as mocks our observation; at other times, arranging themselves like those fleckered clouds where all the heavens are regularly broken up in small divisions, lying evenly over each other with light between each: a state of reverie best brought out in conversation, and we are accordingly re-introduced to our old friend Ellesmere, who comes forward to take part in educing its significance. Now our speculatist muses on law, and pronounces it a notable example of loss of time, of heart, of love, of leisure—pointing to the fact that many admirable and many high-minded men are to be found in all grades of the law, as a more curious instance of the power of the human being to maintain its structure unimpaired in the midst of a hostile element, than that a man should be able to abide in a heated oven. Now he contemplates those stern gigantic laws of Nature which crush everything down which comes in their way, which know no excuses, admit of no small errors, never send a man back to learn his lesson and try him again, but are as inexorable as Fate, and in the presence of which powers it seems as if the faculties of man were hardly as yet adequate to his situation here—a consideration which tends to charity and humility, as it also points to the existence of a future state. Now he meditates on the ambitious hopes and projects of youth—its reckless courage and elastic step—contrasted with subsequent stages of the journey of life, at each of which some hope has dropped off as too burdensome or too romantic, till at last it is enough for the man to carry himself at all upright in this troublesome world, and he sees that he has had not only the hardness, oiliness, and imperturbability of the world to contend with, but that he himself has generally been his worst antagonist: in this mood, our muser is tempted to cast himself under a tree, and utter many lamentations—but, more wisely, walks sedately by it, knowing that as we go on in life, we find we cannot afford excitement, and learn to be parsimonious in our emotions.[1] Now he dilates on the morbid phases of modern Puritanism—the secret belief among some men that God is displeased with men's happiness, in consequence of which they slink about creation, ashamed and afraid to enjoy anything—the cynicism which avoids some pleasure, and exhausts in injurious comment and attack upon other people any leisure and force of mind which it may have gained by its abstinence from the pleasure.[2] Now he dreams of moving for returns of the amount and
- ↑ Even thus Southey, in a letter to Chauncy Townsend, 1817, calls to remembrance the days when he declared, in the gush of youthful sentiment, thatbut Southey, the middle-aged man, adds, "The less of this the better. We stand in need of all that fortitude can do for us in this changeful world; and the tears are running down my cheeks when I tell you so."
He who does not sometimes wake
And weep at midnight, is an instrument
Of Nature's common work; - ↑ We append a happy illustration of the writer's manner, in reference to this question:—"Moreover, this censoriousness is not only a sin, but the inventor of many sins. Indeed, the manufacture of sins is so easy a manufacture, that I am convinced men could easily be persuaded that it was wicked to use the left leg as much as the right; whole congregations would only permit themselves to hop; and, what is more to our present point, would consider that when they walked in the ordinary fashion, they were committing a deadly sin. Now, I should not think that the man who were to invent this sin, would be a benefactor to the human race."—Companions of my Solitude, p. 31 (2nd edition).
