row old, we become more feeble and querulous,
every object "reverbs its own hollowness," and both worlds are not
enough to satisfy the peevish importunity and extravagant presumption
of our desires! There are a few superior, happy beings, who are born
with a temper exempt from every trifling annoyance. This spirit sits
serene and smiling as in its native skies, and a divine harmony
(whether heard or not) plays around them. This is to be at peace.
Without this, it is in vain to fly into deserts, or to build a
hermitage on the top of rocks, if regret and ill-humour follow us
there: and with this, it is needless to make the experiment. The only
true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the
repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference
whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with
graceful resignation.

_Hazlitt._

A VISION

A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take
possession of me alike in spring and in autumn. But in spring it is
the melancholy of hope: in autumn it is the melancholy of resignation.
As I was journeying on foot through the Apennines, I fell in with a
pilgrim in whom the spring and the autumn and the melancholy of both
seemed to have combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and
the colours of April:

"Qual ramicel a ramo,
Tal da pensier pensiero
In lui germogliava."

But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me of the not
unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season, in the stately
elm, after the clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines,
and the vines are as bands of dried withies around its trunk and
branches. Even so there was a memory on his smooth and ample forehead,
which blended with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still
looked--I know not, whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the
line of meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I
express--the breathed tarnish, shall I name it?--on the lustre of the
pilgrim's eyes? Yet had it not a sort of strange accordance with their
slow and reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object on
the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay
upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments now unfelt,
but never forgotten. It was at once the melancholy of hope and of
resignation.

We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden temp