, is certainly vexatious: to find one’s-self surrounded by people of the first Fashion, is charming; but then to be dying with heat all the time, is something in the opposite scale; to wear a coat or a head-dress of the newest invention, is indeed a pleasure of the highest order; but then to see, by accident, articles of the same mode on the back of a man-milliner, or the head of a lady’s maid, is a species of vexation not easily endured. An opera, a play, a party, a night passed at a dance, or at a cassino, or a faro-table, are all events, to be sure, of the happiest occurrence; but then, to be disappointed of one, makes a deeper impression on the side of pain, than to be gratified with three, does on that of pleasure: and disappointments will happen, where many objects are pursued, and where the concurrence of many instruments is necessary to their accomplishment. A drunken coachman, a broken pannel, a sick horse, a saucy footman, a mistaken message, a dull play, indifferent company, a head-ach, a heart-burn, an epidemical disease, or the dread of it, a death in the family, Sunday, Fast-day, Passion week, and a thousand other provoking casualties, either deprive these entertainments of their power of pleasing, or even set them wholly aside. I should only weary my reader were I to lay before him in detail half the catalogue of those minor distresses which embarrass the idea of a modish life: he must however perceive, from the little which has been said, that every pleasure has its countervailing pain; and that every sacrifice to diversion and splendour has its correspondent chastisement in vexation and disgrace.

Hitherto those principles have been assumed as the basis of calculation, upon which people of Fashion have some advantages in their favour; but there is another ground upon which (to say the whole truth) it ought to be put, and on which all the advantages are against them.

Man (it is notorious) is a reflecting being; and, do what he will, he must reflect. He may choose an habitual career of sense; but still he must have, whether he seek or shun them, moments of Reflection. This is I admit, extremely inconvenient; but then it is without a remedy. My business, however, is, neither to impugn, nor to vindicate the existence of such a principle; but to show its bearings upon the sort of life which people of Fashion must necessarily lead. Not to enter into particulars, what can constitute a heavier affliction, than for a man of Fashion (or, which is the same thing, a man of the world) to be obliged to think over again the events of his licentious career? To be persecuted with recollecting the property he has squandered, the wine he has drunk, the seduction he has practised, and the duels he has fought? These things were well enough at the time; they had their humour and their reputation, and they were not without their pleasure: but then they were designed to be acted, and not reflected upon. The woman of Fashion is under the same law, and is therefore exposed to the same mental torments. She, too, must trace back (though she would give the world to be excused) the steps she has trodden in the enchanting walks of dissipation. She must live over again every portion of a life which, though too fascinating to be declined, is yet too shocking to be thought of. Her memory, also, must be haunted with frightful scenes, which remind her, at the expence of how much health, and property, and time, and virtue, she has sustained the figure which made her so talked of, and the gaieties which rendered her so happy. Now these are real afflictions; and that Reflection from which they result is, not without reason, felt and acknowledged as the scourge of their existence, by the ingenuous part, at least, of the Fashionable World.

Many expedients have indeed been suggested for laying this busy principle asleep, and many plans struck out for rendering its pangs supportable; but hitherto without success. For though it has been proposed to laugh it away, dance it away, drink it away, or travel it away; yet not one of these projects has answered the end: and Fashionable casuists are as far as ever from finding out a remedy of sufficient potency, to cure, or even abate, in any material degree, the pains of Reflection.

And here I cannot but remark, how grievously the seat of this disease (for such it is considered) has been mistaken by those who have so lightly undertaken to prescribe for its removal. They have manifestly considered it as a disorder of the nerves; and hence all the remedies which they have recommended, are calculated to promote, either by change of scene, or by some other mechanical impulse, a brisker circulation of the animal spirits. The ill success with which each has been attended, sufficiently proclaims the fallacy upon which they all are founded. If Reflection had been only a nervous disturbance, if it had arisen out of any disarrangement of the animal economy, some, at least, of the Fashionable nostrums would have dispersed the complaint: whereas it is notorious, that, under every regimen which has been tried, while the stronger symptoms have disappeared, the disorder has remained in the system; and neither Bath, nor Weymouth, nor Tunbridge, nor Town, has ever effected a cure.

The plain truth is, (whatever may be insinuated to the contrary by these MÉdecins À-la-mode,) that the disease is altogether moral; and, consequently, the seat of it is not in the nerves, but in the Conscience. There is, in fact, nothing new in the complaint: it is inseparably connected with a Fashionable career; and has been more or less the scourge of all, in every age, who have declined the duties which they owe “to God and their inferiors.” I take it to have been a malady of the very same description which afflicted Herod in his communication with the Baptist, and which made Felix tremble under the reasoning of Paul. It is not a little remarkable, that both these men of Fashion (for such no doubt they were) fell into the error which has been condemned, in the treatment of their disease; and each, there is reason to believe, carried it with him to his grave.

If my reader now adverts to the particulars which have been stated, he will be compelled to draw conclusions not a little humbling to the lofty pretensions of a Fashionable life. In few states of society, under its present imperfection, is happiness very high: and it might not perhaps be easy to assign the particular condition which embraces it in the greatest proportion. But surely after the discoveries which this discussion has made, we run no risk in affirming, that a life of Fashion is not that condition. The lot of mankind would be wretched indeed, if those were the happiest of the species, who, without exemption from the pains of sense, are excluded from the pleasures of Reflection: and who, as the price of enjoyments derived from the one, become subject to the chastisement inflicted by both.