enthusiasm something like this. Life in modern London even, in the
heavy glow of summer, is stuff sufficient for the fresh imagination
of a youth to build its "palace of art" of; and the very sense and
enjoyment of an experience in which all is new, are but enhanced,
like that glow of summer itself, by the [18] thought of its brevity,
giving him something of a gambler's zest, in the apprehension, by
dexterous act or diligently appreciative thought, of the highly
coloured moments which are to pass away so quickly. At bottom,
perhaps, in his elaborately developed self-consciousness, his
sensibilities, his almost fierce grasp upon the things he values at
all, he has, beyond all others, an inward need of something permanent
in its character, to hold by: of which circumstance, also, he may be
partly aware, and that, as with the brilliant Claudio in Measure for
Measure, it is, in truth, but darkness he is, "encountering, like a
bride." But the inevitable falling of the curtain is probably
distant; and in the daylight, at least, it is not often that he
really shudders at the thought of the grave--the weight above, the
narrow world and its company, within. When the thought of it does
occur to him, he may say to himself:--Well! and the rude monk, for
instance, who has renounced all this, on the security of some dim
world beyond it, really acquiesces in that "fifth act," amid all the
consoling ministries around him, as little as I should at this
moment; though I may hope, that, as at the real ending of a play,
however well acted, I may already have had quite enough of it, and
find a true well-being in eternal sleep.

And precisely in this circumstance, that, consistently with the
function of youth in general, Cyrenaicism will always be more or [19]
less the special philosophy, or "prophecy," of the young, when the
ideal of a rich experience comes to them in the ripeness of the