By-the-by, this doctrine of perpetual transmigration would be a curious plea to urge for the non-fulfilment of former engagements; seven years is I believe the term allotted for the entire change. Now, might not a man encumbered with debt plead at the expiration of the period in the Courts of Westminster, that he was not the person who actually contracted those debts? Or might not an inconstant couple sue for a divorce, on the plea that neither were the individuals who originally married? But as—
"In these nice quibbles of the law,
Good sooth, I am no wiser than a daw,"
I shall leave these intricate questions to closer casuists. But if the outward world be changed, how much more changed is that within!
"'Tis not from youth's smooth cheek alone,
The bloom that fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of the heart is gone
Before its youth be past."
We set out in life, generous, frank, and confiding; the first emotion is always kind and lofty—we are eager to love, for we feel that affection is enjoyment, and that "happiness was born a twin. The world seems filled with beauty, and our very fancies are tangible delights."
"We clothe the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations from the dawn."
But the mist melts away, and with it half the loveliness of the landscape: we are startled to find in how many illusions we have indulged. The dew-drops that glittered as if just melted from some fairy rainbow, are shaken from the bough, and there hangs the bare and thorny branch—old friends have fallen from us, and their memory is sad:—
"They come in long procession led
The cold, the faithless, and the dead."
It is no longer easy to supply their place—love is no longer the easy and the credulous. We investigate the motive, where we once trusted to the impulse: we doubt, because we have been deceived: we cannot choose but remember how often our kindliest feelings have been wasted, and our confidence been betrayed. The dark past flings its shadow forward on our path like a perpetual warning; it is no longer easy to spring into the sunshine. We all grow wiser, but assuredly we are grown colder and graver. The sadness of youth is half poetry. Wordsworth truly says
"In youth sad fancies we affect,
In luxury of disrespect,
Of our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."
Youth has sorrows, but maturity has cares, and the care is harder to bear than the sorrow. Circumstances, too, may change around us; and the trouble that comes late in the day is a heavy burden. We have no longer the alacrity of spirit that feels but half the weight it carries. I know nothing so touching as the account in "Scott's Memoirs" of how different the modes of composition which led to the production of Marmion and of Woodstock. The poet of Marmion delighted in the external impulse—the verse rose sounding in his ears while loitering
April.—VOL.LII. NO. CCVIII.2 I
