1827.] On the Fueling of Immortality in Youth. 271 



Scots, at which I used to gaze when a boy, while the events of the period, 

 all that had happened since, passed in review before me. If all this mass of 

 feeling and imagination could be crowded into a moment's compass, what 

 might not the whole of life be supposed to contain ? We are heirs of the past ; 

 we count upon the future as our natural reversion. Besides, there are some 

 of our early impressions so exquisitely tempered, it appears that they 

 must always last nothing can add to or take away from their sweetness 

 and purity the first breath of spring, the hyacinth dipped in the dew, the 

 mild lustre of the evening-star, the rainbow after a storm while we have 

 the full enjoyment of these, we must be young ; and what can ever alter 

 us in this respect ? Truth, friendship, love, books, are also proof against 

 the canker of time ; and while we live, but for them, we can never grow 

 old. We take out a new lease of existence from the objects on which 

 we set our affections, and become abstracted, impassive, immortal in them. 

 We cannot conceive how certain sentiments should ever decay or grow 

 cold in our breasts ; and, consequently, to maintain them in their first 

 youthful glow and vigour, the flame of life must continue to burn as 

 bright as ever, or rather, they are the fuel that feed the sacred lamp, 

 that kindle " the purple light of love," and spread a golden cloud 

 around our heads ! Again, we not only flourish and survive in our affec- 

 tions (in which we will not listen to the possibility of a change, any more 

 than we foresee the wrinkles on the brow of a mistress), but we have a 

 farther guarantee against the thoughts of death in our favourite studies 

 and pursuits, and in their continual advance. Art we know is long; 

 life, we feel, should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties we have 

 to encounter: perfection is slow of attainment, and we must have time to 

 accomplish it in. Rubens complained that when he had just learnt his 

 art, he was snatched away from it : we trust we shall be more fortunate ! 

 A wrinkle in an old head takes whole days to finish it properly : but to 

 catch " the Raphael grace, the Guido air," no limit should be put to 

 our endeavours. What a prospect for the future ! What a task we have 

 entered upon ! and shall we be arrested in the middle of it ? We do not 

 reckon our time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away, or our 

 progress slow we do not droop or grow tired, but " gain new vigour at 

 our endless task ;" and shall Time grudge us the opportunity to finish 

 what we have auspiciously begun, and have formed a sort of compact 

 with nature to achieve? The fame of the great names we look up to is 

 also imperishable ; and shall not we, who contemplate it with such intense 

 yearnings, imbibe a portion of etherial fire, the divince particula aura, 

 which nothing can extinguish ? I remember to have looked at a print 

 of Rembrandt for hours together, without being conscious of the flight 

 of time, trying to resolve it into its component parts, to connect its strong 

 and sharp gradations, to learn the secret of its reflected lights, and found 

 neither satiety nor pause in the prosecution of my studies. The print 

 over which I was poring would last long enough ; why should the idea in 

 my mind, which was finer, more impalpable, perish before it ? At this, 

 I redoubled the ardour of my pursuit, and by the very subtlety and 

 refinement of my inquiries, seemed to bespeak for them an exemption 

 from corruption and the rude grasp of Death.* 



* Is it not this that frequently keeps artists alive so long, viz. the constant occupation 

 of their minds with vivid images, with little of the wear-and-tear of the body ? 





