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Time, with his scythe and hour-glass, stands
To reap the harvest of our lands,

To shorten prosperous days;

Time eats the keenest steel to rust ;
Time crumbles monuments to dust;
Time robs us of our praise.

Much fault is found with Father Time,
In books and speeches, prose and rhyme;
But we will not upbraid.

For he has left our hearts as young

As when, long since, we laughed and sung
In sunlight and in shade.*)

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"We know what we are," said poor Ophelia, "but we know not what we may be." Perhaps she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy had she said, we know what we have been." Of our present state we can, strictly speaking, know nothing. The act of meditation on ourselves, however quick and subtle, must refer to the past, in which alone we can truly be said to live. Even in the moment of intensest enjoyment, our pleasures are multiplied by the quick-revolving images of thought; we feel the past and future in each fragment of the instant, as the flavor of every drop of some delicious liquid is heightened and prolonged on the lips. It is the past only which we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible of duration. Each by-gone instant of delight becomes rapidly present to us, and "bears a glass which shows us many more." This is the great privilege of a meditative being-never properly to have any sense of the present, but to feel the great realities as they pass away, casting their delicate shadows on the future.

Talfourd has some excellent remarks on this subject: "The ordinary language of moralists respecting time shows that we really know nothing respecting it. They say that life is fleeting and short; why, humanly speaking, may they not as well affirm that it is extended and lasting? The words 'short' and

* Park Benjamin.

'long' have only meaning when used comparatively; and to what can we compare or liken this our human existence? The images of fragility-thin vapors, delicate flowers, and shadows cast from the most fleeting things-which we employ as emblems of its transitoriness, really serve to exhibit its durability as great in comparison with their own.

Mere time, unpeopled with diversified emotions or circumstances, is but one idea, and that idea is nothing more than the remembrance of a listless sensation. A night of dull pain and months of lingering weakness are, in the retrospect, nearly the same thing. When our hands or our hearts are busy, we know nothing of time-it does not exist for us; but as soon as we pause to meditate on that which is gone, we seem to have lived long, because we look back through a long series of events, or feel them at once peering one above the other like ranges of distant hills. Actions or feelings, not hours, mark all the backward course of our being. Our sense of the nearness to us of any circumstance in our life is determined on the same principles-not by the revolutions of the seasons, but by the relation which the event bears in importance to all that has happened to us since. To him who has thought, or done, or suffered much, the level days of his childhood seem at an immeasurable distance, far off as the age of chivalry, or as the line of Sesostris. There are some recollections of such overpowering vastness, that their objects seem ever near ; their size reduces all intermediate events to nothing; and they peer upon us like "a forked mountain, or blue promontory," which, being far off, is yet nigh. How different from these appears some inconsiderable occurrence of more recent date, which a flash of thought redeems for a moment from long oblivion ;which is seen amidst the dim confusion of half-forgotten things, like a little rock lighted up by a chance gleam of sunshine afar in the mighty waters!

What immense difference is there, then, in the real duration of men's lives! He lives longest of all who looks back oftenest,

whose life is most populous of thought or action, and on every retrospect makes the vastest picture. The man who does not meditate has no real consciousness of being. Such an one goes to death as to a drunken sleep; he parts with existence wantonly, because he knows nothing of its value.

Hazlitt observes in his "Table Talk :"

"The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor the last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two-nor our exit, nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there-that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would be easy to show that it is the very extent of human life, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years, spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it is, in a word, the length of our common journey, and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvass would be big enough to hold its striking groups, its endless objects! It is light as vanity; and yet, if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart-aches were compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed with the blow! What a huge heap, a 'huge dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of!"

With what accelerated speed the years
Seem to flit by us, sowing hopes and fears
As they pursue their never-ceasing march!
But is our wisdom equal to the speed

Which brings us nearer to the shadowy bourn
Whence we must never, never more return?

Alas! the wish is wiser than the deed!
"We take no note of time but from its loss,"
Sang one who reasoned solemnly and well.
And so it is; we make that dowry dross

Which would be treasure, did we learn to quell
Vain dreams and passions. Wisdom's alchemy
Transmutes to priceless gold the moments as they fly,

AVERY

THE HUMORS OF LAW.

"These are the spiders of society;

They weave their petty webs of lies and sneers,
And lie themselves in ambush for the spoil,
The web seems fair and glitters in the sun,
And the poor victim winds him in the toil,
Before he dreams of danger, or of death."

L. E. L.

"Laws are like spiders' webs, that will catch flies, but not wasps and hornets." ANACHARSIS.

Law is law-and, as in such, and so forth, and hereby, and aforesaid, provided always, nevertheless, notwithstanding. Law is like a blistering plaster-it is a great irritator and only to be used in cases of great extremity. Law, again, is compared to a country-dance; people are led up and down in it 'till they are thoroughly tired. Law is like a book of surgery; there are a great many terrible cases in it. It is also like physic; they that take the least of it are best off. It is like a scolding wife; very bad when it follows us. It is like bad weather; people are glad when they get out of it.

Take, again, the following lucid definition of legal science:

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