CHAPTER XLVII.
A RECOGNITION.
The most pleasing part about retrospect is the memory of our bygone hopes. The past, however happy, however blissful, few would wish to live over again; but who is there that does not long for, does not pine after the day-dream which gilded the future, which looked ever forward to the time to come as to a realization of all that was dear to us, lightening our present cares, soothing our passing sorrows by that one thought?
Life is marked out in periods in which, like stages in a journey, we rest and repose ourselves, casting a look, now back upon the road we have been travelling, now throwing a keener glance towards the path left us. It is at such spots as these remembrance comes full upon us, and that we feel how little our intentions have swayed our career or influenced our actions; the aspirations, the resolves of youth, are either looked upon as puerile follies, or a most distant day settled on for their realization. The principles we fondly looked to, like our guide-stars, are dimly visible, not seen; the friends we cherished are changed and gone; the scenes themselves seem no longer the sunshine and the shade we loved; and, in fact, we are living in a new world, where our own altered condition gives the type to all around us; the only link that binds us to the past being that same memory that like a sad curfew tolls the twilight of our fairest dreams and most cherished wishes.
That these glimpses of the bygone season of our youth should be but fitful and passing—tinging, not coloring the landscape of our life—we should be engaged in all the active bustle and turmoil of the world, surrounded by objects of hope, love, and ambition, stemming the strong tide in whose fountain is fortune.
He, however, who lives apart, a dreary and a passionless existence, will find that in the past, more than in the future, his thoughts have found their resting-place; memory usurps the place of hope, and he travels through life like one walking onward; his eyes still turning towards some loved forsaken spot, teeming with all the associations of his happiest hours, and preserving, even in distance, the outline that he loved.
Distance in time, as in space, smooths down all the inequalities of surface; and as the cragged and rugged mountain, darkened by cliff and precipice, shows to the far-off traveller but some blue and misty mass, so the long-lost-sight-of hours lose all the cares and griefs that tinged them, and to our mental eye, are but objects of uniform loveliness and beauty; and if we do not think of
“The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,”
it is because, like April showers, they but checker the spring of our existence.