passing thought of the instability of the things of this
world, of which the face of the waters offered an image; but
such light impressions were swiftly effaced in the
uniformity of the ceaseless motion, which rocked me as in a
cradle; it held me with such fascination that even when
called at the hour and by the signal appointed, I could not
tear myself away without summoning all my force.

After supper, when the evening was fine, we used to go all
together for a saunter on the terrace, to breathe the
freshness of the air from the lake. We sat down in the
arbour, laughing, chatting, or singing some old song, and
then we went home to bed, well pleased with the day, and
only craving another that should be exactly like it on the
morrow....

All is in a continual flux upon the earth. Nothing in it
keeps a form constant and determinate; our affections,
fastening on external things, necessarily change and pass
just as they do. Ever in front of us or behind us, they
recall the past that is gone, or anticipate a future that in
many a case is destined never to be. There is nothing solid
to which the heart can fix itself. Here we have little more
than a pleasure that comes and passes away; as for the
happiness that endures, I cannot tell if it be so much as
known among men. There is hardly in the midst of our
liveliest delights a single instant when the heart could
tell us with real truth--"_I would this instant might last
for ever_." And how can we give the name of happiness to a
fleeting state that all the time leaves the heart unquiet
and void, that makes us regret something gone, or still long
for something to come?

But if there is a state in which the soul finds a situation
solid enough to comport with perfect repose, and with the
expansion of its whole faculty, without need of calling back
the past, or pressing on towards the future; where time is
nothing for it, and the present has no ending; with no mark
for its own duration and without a trace of succession;
without a single other sense of privation or delight, of
pleasure or pain, of desire or apprehension, than this
single sense of existence--so long as such a state endures,
he who finds himself in it may talk of bliss, not with a
poor, relative, and imperfec