CHAPTER XXV. P. I.

Hiatus valde lacrymabilis.

I must pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the history of our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into all the ramifications which a faithful biography requires, fourteen volumes would not contain it. They would be worth reading, for that costs little; they would be worth writing, though that costs much. They would deserve the best embellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. The most poetical of artists would be worthily employed in designing the sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruikshank for the grotesque; Wilkie and Richter for the comic and serio-comic; Turner for the actual scenery; Bewick for the head and tail pieces. They ought to be written; they ought to be read. They should be written—and then they would be read. But time is wanting:

and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as we live. We must be contented with doing not what we wish, but what we can,—our possible as the French call it.

One of our Poets—(which is it?)—speaks of an everlasting now. If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative?

Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of knowledge, or of enjoyment, or of happiness; though with regard to all of these, as far as any of them are attainable, there is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment.

Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach.

Not the man who is shaving himself.

Not those who have the tooth ache, or who are having a tooth drawn.

The fashionable beauty might; and the fashionable singer, and the fashionable opera dancer, and the actor who is in the height of his power and reputation. So might the alderman at a city feast. So would the heir who is squandering a large fortune faster than it was accumulated for him. And the thief who is not taken, and the convict who is not hanged, and the scoffer at religion whose heart belies his tongue.

Not the wise and the good.

Not those who are in sickness or in sorrow.

Not I.

But were I endowed with the power of suspending the effect of time upon the things around me, methinks there are some of my flowers which should neither fall nor fade: decidedly my kitten should never attain to cathood; and I am afraid my little boy would continue to “mis-speak half-uttered words;” and never, while I live, outgrow that epicene dress of French grey, half European, half Asiatic in its fashion.