resent disposition. It is not in vain that I return to
the nothings of my childhood; for every one of them has left some stamp
upon me or put some fetter on my boasted free-will. In the past is my
present fate; and in the past also is my real life. It is not the past
only, but the past that has been many years in that tense. The doings
and actions of last year are as uninteresting and vague to me as the
blank gulf of the future, the _tabula rasa_ that may never be anything
else. I remember a confused hotch-potch of unconnected events, a "chaos
without form, and void"; but nothing salient or striking rises from the
dead level of "flat, stale, and unprofitable" generality. When we are
looking at a landscape we think ourselves pleased; but it is only when
it comes back upon us by the fire o' nights that we can disentangle the
main charm from the thick of particulars. It is just so with what is
lately past. It is too much loaded with detail to be distinct; and the
canvas is too large for the eye to encompass. But this is no more the
case when our recollections have been strained long enough through the
hour-glass of time; when they have been the burthen of so much thought,
the charm and comfort of so many a vigil. All that is worthless has been
sieved and sifted out of them. Nothing remains but the brightest lights
and the darkest shadows. When we see a mountain country near at hand,
the spurs and haunches crowd up in eager rivalry, and the whole range
seems to have shrugged its shoulders to its ears, till we cannot tell
the higher from the lower: but when we are far off, these lesser
prominences are melted back into the bosom of the rest, or have set
behind the round horizon of the plain, and the highest peaks stand forth
in lone and sovereign dignity against the sky. It is just the same with
our recollections. We require to draw back and shade our eyes before the
picture dawns upon us in full breadth and outline. Late years are still
in limbo to us; but the more distant past is all that we possess in
life, the corn already harvested and stored for ever in the grange of
memory. The doings of to-day at some future time will gain the required
offing; I shall learn to love the things of my adolescence, as Hazlitt
loved them, and as I love already the recollections of my childhood.
They will gather interest with every year. They will ripen in forgotten
corners of my memory; and some day I shall waken and find them vested
with ne