MERE SENSATION. 21 



have no more effect upon our organs of sense than 

 sun-beams when they play on the snow-clad sum- 

 mit of a lofty mountain ; they are reflected away 

 in an instant ; and that which would have warmed 

 a more genial place into life and beauty, is gone 

 wasted, never to return. How scorpion-like, a 

 little bit of the tail of some day spent in favourable 

 places, but spent thoughtlessly, will turn and sting 

 us with the remorse of how much we have lost, 

 and lost never to be recalled or replaced ! How 

 often, even when the most delightfully instructive 

 prospects are before us, have we reason to address 

 ourselves in the words of Macbeth to the ghost of 

 his murdered friend : 



" Thou hast no speculation in these eyes 

 Which thou dost glare with." 



And we, too, are murderers, and murderers " red 

 hand" in the fact, and not in the remorse caused 

 by the dogging ghost of that which we are mur- 

 dering. We are murdering Time the means of 

 all knowledge, and the measure of all enjoying ; 

 and, independently of the direct loss, which is irre- 

 parable, if the ghost of murdered Time shall, at 

 any period, rise and haunt us, it is one of the 

 most terrible of ghosts, and we must abide its 

 tormentings alone and unpitied. 



This abuse of our time, and neglect of thinking, 

 instead of working its own cure, throws us into 

 the opposite fault; and, just because we have 

 gazed without thinking, we think without observ- 

 ing, and lose both the time and the thought ; and 

 lose it in utter oblivion, out of which not even the 

 ghost of the departed day can return to torment 



