268 On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth. [MARCH, 



Hope supplies their place, and draws a veil over the abrupt termination of 

 all our cherished schemes. While the spirit of youth remains unim- 

 paired, ere the " wine of life is drank up," we are like people intoxicated 

 or in a fever, who are hurried away by the violence of their own sensa- 

 tions : it is only as present objects begin to pall upon the sense, as we have 

 been disappointed in our favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, 

 that passion loosens its hold upon the breast, that we by degrees become 

 weaned from the world, and allow ourselves to contemplate, " as in a 

 glass, darkly," the possibility of parting with it for good. The example 

 of others, the voice of experience, has no effect upon us whatever. Ca- 

 sualties we must avoid: the slow and deliberate advances of age we can 

 play at hide-and-seek with. We think ourselves too lusty and too nimble 

 for that blear-eyed decrepid old gentleman to catch us. Like the foolish 

 fat scullion, in Sterne, when she hears that Master Bobby is dead, our 

 only reflection is <c So am not I P The idea of death, instead of stag- 

 gering our confidence, rather seems to strengthen and enhance our pos- 

 session and our enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like leaves, 

 or be mowed down like flowers by the scythe of Time : these are but 

 tropes and figures to the unreflecting ears and overweening presumption 

 of youth. It is not till we see the flowers of JLove, Hope, and Joy, 

 withering around us, and our own pleasures cut up by the roots, that we 

 bring the moral home to ourselves, that we abate something of the wanton 

 extravagance of our pretensions, or that the emptiness and dreariness of the 

 prospect before us reconciles us to the stillness of the grave ! 



" Life ! thou strange thing, that hast a power to feel 

 Thou art, and to perceive that others are."* 



Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an art, whose 

 professed object is its destruction, with this animated apostrophe to life. 

 Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most miraculous. Nor 

 is it singular that when the splendid boon is first granted us, our gratitude, 

 our admiration, and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on our 

 own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and 

 strongest impressions are taken from the mighty scene that is opened to 

 us, and we very innocently transfer its durability as well as magnificence 

 to ourselves. So newly found, we cannot make up our minds to parting 

 with it yet, and at least put off that consideration to an indefinite term. 

 Like a clown at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have 

 no thoughts of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our 

 existence only from external objects, and we measure it by them. We 

 can never be satisfied with gazing ; and nature will still want us to look 

 on and applaud. Otherwise, the sumptuous entertainment, " the feast of 

 reason and the flow of soul," to which they were invited, seems little better 

 than a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the 

 scene is ended, and the lights are ready to be extinguished. But the fair 

 face of things still shines on ; shall w T e be called away, before the curtain 

 falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse of what is going on ? Like 

 children, our step-mother Nature holds us up to see the raree-show of 

 the universe ; and then, as if life were a burthen to support, lets us 

 instantly down again. Yet in that short interval, what " brave sublunary 

 things" does not the spectacle unfold; like a bubble, at one minute 



* Fa\vcett's ART OF WAR, a poem, 1704. 



