1827.] On the Feeling of Immortality in YoHth. 273 



end to the agony of doubt and dread, to burst through our prison-house, 

 and confront the King of Terrors in his grisly palace!.... As I was 

 writing out this passage, my miniature-picture when a child lay on the 

 mantle-piece, and I took it out of the case to look at it. I could perceive 

 few traces of myself in it ; but there was the same placid brow, the 

 dimpled mouth, the same timid, inquisitive glance as ever. But its 

 careless smile did not seem to reproach me with having become a recreant 

 to the sentiments that were then sown in my mind, or with having written 

 a sentence that could call up a blush in this image of ingenuous youth! 



" That time is past with all its giddy raptures." Since the future was 

 barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation to the past, gathering 

 up the fragments of my early recollections, and putting them into a form 

 that might live. It is thus, that when we find our personal and substan- 

 tial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain a reflected and substituted 

 one in our thoughts : we do not like to perish wholly, and wish to bequeath 

 our names at least ,to posterity. As long as w'e can keep alive our 

 cherished thoughts and nearest interests in the minds of others, we do not 

 appear to have retired altogether from the stage, we still occupy a place in 

 the estimation of mankind, exercise a powerful influence over them, and 

 it is only our bodies that are trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our 

 darling speculations still find favour and encouragement, and we make as 

 good a figure in the eyes of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a better than we 

 did in our life-time- This is one point gained; the-demands of our self- 

 love are so far satisfied. Besides, if by the proofs of intellectual superiority 

 we survive ourselves in this world, by exemplary virtue or unblemished 

 faith, we are taught to ensure an interest in another and a higher state of 

 being, and to anticipate at the same time the applauses of men and angels, 



" Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries; 

 Even in our ashes live their wonted fires." 



As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. 

 Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence ; and we become misers ' 

 in this respect. We try to arrest its few last tottering; steps, and to make 

 it linger on the brink of (lie grave. We can never leave off wondering 

 how that which has ever been should cease to be, and would still live on, 

 that we may wonder at our own shadow, and when " all the life of life is 

 flown," dwell on the retrospect of the past. This is accompanied by a 

 mechanical tenaciousness of whatever we possess, by a distrust and a 

 sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy 

 feeling of youth, every thing is flat and insipid. The world is a painted 

 witch, that puts us off with false shews and tempting appearances. The 

 case, the jocund gaiety, the unsuspecting security of youth are fled: nor 

 can WGy without flying in the face of common sense, 



" From the last dregs of life, hope to receive 

 What its first sprightly sunnings could not give." 



If we can slip out of the world without notice or mischance, can tamper 

 with bodily infirmity, and frame our minds to the becoming composure of 

 still-life, before we sink into total insensibility, it is as much as we ought 

 to expect. We do not in the regular course of nature die all at once : we 

 have mouldered away gradually long before ; faculty after faculty, attach- 

 ment after attachment, we are torn from ourselves piece-meal while 

 living; year after year takes something from us; and death only con - 

 M.M. New Series VoL.Hl. No.] 5. 2 N 



