Of all sound of all bells (bells, the music nigbest bordering upon heaven,) most solemn and touching 
is the peal which rings out the old year. I never hear it without gathering up of my mind to a concentra- 
tion of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, per- 
formed or neglected in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a 
personal colour; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed: — 
I saw the skirts of the departing year. 
It is no more than what in sober sadness every one of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave- 
taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me last night; though some of my companions affected 
rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the coming year, than any very tender regrets for the 
decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those who — 
Welcome the coming , speed the parting guest. 
I am naturally, before-hand, shy of novelties ; new books new faces, new years, — from some mental 
twist which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. I have almost ceased to hope ; and am san- 
guine only in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge into fore-gone visions and conclusions. I 
encounter pell-mell with past disappointments. I am armour proof against old discouragements. I forgive, 
or overcome in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again for love, as the gamesters phrase it, games for 
which I once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of those untoward accidents and events of my 
life reversed. I would no more ialter them than the incidents of some well-contrived novel. Methinks it is 
better that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and 
fairer eyes, of Alice W n, than that so passionate a love-adventure should be lost. It was better that 
our family should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell cheated us of, than that I should have at this 
moment two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea of that specious old rogue. 
In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to look back upon those early days. Do I advance a 
paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the intervention of forty years a man may have leave to love 
himself, without the imputation of self love ? 
If I know ought of myself, no one whose mind is introspective — and mine is painfully so — can have a 
less respect for his present identity, than I have for the man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and 
humoursome ; averse from counsel, neither taking it, nor offering it ; — a stammering buffoon ; what you 
will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all, and much more than thou canst be willing to lay 
to his door — but for the child Elia — that “ other me,” there, in the back ground — I must take leave 
to cherish the remembrance of that young master — with as little reference, I protest, to this stupid 
changeling of five and forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, and not of my parents. I 
can cry over its patient small-pox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can lay its poor fevered 
head upon the sick pillow at Christ’s, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle posture of maternal 
tenderness hanging over it, that unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it shrank from any 
the least colour of falsehood. God help thee Elia, how art thou changed ! Thou art sophisticated. 
I know how honest, how courageous (for a weakling) it was — how religious, how imaginative, how hopeful ! 
From what have I not fallen, if the child I remember was indeed myself, and not some dissembling guar- 
dian, presenting a false identity, to give rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate the tone of my moral 
being. The elders, with whom I was brought up, were of a character not likely to let slip the sacred 
observance of any old institution ; and the ringing out of the old year was kept by them with circum- 
stances of peculiar ceremony. In those days the sound of those midnight chimes, though it seemed to raise 
hilarity in all around me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery into my fancy. Yet I scarce 
conceived what it meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned me. Not childhood alone, but the 
young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he 
could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a 
hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now, shall I 
confess a truth ? I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration 
and grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like miser’s farthings. In proportion as 
the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual 
finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away "like a weaver’s shuttle.” Those 
metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with 
the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity ; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am 
in love with the green earth ; the face of town and country ; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet 
security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I 
am arrived ; I and my friends : to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. 
