ion for fifty years' repentance.

Ah, reader! when I look back upon those days, it seems to me that all
things change or perish. Even thunder and lightning, it pains me to say,
are not the thunder and lightning which I seem to remember about the
time of Waterloo. Roses, I fear, are degenerating, and, without a Red
revolution, must come to the dust. The Fannies of our island--though this
I say with reluctance--are not improving; and the Bath road is notoriously
superannuated. Mr. Waterton tells me that the crocodile does _not_
change--that a cayman, in fact, or an alligator, is just as good for riding
upon as he was in the time of the Pharaohs. _That_ may be; but the reason
is, that the crocodile does not live fast--he is a slow coach. I believe
it is generally understood amongst naturalists, that the crocodile is a
blockhead. It is my own impression that the Pharaohs were also blockheads.
Now, as the Pharaohs and the crocodile domineered over Egyptian society,
this accounts for a singular mistake that prevailed on the Nile. The
crocodile made the ridiculous blunder of supposing man to be meant chiefly
for his own eating. Man, taking a different view of the subject, naturally
met that mistake by another; he viewed the crocodile as a thing sometimes
to worship, but always to run away from. And this continued until Mr.
Waterton changed the relations between the animals. The mode of escaping
from the reptile he showed to be, not by running away, but by leaping on
its back, booted and spurred. The two animals had misunderstood each other.
The use of the crocodile has now been cleared up--it is to be ridden; and
the use of man is, that he may improve the health of the crocodile by
riding him a fox-hunting before breakfast. And it is pretty certain that
any crocodile, who has been regularly hunted through the season, and is
master of the weight he carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as
ever he would have done in the infancy of the pyramids.

Perhaps, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, but all things else
_do_: even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. And often the restoration
in vision of Fanny and the Bath road, makes me too pathetically sensible of
that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen to call up the image of Fanny
from thirty-five years back, arises suddenly a rose in June; or, if I think
for an instant of the rose in June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny.
One after the other, like the ant