It is manifest that the attempt is being made to restore the worship of
the old _Chronos_, to whom the ancients had erected temples. Let us
look the idol in the face. Time appears at first to our imagination as
the great destroyer. He is armed with a scythe, and passes gaunt and
bald over the ruins of all that has lived. When he lifts up his great
voice and cries--


Mighty nations famed in story
Into darkness I have hurled,--
Gone their myriads and their glory
(Lo! ye follow) from the world:
My dark shade for ever covers
Stars I quenched as on they rolled:--


the beautiful, and frightened girl in the song is not singular as she
exclaims in her terror:


Ah! we're young, and we are lovers,
Spare us, Reaper gaunt and old![128]


Such is the first impression which time makes upon us. But birth
succeeds to death. From an inexhaustible spring, nature sends gushing
forth new products and new developments. Youth full of hope trips
lightly over the ground, without a thought that the ground it treads on
is the vast cemetery of all past generations. If we fix our thoughts on
the permanence of life and the manifestations of progress, time appears