--_Lowell_.
18. Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise,--
We love the play-place of our early days;
The scene is touching, and the heart is stone
That feels not at the sight, and feels at none.
The wall on which we tried our graving skill,
The very name we carved subsisting still;
The bench on which we sat while deep employed,
Tho' mangled, hacked, and hewed, not yet destroyed;
The little ones, unbuttoned, glowing hot,
Playing our games, and on the very spot,
As happy as we once, to kneel and draw
The chalky ring and knuckle down at taw,
To pitch the ball into the grounded hat,
Or drive it devious with a dexterous pat;--
The pleasing spectacle at once excites
Such recollection of our own delights
That, viewing it, we seem almost t' obtain
Our innocent, sweet, simple years again.--_Cowper_.
19. Considering our present advanced state of culture, and how the torch of
science has now been brandished and borne about, with more or less
effect, for five thousand years and upwards; how, in these times
especially, not only the torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely
than ever, but innumerable rush-lights and sulphur-matches, kindled
thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the smallest
cranny or doghole in nature or art can remain unilluminated,--it might
strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hitherto little or
nothing of a fundamental character, whether in the way of philosophy or
history, has been written on the subject of Clothes.
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