TEMPER.
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There is a sort of fitful gaiety very peculiar to the ill tempered. I have known the most sullen and morose women light up with bursts of brilliant vivacity, which to me, who was aware of the real state of the atmosphere, loaded as it was with thunder and storm, appeared very awful. It was like the precursive lightnings, which manifest to the eye the density and blackness of the coming desolation.
The secret, the charm, the spell, that “makes to-morrow cheerful as to-day,” is the even, spring-like sunshine of the mind, which, though sometimes veiled by the vapour of a passing melancholy, is still seen, pure and bright, through the shadowy medium. This is worth all the explosions of hysterical gaiety in the world. Between the sadness of sensibility and the gloom of morosity, what a difference! But the worst of it is, that, in both instances, the morale goes for so little, and the physique for so much, that the drop or the drachm more or less, in the prescribed dose, makes the surly gay, and the gay sombre.
“There are individuals,” says the unrivalled Madame de Staël (Mademoiselle de Launey,) “whose good and bad humour are equally unbearable.” This was applied to her royal mistress and patroness, the Duchesse de Maine; but it is applicable to half the fine ladies and spoiled children of fashion and fortune, all the world over. There was nothing I dreaded half so much as getting into high favour with Lady ——, when she got into high spirits. Her epilepsy of good humour was insupportable; such tyranny of kindness, such vociferation of gaiety! Running up the great stairs of —— one day, I came against a friend, who was going down. “What are you flying from, in such haste?” he asked.
“From Lady ——’s good humour,” said I.
He told my mot, and I lost my friend. How often does indiscretion pass for ingratitude! Yet the indiscreet are never ungrateful, for they are uncalculating; and ingratitude, coming from insensibility, cannot act upon impulse. Strong impulses come of strong feelings; and strong feelings are the source of all that is great and good, not, alas! of all that is wise: and so end my inferences.