nces into the youth, his
intervals of gravity increase, and he builds up theories and judgments,
some of which no future time shall suffice to overturn. It is idle to
suppose that the first activity of our faculties, when every thing is
new and produces an unbated impression, when the mind is uncumbered, and
every interest and every feeling bid us be observing and awake, should
pass for nothing. We lay up stores then, which shall never be exhausted.
Our minds are the reverse of worn and obtuse. We bring faculties into
the world with us fresh from the hands of the all-bounteous giver; they
are not yet moulded to a senseless routine; they are not yet corrupted
by the ill lessons of effrontery, impudence and vice. Childhood is
beautiful; youth is ingenuous; and it can be nothing but a principle
which is hostile to all that most adorns this sublunary scene, that
would with violence and despotic rule mar the fairest flower that
creation has to boast.

It happens therefore almost unavoidably that, when the man mature
looks back upon the little incidents of his youth, he sees them to a
surprising degree in the same light, and forms the same conclusions
respecting them, as he did when they were actually passing. "The
forgeries of opinion," says Cicero, "speedily pass away; but the rules
and decisions of nature are strengthened." Bitter reproaches and acts of
violence are the offspring of perturbation engendered upon imbecility,
and therefore can never be approved upon a sober and impartial revision.
And, if they are to be impeached in the judgment of an equal and
indifferent observer, we may be sure they will be emphatically condemned
by the grave and enlightened censor who looks back upon the years of
his own nonage, and recollects that he was himself the victim of
the intemperance to be pronounced upon. The interest that he must
necessarily take in the scenes in which he once had an engrossing
concern, will supply peculiar luminousness to his views. He taxes
himself to be just. The transaction is over now, and is passed to the
events that preceded the universal deluge. He holds the balance with
a steadiness, which sets at defiance all attempts to give it a false
direction one way or the other. But the judgment he made on the case
at the time, and immediately after the humiliation he suffered, remains
with him. It was the sentiment of his ripening youth; it was the opinion
of his opening manhood; and it still attends him, when