perious; his
limbs athletic; his bearing haughty and dauntless. All life seemed
spread before him like a beautiful rich estate of which every acre was
his own. How easily will he conquer fame! how easily kindle passion. Who
shall withstand this pink and perfection of aristocracy--this ideal of
the age of fine gentlemen, with all the gifts of nature helped by all
the inventions of art?

Then I thought farther: "That splendid young nobleman in the picture
will look just as young as he does now when we shall be either
superannuated or dead." And I looked at you and your mother again and
thought: "It is just five minutes since I saw these two living beings,
and in this little space of time they have both of them aged a little,
though no human observer has enough delicacy of perception to detect so
inappreciable an alteration." I went gradually on and on into the
future, trying to imagine the changes which would come over yourself
more especially (for it was you who were the centre of my reverie), till
at last I imagined pretty accurately what you might be at sixty; but
there it became necessary to stop, because it was too difficult to
conceive the processes of decay.

After this, one thought grew upon me and became dominant. I thought, at
present he has all the senses in their perfection, and they serve him
without a hitch. He is an intelligence served by organs, and the organs
are all doing their duty as faithfully as a postman who brings letters.
When the postman becomes too infirm to do his work he will retire on his
little pension, and another will take his place and bring the letters
just as regularly; but when the human organs become infirm they cannot
be taken out and replaced by new ones, so that we must content ourselves
to the end, with their service, such as it may be. Then I reflected how
useful the senses are to the high intellectual life, and how wise it is,
even for intellectual purposes, to preserve them as long as possible in
their perfection.

To be able to see and hear well--to feel healthy sensations--even to
taste and smell properly, are most important qualifications for the
pursuit of literature, and art, and science. If you read attentively the
work of any truly illustrious poet, you will find that the whole of the
imagery which gives power and splendor to his verse is derived from
nature through one or other of these ordinary channels. Some
philosophers have gone much farther than this, and have a