NORTH.
Oh! my friends—if this winged and swift life be all our life, what a mournful taste have we had of possible happiness? We have, as it were, from some dark and cold edge of a bright world, just looked in and been plucked away again! Have we come to experience pleasure by fits and glimpses; but intertwined with pain, burdensome labour, with weariness, and with indifference? Have we come to try the solace and joy of a warm, fearless, and confiding affection, to be then chilled or blighted by bitterness, by separation, by change of heart, or by the dread sunderer of loves—Death? Have we found the gladness and the strength of knowledge, when some rays of truth have flashed in upon our souls, in the midst of error and uncertainty, or amidst continuous, necessitated, uninstructive avocations of the Understanding—and is that all? Have we felt in fortunate hour the charm of the Beautiful, that invests, as with a mantle, this visible Creation, or have we found ourselves lifted above the earth by sudden apprehension of sublimity? Have we had the consciousness of such feelings, which have seemed to us as if they might themselves make up a life—almost an angel's life—and were they "instant come and instant gone?" Have we known the consolation of Doing Right, in the midst of much that we have done wrong? and was that also a corruscation of a transient sunshine? Have we lifted up our thoughts to see Him who is Love, and Light, and Truth, and Bliss, to be in the next instant plunged into the darkness of annihilation? Have all these things been but flowers that we have pulled by the side of a hard and tedious way, and that, after gladdening us for a brief season with hue and odour, wither in our hands, and are like ourselves—nothing?
BULLER.
I love you, sir, better and better every day.
NORTH.
We step the earth—we look abroad over it, and it seems immense—so does the sea. What ages had men lived—and knew but a small portion. They circumnavigate it now with a speed under which its vast bulk shrinks. But let the astronomer lift up his glass and he learns to believe in a total mass of matter, compared with which this great globe itself becomes an imponderable grain of dust. And so to each of us walking along the road of life, a year, a day, or an hour shall seem long. As we grow older, the time shortens; but when we lift up our eyes to look beyond this earth, our seventy years, and the few thousands of years which have rolled over the human race, vanish into a point; for then we are measuring Time against Eternity.
TALBOYS.
And if we can find ground for believing that this quickly-measured span of Life is but the beginning—the dim daybreak of a Life immeasurable, never attaining to its night—what weight shall we any longer allow to the cares, fears, toils, troubles, afflictions—which here have sometimes bowed down our strength to the ground—a burden more than we could bear?
NORTH.
They then all acquire a new character. That they are then felt as transitory must do something towards lightening their load. But more is disclosed in them; for they then appear as having an unsuspected worth and use. If this life be but the beginning of another, then it may be believed that the accidents and passages thereof have some bearing upon the conditions of that other, and we learn to look on this as a state of Probation. Let us out, and look at the sky.