nd elasticity of childhood, full of
proud flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence and perversity of our
passions come in more and more to overlay our natural sensibility and
well-grounded affections; and we screw ourselves up to aim only at those
things which are neither desirable nor practicable. Thus life passes
away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of
disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling
satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are
sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The
machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and
withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any
release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more
insupportable than the pangs which we endure. We are suspended between
tormenting desires and the horrors of _ennui_. The impulse of the will,
like the wheels of a carriage going down hill, becomes too strong for
the driver, Reason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Some
idea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain; and however ridiculous,
however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of fascination
through life.

Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at work
in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in the formal
study of arts and sciences, the same thing takes place, and undermines
the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of pursuit overcomes the
satisfaction to result from the accomplishment. The mind is overstrained
to attain its purpose; and when it is attained, the ease and alacrity
necessary to enjoy it are gone. The irritation of action does not cease
and go down with the occasion for it; but we are first uneasy to get to
the end of our work, and then uneasy for want of something to do. The
ferment of the brain does not of itself subside into pleasure and soft
repose. Hence the disposition to strong stimuli observable in persons of
much intellectual exertion to allay and carry off the over-excitement.
The _improvisatori_ poets (it is recorded by Spence in his _Anecdotes
of Pope_) cannot sleep after an evening's continued display of their
singular and difficult art. The rhymes keep running in their head in
spite of themselves, and will not let them rest. Mechanics and labouring
people never know what to do with themselves on a Sunday, though they
return to their work with gr