Solitude Becomes A Sort Of Tangible Enemy,

Sorrow Only Increased With Knowledge.

Our Feelings Probably Are Not Less Strong At Fifty Than They Were Ten Or Fifteen Years Before; But They Have Changed Their Objects, And Dwell On Far Different Prospects. At Five-and-thirty A Man Thinks Of What His Own Existence Is; When The Maturity Of Age Has Grown Into Its Autumn, He Is Wrapt Up In That Of Others. The Loss Of Wife Or Child Then Becomes More Deplorable, As Being Impossible To Repair; For No Fresh Connection Can Give Us Back The Companion Of Our Earlier Years, Nor A "new-sprung Race" Compensate For That, Whose Career We Hoped To See Run.

I Saw And Heard Of None Like Me. Was I Then A Monster, A Blot Upon The Earth, From Which All Men Fled, And Whom All Men Disowned?

Truly Disappointment Is The Guardian Deity Of Human Life; She Sits At The Threshold Of Unborn Time, And Marshals The Events As They Come Forth.

The Instructor Can Scarcely Give Sensibility Where It Is Essentially Wanting, Nor Talent To The Unpercipient Block. But He Can Cultivate And Direct The Affections Of The Pupil, Who Puts Forth, As A Parasite, Tendrils By Which To Cling, Not Knowing To What - To A Supporter Or A Destroyer.