240 LITERAEY VALUES 



ing farther and farther back of us like a fair land 

 idealized by distance into which we may not again 

 enter. The future is alien and unknown, but the 

 past is a part of ourselves. So many ties bind us 

 to it. The past is the cemetery of our days. There 

 they lie, every one of them. Musingly we recall 

 their faces and the gifts they brought us, — the 

 friends, the thoughts, the experiences, the joys, the 

 sorrows ; many of them we have quite forgotten, but 

 they were all dear to us once. 



If our friends should come back from their graves, 

 could they be what they once were to us ? Not un- 

 less our dead selves came back also. How precious 

 and pathetic the thought of father and mother to all 

 men ; yet the enchantment of the past is over them 

 also. They are in that sacred land ; their faces 

 shine with its hallowed light, their voices come to us 

 with its moving tones. 



Pope in replying to a letter of Swift's said, " You 

 ask me if I have got a supply of new friends to make 

 up for those who are gone ? I think that impossi- 

 ble ; for not our friends only, but so much of our- 

 selves is gone by the mere flux and course of years, 

 that, were the same friends restored to us, we could 

 not be restored to ourselves to enjoy them." 



In view of this power and attraction of the past, 

 what do we mean by saying we would not live our 

 lives over again ? It seems to be an almost univer- 

 sal feeling. Cicero says, " If any god should grant 

 me, that from this period of life I should become a 

 child again and cry in the cradle, I should earnestly 



