himself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts himself to the rack of
his imagination every day he has to live in the meanwhile. When the
event is so remote or so independent of the will as to set aside the
necessity of immediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat it,
it gives us little more disturbance or emotion than if it had already
taken place, or were something to happen in another state of being, or
to an indifferent person. Criminals are observed to grow more anxious
as their trial approaches; but after their sentence is passed, they
become tolerably resigned, and generally sleep sound the night before
its execution.

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less
importance to past and future events according as they are more or less
engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune
to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, think little of the past,
for it does not contribute greatly to their views: those who have
nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as
in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real
as that of the other. The season of hope has an end; but the
remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those
who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can
from it 'catch-glimpses that may make them less forlorn.' The
turbulence of action, and uneasiness of desire, must point to the
future: it is only in the quiet innocence of shepherds, in the
simplicity of pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this
inscription--'I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!'

Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to life is in
exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not one of those
splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value at all. _Que peu