at they looked like different
nations of the same species.

Observing an old man, who was the same person I before mentioned, as the
only artist that was at work on this side of the gallery, creeping up and
down from one picture to another, and retouching all the fine pieces that
stood before me, I could not but be very attentive to all his motions. I
found his pencil was so very light that it worked imperceptibly, and
after a thousand touches scarce produced any visible effect in the
picture on which he was employed. However, as he busied himself
incessantly, and repeated touch after touch without rest or intermission,
he wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a
figure. He also added such a beautiful brown to the shades, and
mellowness to the colours, that he made every picture appear more perfect
than when it came fresh from the master's pencil. I could not forbear
looking upon the face of this ancient workman, and immediately by the
long lock of hair upon his forehead, discovered him to be Time.

Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I cannot
tell, but, upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old man, my sleep
left me.

SPARE TIME.

Part One.

--_Spatio brevi_
_Spem longam reseces_: _dum loquimur_, _fugerit invida_
_AEtas_: _carpe diem_, _quam minimum credula postero_.

HOR., _Od._ i. 11, 6.

Thy lengthen'd hope with prudence bound,
Proportion'd to the flying hour:
While thus we talk in careless ease,
Our envious minutes wing their flight;
Then swift the fleeting pleasure seize,
Nor trust to-morrow's doubtful light.

FRANCIS.

We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet
have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are
spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose,
or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining our
days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. That
noble philosopher described our inconsistency with ourselves in this
particular, by all those various turns of expression and thoughts which
are peculiar to his writings.

I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a point
that bears some affinity to the former. Though we seem grieved at the
shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an
end. The minor longs to be of