mperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but
the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own,
and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of
itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please
because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch. When
I was a boy, I lived within sight of a range of lofty hills, whose blue
tops blending with the setting sun had often tempted my longing eyes and
wandering feet. At last I put my project in execution, and on a nearer
approach, instead of glimmering air woven into fantastic shapes, found
them huge lumpish heaps of discoloured earth. I learnt from this (in
part) to leave 'Yarrow unvisited,' and not idly to disturb a dream of
good!

Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of place. It
is not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of the future as it
thinks good, when it even effaces the forms of memory. Time takes out
the sting of pain; our sorrows after a certain period have been so often
steeped in a medium of thought and passion that they 'unmould their
essence'; and all that remains of our original impressions is what we
would wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent before
us, but the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presently
resume their power of deception over the eye: the golden cloud soon
rests upon their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes their
barren sides! Thus we pass on, while both ends of our existence touch
upon Heaven! There is (so to speak) 'a mighty stream of tendency'
to good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and are
imperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet with
strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is 'a tide in the
affairs of men,' a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by
means of which, 'with sails and tackle torn,' the wreck and scattered
fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our
desires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the
deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is
removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity,
and reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflection
and configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the
long perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged
and enriched by countless