the other view of life, until only fools or knaves can hold to
their opinions. We take a sight at a condition in life, and
say we have studied it; our most elaborate view is no more
than an impression. If we had breathing space, we should take
the occasion to modify and adjust; but at this breakneck
hurry, we are no sooner boys than we are adult, no sooner in
love than married or jilted, no sooner one age than we begin
to be another, and no sooner in the fulness of our manhood
than we begin to decline towards the grave. It is in vain to
seek for consistency or expect clear and stable views in a
medium so perturbed and fleeting. This is no cabinet science,
in which things are tested to a scruple; we theorise with a
pistol to our head; we are confronted with a new set of
conditions on which we have not only to pass a judgment, but
to take action, before the hour is at an end. And we cannot
even regard ourselves as a constant; in this flux of things,
our identity itself seems in a perpetual variation; and not
infrequently we find our own disguise the strangest in the
masquerade. In the course of time, we grow to love things we
hated and hate things we loved. Milton is not so dull as he
once was, nor perhaps Ainsworth so amusing. It is decidedly
harder to climb trees, and not nearly so hard to sit still.
There is no use pretending; even the thrice royal game of hide
and seek has somehow lost in zest. All our attributes are
modified or chanced and it will be a poor account of us if our
views do not modify and change in a proportion. To hold the
same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been
stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a
prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the
wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from