1827.] ( 267 ) 



ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 



" Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us." SIR THOMAS BROWN. 



No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of my 

 brother's, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth, which 

 makes us amends for every thing. To be young is to be as one of the 

 Immortal Gods. One half of time indeed is flown the other half re- 

 mains in store for us with all its countless treasures ; for there is no line 

 drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We make the 

 coming age our own. 



" The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us." 



Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us like the 

 idle air which we regard not. Others may have undergone, or may still 

 be liable to them we " bear a charmed life," which laughs to scorn all 

 such sickly fancies. As in setting out on a delightful journey, we strain 

 our eager gaze forward 



' Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail," 



and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we 

 advance; so, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our in- 

 clinations, nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them. We 

 have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag ; and it seems that we 

 can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of life, and 

 motion, and ceaseless progress ; and feel in ourselves all the vigour and 

 spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present symptoms 

 how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things, decline into 

 old age, and drop into the grave. It is the simplicity, and as it were 

 abstractedness of our feelings in youth, that (so to speak) identifies us 

 with nature, and (our experience being slight and our 'passions strong) 

 deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it. Our short-lived con- 

 nection with existence, we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and 

 lasting union a honey-moon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor sepa- 

 ration. As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our 

 wayward fancies, and lulled into security by the roar of the universe 

 around us we quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, 

 instead of which it only overflows the more objects press around us, 

 filling the mind with their magnitude and with the throng of desires that 

 wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. 

 From that plenitude of our being, we cannot change all at once to dust 

 and ashes, we cannot imagine " this sensible, warm motion, to become a 

 kneaded clod" we are too much dazzled by the brightness of the waking 

 dream around us to look into the darkness of the tomb. We no more 

 see our end than our beginning : the one is lost in oblivion and vacancy, 

 as the other is hid from us by the crowd and hurry of approaching events*. 

 Or the grim shadow is seen lingering in the horizon, which we are doomed 

 never to overtake, or whose last, faint, glimmering outline touches upon 

 Heaven and translates us to the skies! Nor would the hold that life has 

 taken of us permit us to detach our thoughts from present objects and 

 pursuits, even if we would. What is there more opposed to health, than 

 sickness ; to strength and beauty, than decay and dissolution ; to the active 

 search of knowledge than mere oblivion ? Or is there none of the usual 

 advantage to bar the approach of Death, an>l mock his idle threats ; 



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