love, friend? or the race that made me? The girl who does
not know and cannot answer for the least portion of
herself? or the stream of which she is a transitory eddy,
the tree of which she is the passing fruit? The race
exists; it is old, it is ever young, it carries its eternal
destiny in its bosom; upon it, like waves upon the sea,
individual succeeds individual, mocked with a semblance of
self-control, but they are nothing. We speak of the soul,
but the soul is in the race.

*

The future is nothing; but the past is myself, my own
history, the seed of my present thoughts, the mould of my
present disposition. It is not in vain that I return to
the nothings of my childhood; for every one of them has
left some stamp upon me or put some fetter on my boasted
free-will. In the past is my present fate; and in the past
also is my real life.

*

For as the race of man, after centuries of civilisation,
still keeps some traits of their barbarian fathers, so man
the individual is not altogether quit of youth, when he is
already old and honoured, and Lord Chancellor of England.
We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading
army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the
phrase goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep
open our communications with the extreme rear and first