119. And, for a yet more important reason, such appearance is not
desirable. Melancholy, when it is productive of pleasure, is accompanied
either by loveliness in the object exciting it, or by a feeling of pride
in the mind experiencing it. Without one of these, it becomes absolute
pain, which all men throw off as soon as they can, and suffer under as
long as their minds are too weak for the effort. Now, when it is
accompanied by loveliness in the object exciting it, it forms beauty;
when by a feeling of pride, it constitutes the pleasure we experience in
tragedy, when we have the pride of endurance, or in contemplating the
ruin, or the monument, by which we are informed or reminded of the pride
of the past. Hence, it appears that age is beautiful only when it is the
decay of glory or of power, and memory only delightful when it reposes
upon pride.[19] All remains therefore of what was merely devoted to
pleasure; all evidence of lost enjoyment; all memorials of the
recreation and rest of the departed; in a word, all desolation of
delight is productive of mere pain, for there is no feeling of
exultation connected with it. Thus, in any ancient habitation, we pass
with reverence and pleasurable emotion through the ordered armory, where
the lances lie, with none to wield; through the lofty hall, where the
crested scutcheons glow with the honor of the dead: but we turn sickly
away from the arbor which has no hand to tend it, and the boudoir which
has no life to lighten it, and the smooth sward which has no light feet
to dance on it.
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