He now felt a degree of
regret, with which he had never been before acquainted. He considered,
how much might have been done in the time which had passed, and left
nothing real behind it. He compared twenty months with the life of man.
"In life," said he, "is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy, or
imbecility of age. We are long, before we are able to think, and we soon
cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may
be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the
four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have
certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure
me?"
The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long
before he could be reconciled to himself. "The rest of my time," said
he, "has been lost, by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the
absurd institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet
without remorse: but the months that have passed, since new light darted
into my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been
squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which can never be
restored: I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle
gazer on the light of heaven: in this time, the birds have left the nest
of their mother, and committed themselves to the woods and to the skies:
the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned, by degrees, to climb the
rocks, in quest of independent sustenance.
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