470 REMNANTS OC TIME. must all mix together among worms and corruption. _sop the deformed, and Helena the fair, are lost and undistinguished in common earth. Nature in its gayest bloom is but a painted 'vanity. Are my nerves well strung and vigorous? Is my activity and strength far superior to my neighbours iii the days of youth ? But youth bath its appointed limit : age steals upon it, unstrings the nerves, and makes the force of nature languish into infirmity and feebleness. Samson and Goliah would have lost their boasted advantages of stature and their brawny limbs in the course of half a century, though the one had escaped the sling of David and the other the vengeance of his own hands in the ruin of Dagon's temple. Man iú his best estate is a flying shadow aid vanity. Even those nobler powers of human life which seem to have something angelical in them, I mean the powers of wit and fancy, gay imagination and capacious memory, they are all subject to the same laws of decay and death. What though they can raise and animate beautiful scenes in a moment, and, in imitation of creating power, can spread bright appearances and new worlds before the sentes and the souls of their friends ? What though they can entertain the better part of mankind, the^ refined and polite world with high delight and rapture ? These scenes of rapturous delight grow flat and old by a frequent review, and the very powers that raised them grow feeble apace. What though they can give immortal applause and fame to their possessors! It is but the immortality of an empty name, a mere succession of the breath of men ; and it is a short sort of im- mortality too, which must the and perish when this world pe- rishes. A poor shadow ofduration indeed, while the real period of these powers is hastening every day ; they languish and the as fast as animal nature, which has a large share in them, make haste to its decay ; and the time of their exercise shall shortly be no more.. In vain the aged poet or the painter would call up the muse and genius of their youth, and summon all the arts of their imagi- nation to spread and dress out some visionary scene : in vain the elegant orator would recal the bold and masterly figures, and all those flowery images which gave ardour, grace and dignity to his,younger composures, and charmed every oar: they are gone,, they are fled beyond the reach of their owner's call : Their time is past, they are vanished and lost beyond all hope of discovery. The God of nature has pronounced an unpassable period upon all the powers and pleasures and glories of this mortal state. Let us then be afraid to make any of them our boast or our hap-
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