Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blessed be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.’
Suppose now the case of two individuals, of equal refinement, intellect, and sensibility, (save that in one the edge of all these qualities must have been blunted by moral defection) nay—that by making the parallel closer, the contrast may be more obvious—suppose them to be brothers. In early life they both were trained in the path of moral rectitude, from which the one has never swerved, but the other has been constantly making wider and wider deviations. Place them now in the situation of the poet, and let them read these lines. The image recalled, the object of their contemplation is the same—their early associations are the same. But the effect is far different. The conviction is present with one, that he has persevered in that course, which his mother toiled and wept to place him in, and in pleased sadness he will repeat with Cowper,
‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free,
And I can view this mimic show of thee,
Time has but half succeeded in his theft—