322 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



must ford at the risk of being swept away, and there a 

 beautiful meadow with its flowers and its birds. Every 

 recovery one has from sickness is in some degree a return 

 of one's youth, and I could almost endure to be many 

 times sick for the sake of being many times young. 



'Now that I have got into this train, I must give you 

 the result of rny speculations on character, of which you 

 yourself (nay, do not start) are in some measure the 

 subject. I have observed that you are one of that happy 

 class of people who have the principle of immortality so 

 strong within them that they never become old. The 

 whole human race may be divided into two grand classes, 

 but the one is to be reckoned by its tens, and the other 

 by its millions. In the more numerous class, we see 

 man the animal, the creature of corruption and decay ; 

 in the other, man the child of eternity. The young of 

 most animals are gay sportive creatures, to whom life 

 is enjoyment, only think of the lamb and the kitten ; 

 but the one becomes the stolid ruminating sheep, the 

 other a staid demure puss, with a great deal of worldly 

 wisdom, and powers of gravity altogether incalculable. 

 Thus it is with the animal class of men. You may 

 know their age as exactly by the state of their minds, 

 as that of a cow by the rings on her horns ; they are 

 playful in youth, grave and staid when mature, stupid 

 in old age ; their minds are so much of a piece with their 

 bodies, that it needs no ordinary powers of faith to 

 believe that they will not perish together. The people of 

 the other class are animals, it is true, the more the pity, 

 but the man preponderates in them over the animal. 

 It is the part of them which neither dies nor becomes 

 old, that gives their character its tone. We see the 

 eartliy house of one of this class falling into decay, and 

 know that it must soon be altogether uninhabitable, 



