among priests or worshippers, or the
mere skill and eloquence, it may be, of its preachers of faith and
righteousness. In his scrupulous idealism, indeed, he too feels
himself to be something of a priest, and that devotion of his days to
the contemplation of what is beautiful, a sort of perpetual religious
service. Afar off, how many fair cities and delicate sea-coasts await
him! At that age, with minds of a certain constitution, no very choice
or exceptional circumstances are needed to provoke an enthusiasm
something like this. Life in modern London even, in the heavy glow of
summer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination of a youth to
build its "palace of art" of; and the very sense and enjoyment of an
experience in which all is new, are but enhanced, like that glow of
summer itself, by the [18] thought of its brevity, giving him something
of a gambler's zest, in the apprehension, by dexterous act or
diligently appreciative thought, of the highly coloured moments which
are to pass away so quickly. At bottom, perhaps, in his elaborately
developed self-consciousness, his sensibilities, his almost fierce
grasp upon the things he values at all, he has, beyond all others, an
inward need of something permanent in its character, to hold by: of
which circumstance, also, he may be partly aware, and that, as with the
brilliant Claudio in Measure for Measure, it is, in truth, but darkness
he is, "encountering, like a bride." But the inevitable falling of the
curtain is probably distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is not
often that he really shudders at the thought of the grave--the weight
above, the narrow world and its company, within. When the thought of
it does occur to him, he may say to himself:--Well! and the rude monk,
for instance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim
world beyond it, really acquiesces in that "fifth act," amid all the
consoling ministries around him, as little as I should at this moment;
though I may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play, however well
acted, I may already have had quite enough of it, and find a true
well-being in eternal sleep.

And precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with the
function of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will always be more or [19]
less the special philosophy, or "prophecy," of the young, when the
ideal of a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the
receptive, if not of the reflective, powers--precisel