THE LETTER-BELL.

_By the late William Hazlitt._

Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of human
life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a world by
themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye of memory,
assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of insects seen
through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the brilliancy or the
variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be compared to
"one entire and perfect chrysolite," which, if analyzed, breaks into
a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the value of human
life, and we are puzzled with the length of the account, and the
multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them apart, and it is
wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in it! As I write
this, the _Letter-Bell_ passes: it has a lively, pleasant sound
with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but
rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten years. It strikes
upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me from the dream of
time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into life, the period
of my first coming up to town, when all around was strange, uncertain,
adverse--a hub-bub of confused noises, a chaos of shifting objects--and
when this sound alone, startling me with the recollection of a letter
I had to send to the friends I had lately left, brought me as it were
to myself, made me feel that I had links still connecting me with the
universe, and gave me hope and patience to persevere. At that loud
tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then,) the long line of blue hills
near the place where I was brought up waves in the horizon, a golden
sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-oaks rustle their red leaves in the