blame weigh little, inasmuch as both those who utter, and those who hear, so soon pass away, to return no more.
Most of us have reason to regret that the time and zeal spent in justifying ourselves, or deprecating harsh judgments, had not been devoted to useful knowledge, or benevolent enterprise. For myself, now that the romance of life has subsided into reality, and shadows cease to delude, I cannot view without gratitude the kind opinions that, beyond my deserts, have attended me, and that encouragement from the good which has often given new strength to my labors.
To my young friends, whose bright eyes are so eager in the pursuit of happiness, let me say that they will find it to depend less on combinations of circumstances, than on the temper of mind with which they meet the dealings of the All-Wise. A harmonizing spirit will extract sweetness where an unsubdued one only combats thorns. Byron, with all his misanthropic infidelity, shed tears, when told of a fair young creature who had expired, exclaiming, "God's happiness! God's happiness!"
"Still at my lessons!" said Michael Angelo, when, at past eighty, he was found in the solitary recesses of the Coliseum, studying the models and monuments of ancient art. "Still at my lessons!" I repeat, at past threescore years and ten.
So would I have it to be. It is one of the privileges
