owded into a moment's compass, what might not the whole of life be
supposed to contain? We are heirs of the past; we count upon the
future as our natural reversion. Besides, there are some of our early
impressions so exquisitely tempered, it appears that they must always
last--nothing can add to or take away from their sweetness and
purity--the first breath of spring, the hyacinth dipped in the dew,
the mild lustre of the evening-star, the rainbow after a storm--while
we have the full enjoyment of these, we must be young; and what can
ever alter us in this respect? Truth, friendship, love, books, are
also proof against the canker of time; and while we live, but for
them, we can never grow old. We take out a new lease of existence from
the objects on which we set our affections, and become abstracted,
impassive, immortal in them. We cannot conceive how certain sentiments
should ever decay or grow cold in our breasts; and, consequently, to
maintain them in their first youthful glow and vigour, the flame of
life must continue to burn as bright as ever, or rather, they are the
fuel that feed the sacred lamp, that kindle "the purple light of
love," and spread a golden cloud around our heads! Again, we not only
flourish and survive in our affections (in which we will not listen to
the possibility of a change, any more than we foresee the wrinkles on
the brow of a mistress), but we have a farther guarantee against the
thoughts of death in our favourite studies and pursuits, and in their
continual advance. Art we know is long; life, we feel, should be so
too. We see no end of the difficulties we have to encounter:
perfection is slow of attainment, and we must have time to accomplish
it in. Rubens complained that when he had just learnt his art, he was
snatched away from it: we trust we shall be more fortunate! A wrinkle
in an old head takes whole days to finish it properly: but to catch
"the Raphael grace, the Guido air," no limit should be put to our
endeavours. What a prospect for the future! What a task we have
entered upon! and shall we be arrested in the middle of it? We do not
reckon our time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away, or our
progress slow--we do not droop or grow tired, but "gain new vigour at
our endless task;"--and shall Time grudge us the opportunity to finish
what we have auspiciously begun, and have formed a sort of compact
with nature to achieve? The fame of the great names we look up to is
also i