It is, however, in the more conventional sense that the phrase “Present Time” is generally made use of in writing and conversation. So Johnson, in his well-known passage: “Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the _past_, the _distant_, or the _future_, predominate over the _present_, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings,” &c. Here we have “the Present” invested with the dignity of individual existence, and compared with the Past and the Future, as having duration or extension with these; as if we should speak of a series of numbers, ascending on each side of nothing to infinity, as being divisible into negative, zero, and positive. Among coincident forms of expression, on the part of writers who have spoken of the “Present Time” in its more precise and philosophical sense, is the following by Cowley, in a note to one of his “Pindarique Odes:” “There are two sorts of Eternity; from the Present backwards to Eternity, and from the present forwards, called by the Schoolmen _Æternitas à parte ante_, and _Æternitas à parte post_. These two make up the whole circle of Eternity, which _Present Time_ cuts like a _Diameter_.” Carlyle, in his _Essays_ (“Signs of the Times”), has this knowledgeful passage: “We admit that the present is an important time; as all present time necessarily is. _The poorest day that passes over us is the conflux of two Eternities_, and is made up of currents that issue from the remotest Past, and flow onwards into the remotest Future. We were wise, indeed, could we discover truly the signs of our own times; and, by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us, then, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us for a little on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity may disappear, some of its distinctive characters and deeper tendencies more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer.”[1] Lord Strangford has left these pathetic stanzas: Time was—when all was fresh, and fair, and bright, My heart was bounding with delight, It knew no pain, it felt no aching: But o’er it all its airy woes As lightly passed, or briefly staid, Like the fleet summer-cloud which throws On sunny lands a moment’s shade, A momentary darkness making. Time is—when all is drear, and dim, and wild, And that gay sunny scene which smiled With darkest clouds is gloomed and saddened; When tempest-toss’d on passion’s tide Reason’s frail bark is madly driven, Nor gleams one ray its course to guide From yon o’ercast and frowning heaven, Till peace is wreck’d and reason maddened.