ly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting
union--a honey-moon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation.
As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward
fancies, and lulled into security by the roar of the universe around
us--we quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it,
instead of which it only overflows the more--objects press around us,
filling the mind with their magnitude and with the throng of desires
that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of
death. From that plenitude of our being, we cannot change all at once
to dust and ashes, we cannot imagine "this sensible, warm motion, to
become a kneaded clod"--we are too much dazzled by the brightness of
the waking dream around us to look into the darkness of the tomb. We
no more see our end than our beginning: the one is lost in oblivion
and vacancy, as the other is hid from us by the crowd and hurry of
approaching events. Or the grim shadow is seen lingering in the
horizon, which we are doomed never to overtake, or whose last, faint,
glimmering outline touches upon Heaven and translates us to the skies!
Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit us to detach our
thoughts from present objects and pursuits, even if we would. What is
there more opposed to health, than sickness; to strength and beauty,
than decay and dissolution; to the active search of knowledge than
mere oblivion? Or is there none of the usual advantage to bar the
approach of Death, and mock his idle threats; Hope supplies their
place, and draws a veil over the abrupt termination of all our
cherished schemes. While the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere
the "wine of life is drank up," we are like people intoxicated or in a
fever, who are hurried away by the violence of their own sensations:
it is only as present objects begin to pall upon the sense, as we have
been disappointed in our favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest
ties, that passion loosens its hold upon the breast, that we by
degrees become weaned from the world, and allow ourselves to
contemplate, "as in a glass, darkly," the possibility of parting with
it for good. The example of others, the voice of experience, has no
effect upon us whatever. Casualties we must avoid: the slow and
deliberate advances of age we can play at _hide-and-seek_ with. We
think ourselves too lusty and too nimble for that blear-eyed decrepid
old gentleman to catch us. Li