e timid, inquisitive
glance as ever. But its careless smile did not seem to reproach me
with having become a recreant to the sentiments that were then sown in
my mind, or with having written a sentence that could call up a blush
in this image of ingenuous youth!

"That time is past with all its giddy raptures." Since the future was
barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation to the past,
gathering up the fragments of my early recollections, and putting them
into a form that might live. It is thus, that when we find our
personal and substantial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain
a reflected and substituted one in our thoughts: we do not like to
perish wholly, and wish to bequeath our names at least to posterity.
As long as we can keep alive our cherished thoughts and nearest
interests in the minds of others, we do not appear to have retired
altogether from the stage, we still occupy a place in the estimation
of mankind, exercise a powerful influence over them, and it is only
our bodies that are trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our
darling speculations still find favour and encouragement, and we make
as good a figure in the eyes of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a
better than we did in our life-time. This is one point gained; the
demands of our self-love are so far satisfied. Besides, if by the
proofs of intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in this world,
by exemplary virtue or unblemished faith, we are taught to ensure an
interest in another and a higher state of being, and to anticipate at
the same time the applauses of men and angels.

"Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires."

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time.
Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers
in this respect. We try to arrest its few last tottering steps, and to
make it linger on the brink of the grave. We can never leave off
wondering how that which has ever been should cease to be, and would
still live on, that we may wonder at our own shadow, and when "all the
life of life is flown," dwell on the retrospect of the past. This is
accompanied by a mechanical tenaciousness of whatever we possess, by a
distrust and a sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead
of the full, pulpy feeling of youth, everything is flat and insipid.
The world is a painted witch, that puts us off with false shows and