“Nature, as it grows again toward earth,
Is fashion’d for the journey, dull and heavy.”
Reflect on the painful end of Sheridan and other brilliant wits of their day; that
“From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show;”
and we may almost wish that biography should begin at each end, and finish in the middle, or zenith of a life.
Ida. If the fact be so, I grant the lesson to our pride, Evelyn; and we may dwell with fervent admiration on the divinity of that mind, which can ennoble and consecrate our body, so fraught as it is with basest passions, and so decayable withal.
NATURE OF SLEEP.
“——Sleep, gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse.”