is laden with a weight of many cares and pleasures; but because the stores are familiar and the bearer is old, ought both to be despised? If a strange face and untried goods are at our door, and the old guest must necessarily resign his place to the new one, this merriment at parting with the former is at least ill-timed. As he glides away from the scene into the shades of night, with what a child-like eagerness do men clamorously welcome his successor, who comes like a plausible pedlar from a foreign land. They gaze greedily on his glittering wares, and grasp at the brittle bubbles of hope, the gilded dross of avarice, and the drums and rattles of ambition. I know nothing of the future. I look upon the past as a welltried friend that has departed for an eternal exile. Its evil quali, ties are written on water, its good on adamant. I lament that it is gone, and grieve that I did not better appreciate its worth before. I see it now through an altered medium, unblinded by fear or hope or passion. I cannot scan the advancing year with the same facility and precision. The future is like the mist that hangs about the dawn of day. Coming objects loom largely in the shade, but dwindle as the light increases. The past is like an evening landscape bathed in the lingering glory of a departed sun. Our retrospections are generally of a nature far more pure and holy than our hopes and our desires. The evil-minded do not dwell fondly upon the past. Men love to recall the memory of their best actions, and not their worst. heartless rush recklessly forward, "And cast no longing, lingering, look behind." The stern and The gaiety of ingenuous childhood-the first smile of innocent love the cordiality and disinterestedness of youthful friendship -our earliest impressions of the beauty of human life and the loveliness of external nature-the whispered prayers at a mother's knee ere the consciousness of sin made us dread our great Crea tor-these are amongst the many recollections that hallow and endear the past, and which would be ill exchanged for the vague and uncertain visions of the future. Even if the past has been to some a season of affliction, who can say that the new year will be less unhappy? We know the worst of the one-we know literally nothing of the other. The dreariest path has ever some few verdant spots that may be looked back upon with a feeling of interest, and even remembered sorrows do not irritate us like those which are anticipated, but on the contrary often assume an aspect that is strangely pleasing. Their bitterness has passed away. If Hope never deviates from her onward path, nor mingles in the train of departing seasons, Memory is a safer and sweeter though less brilliant companion, and her footsteps are unfollowed by the fiend Despair. I have already adverted to the pure and virtuous and refined emotions which are awakened by the contemplation of the past. Let those who doubt the truth of this reflect, how much more ready they are to forgive old injuries or vexations than such as are experienced in the present or anticipated in the future. We recollect ancient quarrels with self-accusation and a generous allowance. Former rivalries and contests now seem to have been unnecessarily fierce and virulent. A change has come over us, and our hearts are softened. We cannot dwell, therefore, too much upon the past. It is a gentle teacher of virtue, wisdom and benevolence. We listen to its solemn voice with a mysterious reverence and a severe delight. earlier life are treasured things. shadows of departed years like gems seen by moonlight. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." The most trivial relics of our They gleam out from the dusky Our first pure pleasures are yet in Memory's holy keeping. However rough and dreary may be our onward pilgrimage, she, like a heavenly spirit, still haunts and cheers us with her magic mirror. It were a pitiful philosophy that would deprive us of such enchantments as these, and make us look upon the varied and delightful volume of the past as a dead letter. Thoughts are things, and form as essential a part of our actual existence, as our flesh and blood. We should reckon not our life by years and days, but by what we do and think. In this way a short life might be made a long one, by the quantity of ideas and deeds that would be crowded into its narrow span. Such is the life of angels, and the only one that is worthy of intellectual beings. Spirits have no marks of time. The idler and the slumberer only exist at intervals, for vacuity and sleep are a partial death. The noon of night is fast approaching. Now for the farewell toll to the departing year, and the shouts of welcome to the stranger! But hark!--the clock has struck! The mystic change is over. The new year has come-the old one has departed. As at the death and succession of mighty monarchs, we mingle sighs and gratulations, and merriment and mourning. It is a sample of the varieties and incongruities of human life. We resemble those hasty and fickle lovers who receive a new partner ere the predecessor is cold and buried. The gay bridal chariot dashes against the slow solemn hearse. The funeral baked meats furnish forth the marriage table. But let others run riot as they may at the fresh arrival, and worship the rising sun, my own heart still yearns towards the vanished year. I have learnt its worst qualities and its best, and the first are softened and the last increased by the tender hand of Time. ness. I see not 66 Before me all is dark 'Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and dangers I must pass." With reference to the future I can be certain but of one solemn fact, that the new year brings me nearer to that awful period, when even the past, which now lives so vividly in remembrance, will be utterly annihilated, and "This sensible warm motion will become A kneaded clod." I turn from this chilling prospect with stifled breath, and think of "the blind cave of eternal night" with a dread revulsion ;-for I love the blue skies, the green fields and the crystal air. I would still listen to the sound of merry voices, and meet the radiant faces of the young and gay. I would study and commune with living wisdom, and trace the wondrous intellectual advances of mankind. Oh! it is terrible to receive a mandate to depart "From the warm precincts of the cheerful day," ere youth and hope have left us. To quit the glittering and crowded theatre of life, for the dark, solitary and silent cell of death. To be forced from the scene at a fate-fraught period like the present, when such mighty moral revolutions are at work, is like being dragged from the spectacle of an unfinished drama at the moment when we are most interested in its progress. But, alas! the fairest and the proudest of human beings must bow submissively to the stern voice of Asrael, come when he may, and lie in "cold obstruction," while many a loathsome reptile is basking in the pleasant sun! Our dearest friends and kindred, our own cherished offspring, will at last walk over the cold, damp sod which presses upon our breasts, with as much gaiety and thoughtlessness as if we had never been. It is a law of our nature that the image of death is ever thrust from our minds by the strong antagonist principle of vitality, and while our veins are supplied with pure and healthy blood the visions of the charnel house are faint and powerless. They may laugh at death who do not vividly apprehend its nature. The There are too many bright healthy and the happy cannot see it. objects between them and the grave. is often mere obtuseness of mind or strength of nerve. A fit of sickness or meditation works a wondrous change. Perhaps no human being ever looked death in the face without a shudder. The hero who marches up to the cannon's mouth, beholds not the King of Terrors on his path. Through the din and smoke of the mortal strife, he is drawn onward by the glittering eye of Fame, that wins him to destruction, as the deadly serpent is said to fascinate its prey. He that would die boldly and proudly in the presence of assembled thousands would shrink aghast from an unseen struggle with the last dread enemy of man. A desire for death, or even an indifference to life, is a moral disease, and is not consistent with our nature, in which the principle of self-preservation is so deeply planted. The fear of the grave may indeed be easily evaded, but never entirely overcome. The thirst of glory, and the consolations of religion do not make us friendly with death on its own account; but render us proof against its terrors by filling our minds with more congenial images, and by presenting us with glimpses of a paradise beyond the gloomy gratings of the tomb. And yet if we philosophically contemplate the relations of life and death, our horror of annihilation seems utterly unreasonable. It is as natural to die as it is to live. In fact, life itself is " a daily death." As far as yesterday is concerned, we are already dead. Literally speaking, we exist but in the present. In a few brief years both mind and body undergo as complete a revolution as the change from animal to vegetable existence. We are at last no more the same beings, than echoes are original sounds. We bear but a faint resemblance to our former selves. Had we dropped into the grave in our dawn of life, our childhood would not have been more unequivocally dead than it now is. Our youth must also die, and next our manhood, and when old age, says Montaigne, is carried to the tomb, it is but an addition |