that he should have his objects, and hopes, and friendships, and enmities, is all wonderful in the few short years of this passing existence. That our habits should so outlive our powers; that our ambition should begin at the close of life; that our hopes and anxieties should bloom in our wrinkles; that the love of acquisition should so long survive the enjoyment; and that our desire of knowledge should increase with our decay; are to me irresistible proofs of the vast disproportion between our existence and our faculties, and of the separate natures of our corporeal and mental constitution. This princely permanence of the mind, this "forma mentis æterna," is proved in a clear and astonishing manner by the inverse proportion in which its capacities improve under a visible decay of the instrument of its operations. Even in the hour of mortal decrepitude the soul asserts its independency, and exhibits proofs that, however it may fail in its organical functions, its essential powers are in no sort diminished. The living faculties are destined here to work with instruments not immortal like themselves, but of frail and perishable natures. When these are injured by age or accident, they are sometimes repaired, sometimes supplied, by human contrivance the mind, when called upon, is always ready; give it but an engine, and its action recommences. Now either it was the same, or it was reduced in its capacities, during the suspension of its operations, and mutilation of its instruments. If it were defalcated and reduced, we must consent that human means could restore the living powers. If it were the same, then is the mind as separate from the body, its vehicle, as is the charioteer from the chariot in which he rides. Yet for all this it is melancholy to reflect upon the changing condition of all that regards our nature; to contemplate the decline and dissolution of the ostensible objects of all our cares, affections, and friendships; then to look inwards, and regard the revolutions of our own bosoms, the shadowy succession of hopes and wishes, the gradual dereliction of those interests and pleasures in which our hearts have formerly delighted, and the painful disenchantment of those happy delusions which make a paradise of our thoughts in early life, and which are among the most precious sacrifices that youth can make to manhood, or inexperience to knowledge. Yet this changing condition of man brings its comforts as well as its regrets: the objects of our anxieties, our pains, our loves, and our sorrows, alter their complexion or lose their existence in a little time, and nothing but remorse can so fasten upon the mind, but that its liberty may again be regained at some subsequent period, in some new condition or posture of things. It is the solace of disappointed ambition to reflect that those rewards and attainments, which at present elude its grasp, will one day or other be robbed of their relish and attractions, and that thus a sort of revenge will be given it in this natural waste of life; and love despised may find comfort in the thought, that the period is not very distant when those features, which inspired it, shall lose their polish, and those feelings shall be blunted from which it drew its power to torment us. Were it not for this insensible change, that is perpetually taking place in our bosoms and in the colour of every thing around us, it would be impossible for human nature to support the losses and sorrows to which it is subject. It is that law of our existence in which Providence has peculiarly consulted human · imbecility; for, without such a law, our reason could VOL. XLIIL but ill contend with the crosses and calamities of life. But if this condition of universal change was designed as a source of consolation to suffering humanity, it was also designed to be a perpetual lesson of instruction, and a gradual preparation for that last great change to which at length we must resign ourselves. Amidst so much fluctuation and so much mortality, in such a state of lubricity and deception, amidst such a mass of perishing objects of pleasure and fleeting monuments of pride, one would think it impossible for a mind that has been exercised to reflection to fix its hopes on any thing in this life, or lend to present concerns that greater half of our being which belongs to a permanent and solid futurity. Such contemplations as these, continually renewed, make a salutary impression upon the mind; they release it from that thraldom in which the devotees to this world and its pleasures are involved, and hold it in a sort of equilibrium as to temporal concerns, while its option and its views fasten on a spiritual eternity. While such is the insecurity of enjoyment, the pleasures of this existence must be always incomplete; and as no depression of fortunes can long endure, so no elevation of circumstances can raise us above the dread of change. A certain secret alarm, an obtrusive threatening idea, enters into all our delights which depend upon present objects, and troubles those moments of felicity to which have been devoted all the ardours of the mind, as to the consummation of its hopes and rewards. This pensively painful feeling grows intenser as our happiness increases, gains strength with the progress of our fortunes, and is in a manner nourished from those very circumstances with which it is ever at hostility. How admirably is this constitution of things contrived! Our splendours, our sufferings, and our sorrows, thus carry their correctives and antidotes in themselves; and while life is restrained within that measure of enjoyment which is necessary to prevent or to disappoint a too great addiction to worldly pleasures, in the bosom of misery also there grows up a silent and comforting anticipation of change, which, where a sense of religion prevails, is fostered by our griefs, and fed by our calamities. How admirably are things contrived in a world like this, that is nothing but the fore-runner of an immortal futurity, to dispose the mind to the contemplation of that futurity! How suited to such ends is a world wherein such a passing scene is moving before us, such a giddy whirl of unwearied alteration, such a sliding succession of objects, that the thoughts have no repose, no resting-place in the compass of our present existence, no points of contact to which they can adhere, but are forced involuntarily onwards to those durable and sted fast objects which eternity presents! Although the physical vicissitudes of life, such as the loss of strength and the decay of beauty, more deeply affect us by their closer connection with our being, yet the suddenness of moral changes, and the rapid revolutions of our external condition, more forcibly excite our attention, and rouse a more animated sense of the uncertainty of human affairs. When we reflect on the sinking fortunes of nations, and the sudden falls of mighty kingdoms, we are impressed with an awful idea of the supreme Disposer, in whose hands a whole nation is but as one man. When we walk upon fields and meadows, where nothing but a few mounds remain to remind us that here, in ancient times, was raised a fortification that withstood the efforts of armies; and reflect that on the same spot where oxen now graze in tranquillity, was once decided the fate of empires;-when we tread upon piles of stones, which once administered to the grandeur of princes, and over-awed the territory round; how can we persist in building our pride upon such transitory foundations, and in sacrificing the repose of our minds for such unstable rewards? In the packet which my friend Eugenio has left with me, I find a short letter to his Amelia, where there are some affecting ideas on the present subject. "My dearest Emily, "I was thinking, last night, as I sat in my little plantation, how many new possessors it is destined perhaps to receive, long after time shall have swept away the memory of our names and our loves. In this frame of mind, I cast my eyes upon that fragment of a Gothic window, and those other vestiges of an ancient abbey, which remain upon the premises. Here my thoughts were carried back, through a series of changes, to that long-forgotten period in which this abbey stood in all its pride, regarded perhaps then as an upstart edifice in the fashion of the day, and built perhaps in part with the ruins of some older monument that occupied the same spot of ground But Time has seen, that lifts the low, But transient are the smiles of Fate! |