ndle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a _little matter_,
whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclus
desires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a
man never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he
is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on
the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged
of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor
last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two--not our
exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think
while there--that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it.
Indeed it would be easy to show that it is the very extent of human
life, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory
and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another,
the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; that
it is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantity
of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual
perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in
its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing!
It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to
hold its striking groups, its endless subjects! It is light as vanity,
and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches were
compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed with
the blow! What a huge heap, a 'huge, dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts,
feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is
composed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deep
and intense, often pass through the mind in only one day's thinking or
reading, for instance! How many such days are there in a year, how many
years in a long life, still occupied with something interesting,
still recalling some old impression, still recurring to some difficult
question and making progress in it, every step accompanied with a sense
of power, and every moment conscious of 'the high endeavour or the glad
success'; for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed,
and is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement or lively
solicitude, by the necessity of its own nature. The division of the
map of life into its component parts is beautifully made by King Henry
VI.:--