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And who can fail to remember what superior resources a cultivated mind
has over one sunk in sloth and ignorance,--how much wider an outlook,
how much larger and more varied interests, and how these things support
when outward props fail, how they strengthen in misfortune and pain, and
keep the heart from anxieties which might wear out the body? Scott,
dictating "Ivanhoe" in the midst of a torturing sickness, and so rising,
by force of a cultivated imagination, above all physical anguish, to
revel in visions of chivalric splendor, is but the type of men
everywhere, who, but for resources supplied by the mind, would have sunk
beneath the blows of adverse fortune, or else sought forgetfulness in
brutalizing and destructive pleasures. Sometimes a book is better far
than medicine, and more truly soothing than the best anodyne. Sometimes
a rich-freighted memory is more genial than many companions. Sometimes a
firm mind, that has all it needs within itself, is a watchtower to which
we may flee, and from which look down calmly upon our own losses and
misfortunes.


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