IF the golden age is passed, it was not genuine. Gold cannot rust nor decay; it comes out of all admixtures, and all decompositions, pure and indestructible. If the golden age will not endure, it had better never arise: for it can produce nothing but elegies on its loss. A. W. Schlegel. It is the weak only who, at each epoch, believe mankind arrive at the culminant point of their progressive march. They forget that by an intimate concatenation of all truths, knowledge, the field to be run over, becomes more vast the more we advance; bordered as it is by an horizon that continually recedes before us. Humboldt. Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur scientia. FAUST, Is a man who has quitted the ways of vulgar men without light to guide him a better way. No longer restricted by the sympathies, the common interests, and common persuasions, by which the mass of mortals, each individually ignorant,—nay, it may be, stolid, and altogether blind as to the proper aim of life,—are yet held together, and like stones in the channel of a torrent, by their very multitude and mutual collisions are made to move with some regularity,—he is still but a slave; the slave of impulses which are stronger, not truer or better, and the more unsafe that they are solitary. Carlyle. So it is with that soul who had built herself a lordly pleasure-house wherein to dwell alone. For three years she throve in it -but on the fourth she fell, Like Herod when the shout was in his ears, Struck through with pangs of hell. soul, A spot of dull stagnation, without light A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, Remaining utterly confused with fears, And all alone in crime. Tennyson. 66 NETHER BARREL BETTER HERRING." SEE how in the fanning of this wheat, the fullest and greatest grains lie ever the lowest; and the lightest take up the highest place. Leighton. Voltaire is always found at topless by strength in swimming, than by lightness in floating. Carlyle. 66 HOW WE APPLES SWIM!" WEIGHT AND WORTH. AN old rusty iron chest in a banker's shop, strongly locked, and wonderfully heavy, is full of gold. This is the general opinion; neither can it be disproved, provided the key be lost, and what is in it be wedged so close that it will not, by any motion, discover the metal by clinking. Swift. Lady H. Stanhope records that Pitt had more faith in a man who jested easily, than in one who spoke and looked grave and weighty; for the first moved by some spring of his own within, but the latter might be only a buckram cover well stuffed with other's wisdom. Coleridge used to relate how he formed a great notion of the understanding of a solid-looking man, who sat during dinner silent, and seemingly attentive to his 'discourse. Till suddenly, some baked potatoes being brought to table, Coleridge's disciple burst out, "Them's the jockeys for me!" TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW. It is no very good symptom either of nations or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them: and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. Knowest thou YESTERDAY, its aim and reason? Courage, brother! Get honest, and times will mend. Carlyle. |