"The Landscape Garden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

a class, are proverbially more happy than others- and then he
instanced the high ecstasies of the fox-hunter. His second principle
was the love of woman. His third was the contempt of ambition. His
fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other
things being equal, the extent of happiness was proportioned to the
spirituality of this object.
I have said that Ellison was remarkable in the continuous
profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by Fortune. In personal
grace and beauty he exceeded all men. His intellect was of that
order to which the attainment of knowledge is less a labor than a
necessity and an intuition. His family was one of the most illustrious
of the empire. His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of
women. His possessions had been always ample; but, upon the attainment
of his one and twentieth year, it was discovered that one of those
extraordinary freaks of Fate had been played in his behalf which
startle the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom
fail radically to alter the entire moral constitution of those who are
their objects. It appears that about one hundred years prior to Mr.
Ellison's attainment of his majority, there had died, in a remote
province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentlemen had amassed a
princely fortune, and, having no very immediate connexions,
conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century
after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various
modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest
of blood, bearing the name Ellison, who should be alive at the end
of the hundred years. Many futile attempts had been made to set
aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered
them abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was
aroused, and a decree finally obtained, forbidding all similar
accumulations. This act did not prevent young Ellison, upon his
twenty-first birth-day, from entering into possession, as the heir
of his ancestor, Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred and fifty
millions of dollars.*

* An incident similar in outline to the one here imagined, occurred,
not very long ago, in England. The name of the fortunate heir (who
still lives,) is Thelluson. I first saw an account of this matter in
the "Tour" of Prince Puckler Muskau. He makes the sum received
ninety millions of pounds, and observes, with much force, that, "in
the contemplation of so vast a sum, and of the services, to which it
might be applied, there is something even of the sublime." To suit the
views of this article, I have followed the Prince's statement- a
grossly exaggerated one, no doubt.

When it had become definitely known that such was the enormous
wealth inherited, there were, of course, many speculations as to the
mode of its disposal. The gigantic magnitude and the immediately
available nature of the sum, dazzled and bewildered all who thought
upon the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount of money might
have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. With