NEW-YEAR'S DAY. 209 



ter of December 8th, ' whether wise or foolish, we are no 

 longer boys ; last October a note of my father's hand- 

 writing in the first page of the big Bible, which was 

 once his and is now mine, informed me that I had then 

 completed my twenty-fourth year. Since the first page 

 of that Bible furnishes me with a fact of so serious a 

 nature, do you think it would be lost time should I spend 

 a few minutes every day in considering the facts which 

 are laid doAvn in its other pages ? My friend, J. Swan- 

 son, assures me it would not/ 



In a letter to Swanson of December 15th we meet 

 with the following decided repudiation of what is called 

 the selfish theory of morals. ' Are you still/ he asks, 

 ' a member of that School of Philosophy which resolves 

 every feeling expressive of affection into mere selfishness ? 

 I hope not. I have, ever since I heard of it, hated it as 

 heartily as ever I did any of the schools which perplexed 

 me in the days of my boyhood, and the more I examine 

 myself by patiently tracing the connection which sub- 

 sists between my feelings and the circumstances which 

 excite them, the more am I convinced that selfishness 

 does not supply all the ties of that connection. ... I 

 hate the selfish School of Philosophy. I wish I could 

 hate it as practically as St Paul did/ 



On the 1st of January, 1827, he writes to Ross. 

 His reflections are not of a jocund character: 'The 

 first sun of the year has not yet risen, but I have 

 trimmed and lighted my lamp, and set myself down to 

 write by the assistance of its little red flame. . . . Many 

 are the reflections which a closing and an opening year 

 suggest. You have often seen that Egyptian symbol, an 

 adder holding its tail in its mouth ; and I am sure that 

 you have observed that the slender circular body of that 

 adder is but a dull-looking thing, varied as it only is by 



VOL. I. H 



