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OLD MORTALITY.
217
CHAPTER X.
Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shades!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain.
Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College.
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain.
Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College.
It is not by corporeal wants and infirmities only, that men of the most distinguished talents are levelled, during their lifetime, with the common mass of mankind. There are periods of mental agitation when the firmest must be ranked with the weakest of his brethren; and when, in paying the general tax of humanity, his distresses are even aggravated by feeling that he transgresses, in indulgence of his grief, the rules of religion and philosophy, by which he endeavours in general to regulate his passions and his actions. It was during such
