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



Objects, on our first acquaintance with them, have that singleness and 

 integrity of impression that it seems as if nothing could destroy or obli- 

 terate them, so firmly are they stamped and rivetted on the brain. We 

 repose on them with a sort of voluptuous indolence, in full faith and 

 boundless confidence. We are absorbed in the present moment, or return 

 to the same point idling away a great deal of time in youth, thinking 

 we have enough and to spare. There is often a local feeling in the air, 

 which is as fixed as if it were of marble ; we loiter in dim cloisters, losing 

 ourselves in thought and in their glimmering arches ; a winding road 

 before us seems as long as the journey of life, and as full of events. 

 Time and experience dissipate this illusion ; and by reducing them to 

 detail, circumscribe the limits of our expectations. It is only as the 

 pageant of life passes by and the masques turn their backs upon us, that 

 we see through the deception, or believe that the train will have an end. 

 In many cases, the slow progress and monotonous texture of our lives, 

 before we mingle with the world and are embroiled in its affairs, has a 

 tendency to aid the same feeling. We have a difficulty, when left to 

 ourselves, and without the resource of books or some more lively pursuit, 

 to "beguile the slow and creeping hours of time," and argue that if it 

 moves on always at this tedious snaiPs-pace, it can never come to an end. 

 We are willing to skip over certain portions of it that separate us from 

 favourite objects, and irritate ourselves at the unnecessary, delay. The 

 young are prodigal of life from a superabundance of it; the old are tena- 

 cious on tlie same score, because they have little left, and cannot enjoy 

 even what remains of it. 



For my part, I set out in life with the French Revolution, and that event 

 had considerable influence on my early feelings, as on those of others. 

 Youth was then doubly such. It was the dawn of a new era, a new 

 impulse had been given to men's minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon 

 the sun of Life in the same day, and both were proud to run their race 

 together. Little did I uream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand in 

 hand with those of the human race, that long before my eyes should 

 close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more in the night of 

 despotism " total eclipse !" Happy that 1 did not. I felt for years, 

 and during the best part of my existence, heart-whole in that cause, and 

 triumphed in the triumphs over the enemies of man ! At that time, while 

 the fairest aspirations of the human mind seemed about to be realized, 

 ere the image of man was defaced and his breast mangled in scorn, phi- 

 losophy took a higher, poetry could afford a deeper range. At th'at time, 

 to read the *' ROBBERS," was indeed delicious, and to hear 



" From the dungeon of the tower time-rent, 

 That fearful voice, afamish'd father's cry," 



could be borne only amidst the fulness of hope, the crash of the fall of 

 the strong holds of power, and the exulting sounds of the march of 

 human freedom. What feelings the death-scene in Don Carlos sent 

 into the soul ! In that headlong career of lofty enthusiasm, and the 

 joyous opening of the prospects of the world and our own, the thought 

 of death crossing it, smote doubly cold upon the mind ; there was a 

 stifling sense of oppression and confinement, an impatience of our present 

 knowledge, a desire to grasp the whole of our existence in one strong 

 embrace, to sound the mystery of life and death, and in order to put an 



