The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should endeavor to take life and the world as w what we might naturally suppose them meant for--a place and opportunity for enjoyment.
It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in life.

It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than we were born in.

It insists upon everybody's adding somewhat--a mite, perhaps, but earned by incessant effort--to an accumulated pile of usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own.

No life now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the tiniest rivulet to turn.

We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right.
Therefore it was--so, at least, the sculptor thought, although partly suspicious of Donatello's darker misfortune--that the young Count found it impossible nowadays to be what his forefathers had been.