t is happy for us, that, though
in youth we hoped to live in a castle or a palace, we can make up our
mind to live in a little parsonage or a quiet street in a country town.
It is happy for us, that, though in youth we hoped to be very great and
famous, we are so entirely reconciled to being little and unknown. But
it is not happy for the poor girl who walks the Haymarket at night that
she feels her degradation so little. It is not happy that she has come
to feel towards her miserable life so differently now from what she
would have felt towards it, had it been set before her while she was the
blooming, thoughtless creature in the little cottage in the country. It
is only by fits and starts that the poor drunken wretch, living in a
garret upon a little pittance allowed him by his relations, who was once
a man of character and hope, feels what a sad pitch he has come to. If
you could get him to feel it constantly, there would be some hope of his
reclamation even yet.

It seems to me a very comforting thought, in looking on to Future Years,
if you are able to think that you are in a profession or a calling from
which you will never retire. For the prospect of a total change in your
mode of life, and the entire cessation of the occupation which for many
years employed the greater part of your waking thoughts, and all this
amid the failing powers and flagging hopes of declining years, is both a
sad and a perplexing prospect to a thoughtful person. For such a person
cannot regard this great change simply in the light of a rest from toil
and worry; he will know quite well what a blankness and listlessness and
loss of interest in life will come of feeling all at once that you have
nothing at all to do. And so it is a great blessing, if your vocation be
one which is a dignified and befitting one for an old man to be engaged
in, one that beseems his gravity--and his long experience, one that
beseems even his slow movements and his white hairs. It is a pleasant
thing to see an old man a judge; his years become the judgment-seat. But
then the old man can hold such an office only while he retains strength
of body and mind efficiently to perform its duties; and he must do all
his work for himself: and accordingly a day must come when the venerable
Chancellor resigns the Great Seal; when the aged Justice or Baron must
give up his place; and when these honored Judges, though still retaining
considerable vigor, but vigor less than enoug