theme then set us by that incomparable caligraphist, Butterworth.
All "the old familiar faces" occasionally come in for a portion of that
feeling; and on that account, we are glad that we saw, but for one day
and one night, Charles Lamb's. Therefore, some dozen years ago we gave
up the Highlands, not wishing to quarrel with them, and confined our
tender assiduities to the Lowlands, while, like two great flats as we
were, we kept staring away at each other, with our lives on the same
level. All the consequences that might naturally have been expected have
ensued; and we are now as heartily sick of the Lowlands, and they of us.
What can we do but return to our First Love?

Allow us to offer another view of the subject. There is not about Old
Age one blessing more deserving gratitude to Heaven, than the gradual
bedimming of memory brought on by years. In youth, all things, internal
and external, are unforgetable, and by the perpetual presence of passion
oppress the soul. The eye of a woman haunts the victim on whom it may
have given a glance, till he leaps perhaps out of a four-story window. A
beautiful lake, or a sublime mountain, drives a young poet as mad as a
March hare. He loses himself in an interminable forest louring all round
the horizon of a garret six feet square. It matters not to him whether
his eyes be open or shut. He is at the mercy of all Life and all Nature,
and not for one hour can he escape from their persecutions. His soul is
the slave of the Seven Senses, and each is a tyrant with instruments of
torture, to whom and to which Phalaris, with his brazen bull, was a
pointless joke. But in old age "the heart of a man is oppressed with
care" no longer; the Seven Tyrants have lost their sceptres, and are
dethroned; and the grey-headed gentleman feels that his soul has "set up
its rest." His eyes are dazzled no more with insufferable light--no more
his ears tingle with music too exquisite to be borne--no more his touch
is transport. The scents of nature, stealing from the balmy mouths of
lilies and roses, are deadened in his nostrils. He is above and beyond
the reach of all the long arms of many-handed misery, as he is out of
the convulsive clutch of bliss. And is not this the state of best
happiness for mortal man? Tranquillity! The peaceful air that we breathe
as we are westering towards the sunset-regions of our Being, and feel
that we are about to drop down for ever out of sight behind the Sacred
Mountains