Every
object around me, as I passed them in succession,
reminded me of old days, and at the same time
formed the strongest contrast with them possible.
Unattended, on foot, with a small bundle in my
hand, deemed scarce sufficient good company for
the two shabby genteels with whom I had been
lately perched on the top of a mail-coach, I did not
seem to be the same person with the young prodigal,
who lived with the noblest and gayest in the
land, and who, thirty years before, would, in the
same country, have been on the back of a horse
that had been victor for a plate, or smoking along
in his travelling chaise-and-four. My sentiments
were not less changed than my condition. I could
quite well remember, that my ruling sensation in
the days of heady youth, was a mere schoolboy's
eagerness to get farthest forward in the race in
which I had engaged; to drink as many bottles
as ------; to be thought as good a judge of a horse
as ------; to have the knowing cut of ------'s jacket.
These were thy gods, 0 Israel!
Now I was a mere looker-on; seldom an unmoved,
and sometimes an angry spectator, but still
a spectator only, of the pursuits of mankind. I
felt how little my opinion was valued by those
engaged in the busy turmoil, yet I exercised it
with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from
his profession, who thrusts himself into his neighbour's
affairs, and gives advice where it is not
wanted, merely under pretence of loving the crack
of the whip.
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