we are informed or reminded of the pride of the past. Hence, it appears that age is beautiful only when it is the decay of glory or of power, and memory only delightful when it reposes upon pride.[1] All remains, therefore, of what was merely devoted to pleasure; all evidence of lost enjoyment; all memorials of the recreation and rest of the departed; in a word, all desolation of delight, is productive of mere pain, for there is no feeling of exultation connected with it. Thus, in any ancient habitation, we pass with reverence and pleasurable emotion through the ordered armoury, where the lances lie, with none to wield; through the lofty hall, where the crested scutcheons glow with the honour of the dead: but we turn sickly away from the arbour which has no hand to tend it, and the boudoir which has no life to lighten it, and the smooth sward which has no light feet to dance on it. So it is in the villa: the more memory the more sorrow; and, therefore, the less adaptation to its present purpose. But, though cheerful, it should be ethereal in its expression: "spirituel" is a good word, giving ideas of the very highest order of delight that can be obtained in the mere present. It seems, then, that for all these reasons an appearance of age is not desirable, far less necessary, in the
- ↑ Observe, we are not speaking of emotions felt on remembering what we ourselves have enjoyed, for then the imagination is productive of pleasure by replacing us in enjoyment, but of the feelings excited in the indifferent spectator, by the evident decay of power or desolation of enjoyment, of which the first ennobles, the other only harrows, the spirit.
