like the sympathy of a friend.

He passed a group of terrified peasants; they were cowering under a tree.
The oldest hid his head and shuddered; but the youngest looked steadily
at the lightning which played at fitful intervals over the mountain
stream that rushed rapidly by their feet. Falkland stood beside them
unnoticed and silent, with folded arms and a scornful lip. To him,
nature, heaven, earth had nothing for fear, and everything for
reflection. In youth, thought he (as he contrasted the fear felt at one
period of life with the indifference at another), there are so many
objects to divide and distract life, that we are scarcely sensible of the
collected conviction that we live. We lose the sense of what is by
thinking rather of what is to be. But the old, who have no future to
expect, are more vividly alive to the present, and they feel death more,
because they have a more settled and perfect impression of existence.

He left the group, and went on alone by the margin of the winding and
swelling stream. "It is (said a certain philosopher) in the conflicts of
Nature that man most feels his littleness." Like all general maxims,
this is only partially true. The mind, which takes its first ideas from
perception, must take also its tone from the character of the objects
perceived. In mingling our spirits with the great elements, we partake
of their sublimity; we awaken thought from the secret depths where it had
lain concealed; our feelings are too excited to remain riveted to
ourselves; they blend with the mighty powers which are abroad; and as, in
the agitations of men, the individual arouses from himself to become a
part of the crowd, so in the convulsions of nature we are equally
awakened from the littleness of self, to be lost in the grandeur of the
conflict by which we are surrounded.