doubt it: it is but
reasonable to suppose it. He that hath made this world and all upon it,
can have no limits to His power.

I wonder whether I shall ever see it.

I said just now, let us think. I had better have said, let us not
think; for thought is painful, even dangerous when carried to excess.
Happy is he who thinks but little, whose ideas are so confined as not to
cause the intellectual fever, wearing out the mind and body, and often
threatening both with dissolution. There is a happy medium of
intellect, sufficient to convince us that all is good--sufficient to
enable us to comprehend that which is revealed, without a vain endeavour
to pry into the hidden; to understand the one, and lend our faith unto
the other; but when the mind would soar unto the heaven not opened to
it, or dive into sealed and dark futurity, how does it return from its
several expeditions? confused, alarmed, unhappy; willing to rest, yet
restless; willing to believe, yet doubting; willing to end its futile
travels, yet setting forth anew. Yet, how is a superior understanding
envied! how coveted by all! a gift which always leads to danger, and
often to perdition.

Thank Heaven! I have not been intrusted with one of those
thorough-bred, snorting, champing, foaming sort of intellects, which run
away with Common Sense, who is jerked from his saddle at the beginning
of its wild career. Mine is a good, steady, useful hack, who trots
along the high-road of life, keeping on his own side, and only stumbling
a little now and then, when I happen to be careless,--ambitious only to
arrive safely at the end of his journey, not to pass by others.

Why am I no longer ambitious? once I was, but 'twas when I was young and
foolish. Then methought "It were an easy leap to pluck bright honour
from the pale-faced moon;" but now I am old and fat, and there is
something in fat which chokes or destroys ambition. It would appear
that it is requisite for the body to be active and springing as the
mind; and if it is not, it weighs the latter down to its own gravity.
Who ever heard of a fat man being ambitious? Caesar was a spare man;
Bonaparte was thin, as long as he climbed the ladder; Nelson was a
shadow. The Duke of Wellington has not sufficient fat in his
composition to grease his own Wellington-boots. In short, I think my
hypothesis to be fairly borne out, that fat and ambition are
incompatible.

It is very melancholy to be forced to acknowledge