e
the raree-show of the universe; and then, as if life were a burthen to
support, lets us instantly down again. Yet in that short interval,
what "brave sublunary things" does not the spectacle unfold; like a
bubble, at one minute reflecting the universe, and the next, shook to
air!--To see the golden sun and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean,
to walk upon the green earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures,
to look down giddy precipices or over distant flowery vales, to see
the world spread out under one's finger in a map, to bring the stars
near, to view the smallest insects in a microscope, to read history,
and witness the revolutions of empires and the succession of
generations, to hear of the glory of Sidon and Tyre, of Babylon and
Susa, as of a faded pageant, and to say all these were, and are now
nothing, to think that we exist in such a point of time, and in such a
corner of space, to be at once spectators and a part of the moving
scene, to watch the return of the seasons, of spring and autumn, to
hear

----"The stockdove plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale"----

to traverse desert wildernesses, to listen to the midnight choir, to
visit lighted halls, or plunge into the dungeon's gloom, or sit in
crowded theatres and see life itself mocked, to feel heat and cold,
pleasure and pain, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, to study the
works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony, to worship fame
and to dream of immortality, to have read Shakspeare and belong to the
same species as Sir Isaac Newton;[40] to be and to do all this, and
then in a moment to be nothing, to have it all snatched from one like
a juggler's ball or a phantasmagoria; there is something revolting and
incredible to sense in the transition, and no wonder that, aided by
youth and warm blood, and the flush of enthusiasm, the mind contrives
for a long time to reject it with disdain and loathing as a monstrous
and improbable fiction, like a monkey on a house-top, that is loath,
amidst its fine discoveries and specious antics, to be tumbled
head-long into the street, and crushed to atoms, the sport and
laughter of the multitude!

[Footnote 40: Lady Wortley Montagu says, in one of her letters, that
"she would much rather be a rich _effendi_, with all his ignorance,
than Sir Isaac Newton, with all his knowledge." This was not perhaps
an impolitic choice, as she had a better chance of becoming one