oment; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation
for another; all their ideas are _in transitu_. Every thing is
detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years
before a Frenchman would think of the _Horas non numero nisi serenas_.
Its impassioned repose and _ideal_ voluptuousness are as far from
their breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare--"How sweet the
moonlight sleeps upon that bank!" They never arrive at the
classical--or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion,
and pleasure; but they do not expand their perceptions into
refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing
fine in the ground-work of the imagination, nothing fine in the
superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy, fanciful (to
give them their due)--but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere
good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile
salt has flown off, nothing but a _caput mortuum_ remains. They have
infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches, which
seem made for anything but to tell the hour--gold-repeaters, watches
with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is no
escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to
calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for me,
without remarking every moment as it flies; and farther, I must say I
dislike a watch (whether of French or English manufacture) that comes
to me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not present its
clear, open aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the
time of day. All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under
pretence that the glass-lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the
dust or air and obstructs the movement of the watch), is not to
husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and
self-importance, like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries
about with one in one's pocket, instead of asking a common question of
an acquaintance or companion. There are two clocks which strike the
hour in the room where I am. This I do not like. In the first place, I
do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes (it is like the
second tap of a saucy servant at your door when perhaps you have no
wish to get up): in the next place, it is starting a difference of
opinion on the subject, and I am averse to every appearance of
wrangling and disputation. Time moves o