Excerpt from Lays of a Lifetime: The Record of One Departed How powerfully some natures move and manifest themselves! What a magnetism goes out from them, drawing around them heart after heart, and mind after mind, till they die amid a throng of votaries! These are they that linger long after they are gone, but yet not forever. A lamp burns, not more from its flowing oil, than from its surrounding air. He who has impressed himself upon the hearts of his contemporaries only, will burn on, at first brightly, but every year more dimly, as they consume away, one after another, till, with the failing breath of the last of his age, he goes out into oblivion. How many a grand being, thus filled with inexhaustible oil, has so flamed awhile in the narrow chamber of its generation, and been too soon extinguished by the vacuum around it! Unwritten minds cannot last forever. But they whose hearts have flowed forth into language, have not only an oil perennial, but an atmosphere as wide as the world. They have discovered the Rosicrucian secret; for they have lit an ever-burning lamp. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.