n, into separate remembrance, all the
changes and varieties which the seasons brought over the material
world,--every gleam of sunshine that beautified the Spring,--every cloud
and tempest that deformed the Winter. In truth, were this power and
domination over the past given unto us, and were we able to read the
history of our lives all faithfully and perspicuously recorded on the
tablets of the inner spirit,--those beings, whose existence had been
most filled with important events and with energetic passions, would be
the most averse to such overwhelming survey--would recoil from trains of
thought which formerly agitated and disturbed, and led them, as it were,
in triumph beneath the yoke of misery or happiness. The soul may be
repelled from the contemplation of the past as much by the brightness
and magnificence of scenes that shifted across the glorious drama of
youth, as by the storms that scattered the fair array into disfigured
fragments; and the melancholy that breathes from vanished delight is,
perhaps, in its utmost intensity, as unendurable as the wretchedness
left by the visitation of calamity. There are spots of sunshine sleeping
on the fields of past existence too beautiful, as there are caves among
its precipices too darksome to be looked on by the eyes of memory; and
to carry on an image borrowed from the analogy between the moral and
physical world, the soul may turn away in sickness from the untroubled
silence of a resplendent Lake, no less than from the haunted gloom of
the thundering Cataract. It is from such thoughts, and dreams, and
reveries, as these, that all men feel how terrible it would be to live
over again their agonies and their transports; that the happiest would
fear to do so as much as the most miserable; and that to look back to
our cradle seems scarcely less awful than to look forward to the grave.

But if this unwillingness to bring before our souls, in distinct array,
the more solemn and important events of our lives, be a natural and
perhaps a wise feeling, how much more averse must every reflecting man
be to the ransacking of his inmost spirit for all its hidden emotions
and passions, to the tearing away that shroud which oblivion may have
kindly flung over his vices and his follies, or that fine and delicate
veil which Christian humility draws over his virtues and acts of
benevolence. To scrutinize and dissect the character of others is an
idle and unprofitable task; and the most sk