dance of the
hanger! Thus was I, as it were, by these still legible names, brought
into personal contact with Addison, and Steele, and Congreve, and
Garth, and Dryden, and with many _hereditary_ nobles, remembered, only
because they were patrons of those _natural_ nobles!--I read their
names aloud!--I invoked their departed spirits!--I was appalled by the
echo of my own voice!--The holes in the floor, the forests of cobwebs
in the windows, and a swallow's nest in the corner of the ceiling,
proclaimed that I was viewing a vision of the dreamers of a past
age,--that I saw realized before me the speaking vanities of the
anxious career of man! The blood of the reader of sensibility will
thrill as mine thrilled! It was feeling without volition, and
therefore incapable of analysis!

I could not help lingering in a place so consecrated by the religion
of Nature; and, sitting down for a few minutes on some broken boards,
I involuntarily shed a tear of sympathy for the departed great--for
times gone by,--here brought before my eyes in so tangible a shape! I
yielded to the unsophisticated sentiments which I could not avoid
reading in this #VOLUME# of ruins; and felt, by irresistible association,
that every object of our affections--that our affections themselves--and
that all things that delight us, must soon pass away like this place and
its former inhabitants! #Beginning yesterday--flourishing to-day--ceasing
to-morrow!#--such is the sum of the history of all organized being!
Certain combinations excite, and the creative powers proceed with success,
till balanced by the inertia of the materials--a contest of maturity
arises, measured in length by the activity of the antagonist powers;--but
the _unceasing_ inertia finally prevails over the original excitement
and its accessary stimuli, and ultimately produces disorganization and
dissolution! Such is the abstract view of the physical laws which, in
the peculiar career of intellectual man, successively give rise to
#HOPE# in youth--#PRIDE# in manhood--#REFLECTION# in decay--and
#HUMILITY# in old age. He knows his fate to be inevitable--but every
day's care is an epitome of his course, and every night's sleep
affords an anticipation of its end!--He is thus taught to die--and, if
in spite of his vices or follies he should live till his world has
passed away before him, he will then contentedly await the termination
of that vital action which, creating no passion, affords no enjoymen