th, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and
withereth."

The foundation of this sentiment is obvious. Men do not live for ever.
The longest duration of human existence has an end: and whatever it is
of which that may be affirmed, may in some sense be pronounced to be
short. The estimation of our existence depends upon the point of
view from which we behold it. Hope is one of our greatest enjoyments.
Possession is something. But the past is as nothing. Remorse may give it
a certain solidity; the recollection of a life spent in acts of virtue
may be refreshing. But fruition, and honours, and fame, and even pain,
and privations, and torment, when they ere departed, are but like a
feather; we regard them as of no account. Taken in this sense, Dryden's
celebrated verses are but a maniac's rant:

To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day:
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.

But this way of removing the picture of human life to a certain distance
from us, and considering those things which were once in a high degree
interesting as frivolous and unworthy of regard, is not the way by which
we shall arrive at a true and just estimation of life. Whatever is now
past, and is of little value, was once present: and he who would form a
sound judgment, must look upon every part of our lives as present in its
turn, and not suffer his opinion to be warped by the consideration of
the nearness or remoteness of the object he contemplates.

One sentence, which has grown into a maxim for ever repeated, is
remarkable for the grossest fallacy: Ars longa, vita brevis(9). I would
fain know, what art, compared with the natural duration of human life
from puberty to old age, is long.

(9) Art is long; life is short.

If it is intended to say, that no one man can be expected to master all
possible arts, or all arts that have at one time or another been the
subject of human industry, this indeed is true. But the cause of this
does not lie in the limited duration of human life, but in the nature of
the faculties of the mind. Human understanding and human industry cannot
embrace every thing. When we take hold of one thing, we must let go
another. Science and art, if we would pursue them to the furthest extent
of which we are capable, must