Chapter 10

When midnight o'er the moonless skies
Her pall of transient death has spread,
When mortals sleep, when spectres rise,
And none are wakeful but the dead;
No bloodless shape my way pursues,
No sheeted ghost my couch annoys,
Visions more sad my fancy views,--
Visions of long departed joys.
W. R. Spenser.


When they reached the Green Room, as it was called, Oldbuck placed the
candle on the toilet table, before a huge mirror with a black japanned
frame, surrounded by dressing-boxes of the same, and looked around him
with something of a disturbed expression of countenance. "I am seldom in
this apartment," he said, "and never without yielding to a melancholy
feeling--not, of course, on account of the childish nonsense that Grizel
was telling you, but owing to circumstances of an early and unhappy
attachment. It is at such moments as these, Mr. Lovel, that we feel the
changes of time. The, same objects are before us--those inanimate things
which we have gazed on in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious
and scheming manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look
upon them in cold unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our
pursuits, our feelings--changed in our form, our limbs, and our
strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather look
back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves, as being separate and
distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who appealed from Philip
inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of sobriety, did not choose a
judge so different, as if he had appealed from Philip in his youth to
Philip in his old age. I cannot but be touched with the feeling so
beautifully expressed in a poem which I have heard repeated:*

*Probably Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads had not as yet been published.

My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.

Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what time takes away,
Than what he leaves behind.

Well, time cures every wound, and though the scar may remain and
occasionally ache, yet the earliest agony of its recent infliction is
felt no more."--So saying, he shook Lovel cordially by the hand, wished
him good-night, and took his leave.

Step after step Lovel could trace his host's retreat along the various
passages, and each door which he closed behind him fell with a sound more
distant and dead. The guest, thus separated from the living world, took
up the candle and surveyed the apartment.

The fire blazed cheerfully. Mrs. Grizel's attention had left some fresh
wood, should he choose to continue it,