mstance. Time would lose its
abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity or a
jack-in-a-box: its prophetic warnings would have no effect, if it
obviously spoke only at our prompting, like a paltry ventriloquism.
The clock that tells the coming, dreaded hour--the castle bell, that
"with its brazen throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy
ear of night"--the curfew, "swinging slow with sullen roar" o'er
wizard stream or fountain, are like a voice from other worlds, big
with unknown events. The last sound, which is still kept up as an old
custom in many parts of England, is a great favourite with me. I used
to hear it when a boy. It tells a tale of other times. The days that
are past, the generations that are gone, the tangled forest glades and
hamlets brown of my native country, the woodsman's art, the Norman
warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror's
iron rule and peasant's lamp extinguished, all start up at the
clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess,
nothing at present interests me but what has been--the recollection of
the impressions of my early life, or events long past, of which only
the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom.
That _things should be that are now no more_, creates in my mind the
most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery of the past,
nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the generations to come, are
nothing to me. We care no more about the world in the year 2300 than
we do about one of the planets. Even George IV is better than the Earl
of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the moon as think of
stealing a march upon Time with impunity. _De non apparentibus et non
existentibus eadem est ratio._ Those who are to come after us and push
us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may be said
to exist _in vacuo_, we know not upon what, except as they are blown
up with vain and self conceit by their patrons among the moderns. But
the ancients are true and _bona-fide_ people, to whom we are bound by
aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom seen by the mellow
light of history we feel our own existence doubled and our pride
consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public in
general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference about the
future to what is to happen to themselves, or to the part they are to
act in the busy scene. For my own part, I