until the eye is wearied
with the eternal wheelings of their inimitable flight--Grecian
simplicities of motion, amidst a labyrinthine infinity of curves that
would baffle the geometry of Apollonius--seek the water at last, as if
with some settled purpose (you imagine) of reposing. Ah, how little have
you understood the omnipotence of that life which they inherit! _They_
want no rest; they laugh at resting; all is "make believe," as when an
infant hides its laughing face behind its mother's shawl. For a moment it
is still. Is it meaning to rest? Will its impatient heart endure to lurk
there for long? Ask rather if a cataract will stop from fatigue. Will a
sunbeam sleep on its travels? Or the Atlantic rest from its labours? As
little can the infant, as little can the waterfowl of the lakes, suspend
their play, except as a variety of play, or rest unless when nature
compels them. Suddenly starts off the infant, suddenly ascend the birds,
to new evolutions as incalculable as the caprices of a kaleidoscope; and
the glory of their motions, from the mixed immortalities of beauty and
inexhaustible variety, becomes at least pathetic to survey. So also, and
with such life of variation, do the _primary_ convulsions of nature--such,
perhaps, as only _primary_[17] formations in the human system can
experience--come round again and again by reverberating shocks.

The new intercourse with my guardian, and the changes of scene which
naturally it led to, were of use in weaning my mind from the mere disease
which threatened it in case I had been left any longer to my total
solitude. But out of these changes grew an incident which restored my
grief, though in a more troubled shape, and now for the first time
associated with something, like remorse and deadly anxiety. I can safely
say that this was my earliest trespass, and perhaps a venial one--all
things considered. Nobody ever discovered it; and but for my own frankness
it would not be know to this day. But _that_ I could not know; and for
years, that is from seven or earlier up to ten, such was my simplicity,
that I lived in constant terror. This, though it revived my grief, did me
probably great service; because it was no longer a state of languishing
desire tending to torpor, but of feverish irritation and gnawing care that
kept alive the activity of my understanding. The case was this:--It
happened that I had now, and commencing with my first introduction to
Latin studies, a large we