appears to the imagination of youth. Our Middle-Age. ideas of length, and distance, are relative and comparative. When we can take a distinct view of the beginning of any measure, we see and apprehend its proportions.

74. If life consists of seventy years, we may say, that it consists of three times twenty three years. He who is living in the first of those three divisions, is utterly insensible of the period at which it commenced; and hence, that first period appears to him to have had no beginning: it is like an emanation from eternity. Hence the difference also, between the length of that same term of years in the apprehension of the parent, and in that of the child. When the second measure of twenty-three years has been entered, and somewhat proceeded in; when we can take a reflective view. of the point from which our manhood commenced, and can look back, beyond it, into youth; then the progress of time begins to rectify itself in our judgment, and the second twenty-three years seem to proceed with a rapidity, of which we had no idea

Middle-Age. during the first. But when the second divi

sion is concluded, and the extended compass is turned upon us for the last time; when forty-six years are numbered, and the remaining twenty-three conclude the measure, as in the following scale;

then, our improved experience gains a perfect sentiment, of the true measure and velocity of life; that it is but "as a span long" and, if truth and nature have our ear, that last measure will imperatively call upon us, to adapt our minds to the declension and conclusion of our course,

- 75. If truth and nature are not attended to: if we fly from their warnings, and strive to remove ourselves from them by attempting to reascend the stream of time; or if we waver in uncertainty, without taking a resolute course; the consequence is obvious: that which we are reluctant to approach,

will violently take hold upon us; and where Middle-Age. we might have arrived in serenity, we shall

be brought in sorrow. Let us, then, take a caution from that severe satire of the poet :

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan :
At fifty, chides his infamous delay:
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought

Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.

76. These middle ages, in their degrees and order, will be greatly assisted by a patient and steady observation of the Bioscope. The visible progress of the index. through all those periods, will add the strongest enforcement to the conviction, arising from an improving experience of the rapid flux of time.

77. As a Monitor, the Bioscope will point out to MIDDLE LIFE, the critical stage at which it is arrived. For, although half of life, more or less, may possibly remain, yet half of it is certainly exhausted; and

Middle-Age. the second half will appear to pass with

a continually increasing rapidity, owing to the continual rectification of our judgment with respect to the true velocity of time. And, as we shall find ourselves declining in vigour in the last half, whereas we were constantly increasing in it in the first half, we shall be led to a provident consideration of the present period; in order to recover, and redress, whatever in the past may point itself out to our reflection as requiring it.

78. The power of habit, which acquires such compound strength from the progress of time, will begin to alarm us, and to awaken in us a wise anxiety; and we shall naturally reflect, that if we are under the influence of any habits which ought to be broken and subdued, this is the latest season to which the effort ought, in common prudence, to be protracted. The vigour we now possess, will still render easy the subjugation of habits; the dominion of which will be irresistibly confirmed, if we permit them to acquire an established inveteracy, and if we postpone our combat with them until our strength.

decays, and our resolution becomes too Middle-Age. feeble to encounter them. It is a terrific thought, but an incontestable truth; that although the habits of the body perish with the body, the habits of the soul survive in the soul.

79. A profound sense of this fearful truth, made the good Archbishop Tillotson live, even to old age, in watchful and unceasing warfare against those evil impulses of the mind and heart, which, if not conquered while our powers of resistance are efficient, will grow with age, and ripen in decay. The following secret resolutions, found in his desk after his death, and written at the age of 66, mark out to middle age an exercise from which it never should repose, and which must be extended to every form of vice.

RESOLUTIONS.

"Not to be angry with any body, upon any occasion; because all anger is foolish, and a short fit of madness; betrays us to great indecencies; and whereas it is intended to hurt others, the edge of it turns upon