HOPE. 289 



forter in youth ; it is our flatterer and comforter in years 

 which need still more to be flattered and comforted. What 

 it promises, indeed, is different in these different years ; but 

 the kindness and irresistible persuasion with which it makes 

 the promise are still the same ; and while we laugh, in ad- 

 vanced age, at the easy confidence of our youth in wishes 

 which seem incapable of deceiving us now, we are still, as to 

 other objects of desire, the same credulous, confiding beingSj 

 whom it was then so easy to make happy. Nor is it only 

 over terrestrial things that it diffuses its delightful radiance. 

 The power which attends us with consolation, and with more 

 than consolation, through the anxieties and labours of our 

 life, does not desert us at the close of that life which it has 

 blessed or consoled. It is present with us in our last mo- 

 ment. We look to scenes which are opening on us above, 

 and we look to t^ose around us, with an expectation still 

 stronger than the strongest hope, that, in the world which 

 we are about to enter, we shall not have only remembrances 

 of what we loved and revered on earth, but that the friend- 

 ships from which it is so painful to part, even in parting 

 to Heaven, will be restored to us there, to unite us again in 

 affection more ardent, and in still purer adoration of that 

 Great Being, whose perfections, as far as they were then 

 dimly seen by us, it was our delight to contemplate together 

 on earth, when it was only on earth that we could trace 

 them, but on that earth which seemed holier, and lovelier, 

 and more divine, when thus joined in our thought with the 

 Excellence that made it. Browne 



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