come when they will come, they will not run
to meet them. Nay more, they will not move one step to prevent them,
nor let any one else. The mention of such things is shocking; the very
supposition is a nuisance that must not be tolerated. The idea of the
obviate disagreeable consequences oppresses them to death, is an
exertion too great for their enervated imaginations. They are not like
Master Barnardine in _Measure for Measure_, who would not 'get up to
be hanged'--they would not get up to avoid being hanged. They are
completely wrapped up in themselves; but then all their self-love is
concentrated in the present minute. They have worked up their effeminate
and fastidious appetite of enjoyment to such a pitch that the whole of
their existence, every moment of it, must be made up of these exquisite
indulgences; or they will fling it all away, with indifference and
scorn. They stake their entire welfare on the gratification of the
passing instant. Their senses, their vanity, their thoughtless gaiety
have been pampered till they ache at the smallest suspension of
their perpetual dose of excitement, and they will purchase the hollow
happiness of the next five minutes by a mortgage on the independence and
comfort of years. They must have their will in everything, or they grow
sullen and peevish like spoiled children. Whatever they set their eyes
on, or make up their minds to, they must have that instant. They may pay
for it hereafter. But that is no matter. They snatch a joy beyond
the reach of fate, and consider the present time sacred, inviolable,
unaccountable to that hard, churlish, niggard, inexorable taskmaster,
the future. _Now or never_ is their motto. They are madly devoted to the
plaything, the ruling passion of the moment. What is to happen to them
a week hence is as if it were to happen to them a thousand years hence.
They put off the consideration for another day, and their heedless
unconcern laughs at it as a fable. Their life is 'a cell of ignorance,
travelling a-bed'; their existence is ephemeral; their thoughts are
insect-winged; their identity expires with the whim, the folly, the
passion of the hour.

Nothing but a miracle can rouse such people from their lethargy. It is
not to be expected, nor is it even possible in the natural course of
things. Pope's striking exclamation,

Oh! blindness to the future kindly given,
That each may fill the circuit mark'd by Heaven!

hardly applies here; namely, to ev