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destroys pleasure. This remark having been questioned by one to whose judgment I exceedingly defer, may I be permitted not to retract, but to defend my assertion? Hope is like constancy, the country, or solitude—all of which owe their reputation to the pretty things that have been said about them. Hope is but the poetical name for that feverish restlessness which hurries over to-day for the sake of to-morrow. Who among us pauses upon the actual moment, to own, 'Now, even now, am I happy?' The wisest of men has said, that hope deferred is sickness to the heart: yet what hope have we that is not deferred? For my part, I believe that there are two spirits who preside over this feeling, and that hope, like love, has its Eros and Anteros. Its Eros, that reposes on fancy and creates rather than calculates; while its Anteros lives on expectation, and is dissatisfied with all that is, in vague longings for what may be.

Childhood, more than any other period, links its remembrance with inanimate objects, perhaps because its chief pleasures are derived from them. The hillock, whose top was left with a flying step—the oak, to scale whose leafy fortress had in it something of that sense of danger and exertion in which even the earliest age delights—the broad sheet of water, whose smooth surface has been so often skimmed and broken by the round pebble, to whose impetus the young arm lent its utmost vigour—how deeply are these things graven upon the memory! The great reason why the pleasures of childhood are so much more felt in their satisfaction, is, that they suffice unto themselves. The race is run without an eye to a prize;—the oak is climbed without reference to aught that will reward the search;—the stone is flung upon the waters, but not in the hope that, ere many days, it will be found