A day’s illness may teach something of this to a thoughtful mind; but the most inconsiderate can scarcely fail to learn the lesson, when the proof is drawn out over a succession of months and seasons. With me, it has now included several New Year’s Days; and what have they taught me? What any future New Year’s retrospect cannot possibly contradict, and must confirm: though it can scarcely illustrate further what is already as clear as its moon and stars. During the year looked back upon, all the days, and most hours of the day, have had their portion of pain--usually mild--now and then, for a few marked hours of a few marked weeks, severe and engrossing; while, perhaps, some dozen evenings, and half-dozen mornings, are remembered as being times of almost entire ease. So much for the body. The mind, meantime, though clear and active, has been so far affected by the bodily state as to lose all its gaiety, and, by disuse, almost to forget its sense of enjoyment. During the year, perhaps, there may have been two surprises of light-heartedness, for four hours in June, and two hours and a half in October, with a few single flashes of joy in the intermediate seasons, on the occurrence of some rousing idea, or the revival of some ancient association. Over all the rest has brooded a thick heavy cloud of care, apparently causeless, but not for that the less real. This is the sum of the pains of the year, in relation to illness. Where are these pains now?--Not only gone, but annihilated. They are destroyed so utterly, that even memory can lay no hold upon them. The fact of their occurrence is all that even memory can preserve. The sensations themselves cannot be retained, nor recalled, nor revived; they are the most absolutely evanescent, the most essentially and completely destructible of all things. Sensations are unimaginable to those who are most familiar with them. Their concomitants may be remembered, and so vividly conceived of, as to excite emotions at a future time: but the sensations themselves cannot be conceived of when absent. This pain, which I feel now as I write, I have felt innumerable times before; yet, accustomed as I am to entertain and manage it, the sensation itself is new every time; and a few hours hence I shall be as unable to represent it to myself as to the healthiest person in the house. Thus are all the pains of the year annihilated. What remains? All the good remains. And how is this? whence this wide difference between the good and the evil?