, to be
accomplished by them in their own lifetime, which would require several
men and many lifetimes to complete; and, generally speaking, if any
person, who has passed the meridian of life, looks back upon his career,
he will probably own that his greatest errors have arisen from his not
having made sufficient allowance for the length of time which his
various schemes required for their fulfilment."

There are many traditional maxims about time which insist upon its
brevity, upon the necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon the
impossibility of recovering what is lost; but the practical effect of
these maxims upon conduct can scarcely be said to answer to their
undeniable importance. The truth is, that although they tell us to
economize our time, they cannot, in the nature of things, instruct us as
to the methods by which it is to be economized. Human life is so
extremely various and complicated, whilst it tends every day to still
greater variety and complication, that all maxims of a general nature
require a far higher degree of intelligence in their application to
individual cases than it ever cost originally to invent them. Any person
gifted with ordinary common sense can perceive that life is short, that
time flies, that we ought to make good use of the present; but it needs
the union of much experience, with the most consummate wisdom, to know
exactly what ought to be done and what ought to be left undone--the
latter being frequently by far the more important of the two.

Amongst the favorable influences of my early life was the kindness of a
venerable country gentleman, who had seen a great deal of the world and
passed many years, before he inherited his estates, in the practice of
a laborious profession. I remember a theory of his, that experience was
much less valuable than is generally supposed, because, except in
matters of simple routine, the problems that present themselves to us
for solution are nearly always dangerous from the presence of some
unknown element. The unknown element he regarded as a hidden pitfall,
and he warned me that in my progress through life I might always expect
to tumble into it. This saying of his has been so often confirmed since
then, that I now count upon the pitfall quite as a matter of certainty.
Very frequently I have escaped it, but more by good luck than good
management. Sometimes I have tumbled into it, and when this misfortune
occurred it has not unfrequently been