1 844-54. RETROSPECT OF LIFE. 249 



there anything to bridge over the long space between our 

 two meetings. It has set me to meditate a great deal, this 

 glimpse of myself at seventeen, with all that filled the years 

 onwards to thirty-two obliterated ; and I realize better than 

 I might otherwise have done what a changed being I am. I 

 lament not the loss of my vivacity, for I had more than enough 

 of that volatile ingredient, and can well afford to let some of 

 it evaporate. One thing, however, does alarm me, the fear, 

 namely, lest I should settle down into a sombre, prosaic 

 mortal, leading a dawdling, semi-valetudinarian, coddling 

 life, which were worse even than the alternate and unequal 

 rises and falls of my youthful, wayward moods. The fires 

 of my heart, which once blazed, are all burned out, or de- 

 liberately extinguished ; and without making vows, which 

 would be foolish and even sinful, I feel every day the circle 

 of my imaginative rovings shorten its diameter, and the 

 thirst of my earlier ambition cease, although, like the thirst 

 of a fever-patient, it has never been slaked. All this is well, 

 if the empty heart be filled by Him who should from the 

 first have been its occupant ; but I have seen in others, and 

 I fear in myself, an exchange of dissipation of mind for 

 unprofitable idleness, and this the more that my mode of 

 life carries me out of the busy current in which I formerly 

 at least struggled to swim, and my health has embayed me 

 in a side pool, little influenced by the tide." 



The various effects of affliction he expresses to Daniel 

 Macmillan in these words : " The furnace of affliction 

 puffs away some men in black smoke, and hardens others 

 into useless slags, and melts a few into clear glass. May it 

 refine us into gold seven times purified, ready to be fashioned 

 into vessels for the Master's use ! " Expecting a visit from 

 this friend in 1850, he tells him, "I am reputed to be much 

 graver than I was, but when not in sickness or pain there 



