would be so. I can well imagine, that, if you told a
thoughtful and affectionate child, how well he would some day get on,
far from his parents and his home, his wish would be that any evil might
befall him rather than that! We shrink with terror from the prospect of
things which we can take easily enough when they come. I dare say Lord
Chancellor Thurlow was moderately sincere when he exclaimed in the House
of Peers, "When I forget my king, may my God forget me!" And you will
understand what Leigh Hunt meant, when, in his pleasant poem of "The
Palfrey," he tells us of a daughter who had lost a very bad and
heartless father by death, that,

"The daughter wept, and wept the more,
To think her tears would soon be o'er."

Even in middle age, one sad thought which comes in the prospect of
Future Years is of the change which they are sure to work upon many of
our present views and feelings. And the change, in many cases, will be
to the worse. One thing is certain,--that your temper will grow worse,
if it do not grow better. Years will sour it, if they do not mellow it.
Another certain thing is, that, if you do not grow wiser, you will be
growing more foolish. It is very true that there is no fool so foolish
as an old fool. Let us hope, my friend, that, whatever be our honest
worldly work, it may never lose its interest. We must always speak
humbly about the changes which coming time will work upon us, upon even
our firmest resolutions and most rooted principles; or I should say for
myself that I cannot even imagine myself the same being, with bent less
resolute and heart less warm to that best of all employments which is
the occupation of my life. But there are few things which, as we grow
older, impress us more deeply than the transitoriness of thoughts and
feelings in human hearts.

Nor am I thinking of contemptible people only, when I say so. I am not
thinking of the fellow who is pulled up in court in an action for breach
of promise of marriage, and who in one letter makes vows of unalterable
affection, and in another letter, written a few weeks or months later,
tries to wriggle out of his engagement. Nor am I thinking of the weak,
though well-meaning lady, who devotes herself in succession to a great
variety of uneducated and unqualified religious instructors; who tells
you one week how she has joined the flock of Mr. A., the converted
prize-fighter, and how she regards him as by far the most improving
preacher s