the declaration of the wise man, be able to say, There is nothing old under the sun!

What a spirit is there in that word old! Who would live in a world where there was nothing old? Experience would not, could not; nor sedateness, nor reflection, slow and thoughtful. Fancy might, perhaps; but not imagination, that deeper power of the soul. And could the heart let go all its old attachments, and yet live? And hope, even beautiful hope, though the future be its nourisher, is the child of the past, and waits by the bed of weariness or sorrow :

"A woman-saint, who bare an angel's face,

Bade me awake, and ease my troubled mind.
With that I waked,

And saw 't was Hope."

And how large would be the discourse of reason, looking before, and never after? What would prospect be to us, without retrospect? A strange land without a guide. And what is the present to us, without a lingering feeling for the past? A state of selfcomplacency, strangely blended with restlessness, and an impatient desire to be something we are not, no matter what, to gain something we have not, no matter how.

If this be indeed the age of change, it may be well to stop awhile, and ask ourselves whether all we have cast behind us is quite so useless as we have presumed; whether that which we may have retained is only to be tolerated for a time, and soon to be thrown by as worthless; whether the present, in comparison with the old and despised past, is every thing, and, compared with the vague but exciting future, nothing.

It is not, however, my present purpose to go into the question of the relative merits of past and present

times; but to speak, first, of the influence which a respect for the past has upon the mind; and then of the influence which an exclusive attention to the present has upon it.

I must not be understood as confining myself to the remote, when I speak of the past; but as coming down and including both that which has more lately gone by us and taken its place in the memory, and sometimes even that which may still remain within us, but bearing the marks of age and the aspect of the past. This subject lies broad and deep in human nature; but all I can now do is, to set down a few of those thoughts which such a subject must call up in every reflecting mind, and to give utterance to only a part of those feelings which grow from it, and which are dear to me, because of my inward conviction of their truth.

The question naturally arises, in the outset, Is change, in itself considered, a good, or an evil?

Existence may be so unvaried, as to bring a sluggishness into the feelings, and a sleepiness over the intellect; uniformity may settle down into dulness, and content be the mere absence of sensibility. There may also be a pertinacious adherence to what is old, growing out of a morose pride in it, rather than out of a kindly love of it; a sulky rejection of the new, merely because it is new, and not from a heart-sense that "the old is better"; - there may be more of surly dislike of the one, than of considerate esteem or mellowed affection for the other. Age sometimes bears you a grudge, because not itself possessing that of which youth is full,buoyancy of spirits, hopefulness, and health.

Nevertheless, after all that may be said about oldfashioned notions, obstinate prejudices, a stupid indifference to improvement, or a provoking unbelief in it,

there is no less of clear-headedness, and quite as much of true-heartedness, in this clinging to things as they were, as will be found at work in our eagerness after so-called improvements, in other words, change.

Through a long acquaintance with any thing, no matter how insignificant in itself, it becomes imperceptibly inwrought with our accustomed associations of feelings and thoughts, and thus partakes of their common life, and, by sharing in it, adds to it. How much is there in the term, wonted to a thing! We cannot utter it without being conscious of a gentle stirring among the affections. It is something that took life early in our hearts, and grew up, unobserved, it may be, branching in among our gentler feelings and quieter meditations, till the whole shoots up into a beautiful tree-top; and when the air of some outward circumstance blows upon it, how easily it swings back and forth, all together, and what a melody there is in its low murmur! Look at it! Listen to it; for I know you are not so lost in the present, as to be no longer able to see it, to hear it, ay, to feel it.

The past, having thus grown up in and with us, is become a part of ourselves, or rather, may it not be said? is become very self; not the whole self, but so in and of self as to take away the thought of parts or portions, and thus has acted in the way of increment, without breaking up the integrity of the man. Nay, the unity of the character is the more perfect for it; for where unity does exist, its perfectness will be according to its intensity, and its intensity will be according to that which goes to make up its one simple element of living consciousness: the more life, the more perfect oneness.

So it is that the past, resolved within us into the

principle of self, and thence taking form early in us, becomes a constituent of our inward growth; and our enlargement has an all-pervading unity, and our variety is harmony. There is consistency in the man; and there has so long been a blending of the thoughts and feelings, that they are, as it were, elemented of one, and the result is a whole man.

Hence comes strong individuality; for the growth being mainly from within, it partakes of the character of that from which it springs, and all the nourishment it absorbs from without is transformed into this individuality, and then transfused through it to invigorate and expand it, but not to change it. The branches of this spiritual tree may grow broader and stronger, but will keep their old shapes; its leaves may be fresher, but you will not be shocked by an unnatural putting forth of various sorts upon the same boughs. With variety there will be singleness of kind; for they are of one family, the children of their common parent trunk, not adopted ones; and thus all will be beautiful congruity.

As this spirit of the past gives congruity and oneness to the character, all that share in this oneness must, as was said, in partaking of it, add so much to its life, and not lie like detached masses upon the mind to be moved by it, but, on the contrary, be converted into the living energy of the mind itself, and so be an increase of that mind's moving power.

The past gives strength to the living principle in still another way. One who is not dead to old associations never has his thoughts go back to the past, without a softening emotion of the soul. There is something in the past (I will not stop here to inquire what it is) which moves our better affections and makes us

tiful and like the first parent emotion of the soul. For, as Butler profoundly remarks, "Human nature is so constituted, that every good affection implies a love of itself; i. e. becomes an object of a new affection in the same person." Thus the birth of emotion upon emotion is begun in the soul, of which, though it has a beginning, no one can so much as imagine to himself an end: a creation is commenced which shall go on through eternity.

Not only has the past this life-giving power, by which, through the according action of heart and mind, the being grows up and expands with a just congruity throughout; it also imparts stability to the character; for the past is fixed: to that is neither change, nor the shadow of turning. We may look back along the shores of that sea, and behold every cliff standing in its original, dark strength; we may hear the solemn moving of its waves, but no plunge of a heavy promontory, tumbling from its base, startles us: what hath been in the soul cannot cease to be. Every secret thought of all the races of men who have been, all forms of the creative mind, put forth in act, still live. Every emotion of the heart that beat away back in time may sleep, but is not dead: it shall wake again. The hands that moulded the images first embodied in the mind may be dust now; the material forms of art may have fallen back into shapeless earth again; castle and fane, pyramid and column, may have come down; but the forms in the mind, of which these were but the outward show, still stand there perfect. True, a veil may hang before them for a while; but when the angel, that standeth upon the sea and upon the earth, shall utter the voice, "Time shall be no longer," that veil shall be rent from the top to the bottom.