Macon Intelligencer

Recollections.—Time mellows as
it mellows wine. Things in themselves
indifferent acquire a certain tenderness in
recollection: and the scenes of our youth,
though remarkable neither for elegance
nor feeling, rise up to our memory dignified
at the same time and endeared. As
countrymen in a distant land acknowledge
one another as friends, so objects to which
when present we give but little attention are
nourished in distant remembrance with a
cordial regard. If in our own nature of a
tender kind, the ties which they have in
the heart are drawn still closer, and we
recal them with an enthusiasm of feeling
which the same objects at the immediate
time are unable to excite. The hum of a
little tune, to which in our infancy we have
often listened; the course of a brook,
which in our childhood we have frequently
traced; the ruins of an ancient building
which we remember almost entire—these
remembrances sweep over the mind
with an enchanting power of tenderness
and melancholy, at whose bidding the pleasures,
the business, the ambition of the
present moment, fade and disappear. Our
finer feelings are generally not more grateful
to the fancy than moral to the mind.
Of this tender power which remembrance
has over us several uses might be made:
this divinity of memory, did we worship it
aright, might lend its aid to our happiness
as well as our virtue.