ke the foolish fat scullion, in Sterne,
when she hears that Master Bobby is dead, our only reflection is--"So
am not I!" The idea of death, instead of staggering our confidence,
rather seems to strengthen and enhance our possession and our
enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like leaves, or be mowed
down like flowers by the scythe of Time: these are but tropes and
figures to the unreflecting ears and overweening presumption of youth.
It is not till we see the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy, withering
around us, and our own pleasures cut up by the roots, that we bring
the moral home to ourselves, that we abate something of the wanton
extravagance of our pretensions, or that the emptiness and dreariness
of the prospect before us reconciles us to the stillness of the grave!

"Life! thou strange thing, that hast a power to feel
Thou art, and to perceive that others are."[39]

[Footnote 39: Fawcett's Art of War, a poem, 1794.]

Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an art,
whose professed object is its destruction, with this animated
apostrophe to life. Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges
are most miraculous. Nor is it singular that when the splendid boon is
first granted us, our gratitude, our admiration, and our delight
should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from
thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest impressions
are taken from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we very
innocently transfer its durability as well as magnificence to
ourselves. So newly found, we cannot make up our minds to parting with
it yet and at least put off that consideration to an indefinite term.
Like a clown at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have
no thoughts of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our
existence only for external objects, and we measure it by them. We can
never be satisfied with gazing; and nature will still want us to look
on and applaud. Otherwise, the sumptuous entertainment, "the feast of
reason and the flow of soul," to which they were invited, seems little
better than a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play
till the scene is ended, and the lights are ready to be extinguished.
But the fair face of things still shines on; shall we be called away,
before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse of what
is going on? Like children, our stepmother Nature holds us up to se