without yielding to a melancholy feeling—not of course on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel was telling you, but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy attachment. It is at such momenta as these, Mr. Lovel, that we feel the changes of time. The same objects are before us—those inanimate things which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming manhood—they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our pursuits, our feelings—changed in our form, our limbs, and our strength, —can we b:1 ourselves called the same ? or do we not rather look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves, as beings separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher, who appealed from Philip inflamed with wine, to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not chuse a judge so different, as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth, to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched" with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated :
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what time takes away,
Than what he leaves behind.
