borders of the grave, ay, to the very moment when they fall into it;
a beautiful golden cloud surrounds them to the last, and such talk of the
shortness of time: through the medium of that cloud the world has ever
been a pleasant world to them; their only regret is that they are so soon
to quit it; but oh, ye dear deluded hearts, it is not every one who is so
fortunate!

To the generality of mankind there is no period like youth. The
generality are far from fortunate; but the period of youth, even to the
least so, offers moments of considerable happiness, for they are not only
disposed but able to enjoy most things within their reach. With what
trifles at that period are we content; the things from which in
after-life we should turn away in disdain please us then, for we are in
the midst of a golden cloud, and everything seems decked with a golden
hue. Never during any portion of my life did time flow on more speedily
than during the two or three years immediately succeeding the period to
which we arrived in the preceding chapter: since then it has flagged
often enough; sometimes it has seemed to stand entirely still; and the
reader may easily judge how it fares at the present, from the
circumstance of my taking pen in hand, and endeavouring to write down the
passages of my life--a last resource with most people. But at the period
to which I allude I was just, as I may say, entering upon life; I had
adopted a profession, and, to keep up my character, simultaneously with
that profession--the study of a new language. I speedily became a
proficient in the one, but ever remained a novice in the other: a novice
in the law, but a perfect master in the Welsh tongue.

Yes; very pleasant times were those, when within the womb of a lofty deal
desk, behind which I sat for some eight hours every day, transcribing
(when I imagined eyes were upon me) documents of every description in
every possible hand, Blackstone kept company with Ab Gwilym--the polished
English lawyer of the last century, who wrote long and prosy chapters on
the rights of things--with a certain wild Welshman, who some four hundred
years before that time indited immortal cowydds and odes to the wives of
Cambrian chieftains--more particularly to one Morfydd, the wife of a
certain hunchbacked dignitary called by the poet facetiously Bwa
Bach--generally terminating with the modest request of a little private
parlance beneath the greenwood bough, with no other wit