are some persons of that reach of soul that they would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of empire America will have grown up in that period, or whether the English constitution will last so long. These are points beyond me. But I confess I should like to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons. That is a vital question with me; and I shall like it the better, the sooner it happens!
No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may believe that others will, or assent to the doctrine that “all men are mortal” as an abstract proposition, but he is far enough from bringing it home to himself individually[1]. Youth, buoyant activity, and animal spirits, hold absolute antipathy with old age as well as with death; nor have we, in the hey-day of life, any more than in the thoughtlessness of childhood, the remotest conception how
A kneaded clod”—
nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour, shall “turn to withered, weak, and grey.” Or if in a moment of idle speculation we indulge in this notion of the close of life as a theory, it is amazing at what a distance it seems; what a long, leisurely interval there is between; what
