I am less liable to illusions.

One knows by experience that nothing is so good or so bad as one has fancied, and that what is to be will be mainly what has been.

So many of one's friends are dead! Yes, but one will soon die too.

Each friend gone is the cutting a link which would have made death painful.

It loses its terror as it draws nearer, especially when one thinks what it would be if one were not allowed to die." Tennyson has expressed in Tithonus the idea at which Froude glances, and from which he averts his gaze.