NOTES. (continued 2)

The marriage, whether of love, of ambition, of convenience or mere animal impulse, takes place. The music and dancing are no more, and the brilliancy of the bridal torch is extinct, and with those physical parapharnalia, one mental illusion after another begins to melt into thin air. The discriminating faculties, judgment and the critical vision, now become morbidly sensitive and severe, since satiety and the extinction of fancy and the imagination have left these capacities to unchecked action, beholding the object of their scrutiny continually, and close at hand. The medium becomes as unnaturally dark, as it was unnaturally light before. A thousand circumstances, never dreamed of in the philosophy of love and courtship, crowd upon this disposition to cynical and bilious criticism. Manifestations of temper and character, that once indicated to the lover, amiability and intelligence, become, to the moody husband or the discontented wife, marks of a weak understanding and a bad heart; and in proportion, as they nourish despondency and disappointment, they destroy the capability of indulgence and forbearance, and resist efforts to soothe, and correct, and conciliate.

In proportion as they become dissatisfied with each other, by a mental progress, exactly the reverse of that which brought them together, home is enveloped with associations of gloom. The imagination finds sunshine in every other place; and every other person is sensible and attractive, but the one they have sworn to love and honor until death.

There are those who will see in these revolting representations, a coloring of misanthropy; and pronounce this statement of the case harsh beyond nature. I would it were so; for, unless I deceive myself, I love my kind; and my only object is, to impress upon the young the importance of inquiring, when contemplating this vital and all important transaction, whether they see things in the clear light of truth, and as they will certainly appear after the delirium of love has passed away; or under the nameless and numberless illusions of that fever of the senses, of vanity, and instinct, too often miscalled by the name of love. I much mistake, if the greater portion of the domestic infelicity, which is loudly charged upon the wedded state in the abstract, is not owing to this fascination, this incapacity to examine the only elements, on which the happiness of a family must depend. All I would say, is, before entering on this union, remember, that it is easier to repent before, than after the evil is without a remedy. Pause and scrutinize; and let not the first glimpse of real light open your eyes to your true condition, when it is irretrievable.

I am as well aware, as the author can be, that there are many more happy marriages, than vulgar opinion allows, and that even in those, which are not reputed happy, in which the parties themselves have had their criminating and complaining éclaircissements, there is often much more affection, than has been allowed to exist. Such is generally found to be the case, in the numberless attempted separations, which prove abortive, when the final alternative is to be adopted. I know, too, that the history of the manifestation of conjugal affection is one of the most affecting and honorable to human nature, that has ever been exhibited. No union of tenderness and fortitude has ever been displayed in the annals of human nature, that can be compared with the maternal love and conjugal affection of a devoted wife. Of this, if I had space, and my scope were different, I could cite numerous, and most impressive examples.

I beg leave to enter my utter dissent to this doctrine. It seems from a note appended to this chapter of the author, that dislike to female authorship has been carried to the most ridiculous lengths in France. This is the more astonishing, as no country has produced so many admirable female writers, many of them peculiarly noted for possessing the charm of simplicity, and freedom from pedantry and affectation. A woman, not less than a man, is more amiable, interesting and capable of sustaining any relation with honor and dignity, in proportion as she is more instructed and enlightened. It is to female pedants only, that the ridiculous question of the French academy, whether a reputable woman could write a book, ought to apply. If a woman really deserves a crown of laurels, it sits more gracefully on her brow, than any chaplet of roses that poet ever dreamed of. But let us have real, unpresuming knowledge, without pedantry or affectation, either of which is always odious in man or woman, but certainly, as it seems to me, most so in woman.

Nothing, however, is more common, than this contemptible ambition of wives to govern their husbands. It is said that there are coteries of wives, who impart the rules in masonic conclave. Be it so. Whoever exults in having usurped this empire, glories in her shame. If there be any axiom universally applying to this partnership, it is, that the interest and reputation of the concern must be identical. However much a wife may humble her husband, in general estimation, by presenting him in the light of a weak and docile subject, with all sensible persons, she humbles herself still more. If the slave is contemptible, the tyrant is still more so. For the rest, this chapter contains more truth and impressive eloquence upon this all important theme, than I have elsewhere met in so small a compass.

I present you with the following development of these new emotions, which, I hope, you will not find amiss. ‘William and Yensi were as happy in this vale, as man can hope to be here below. They would have requested nothing more of heaven, than thousands of years of this half dreaming, yet satisfying existence. A daughter was born to them, a desert flower of exquisite beauty even from its birth. New and unmoved fountains of slumbering and mysterious affections were awakened in the deepest sanctuary of their hearts. In the clear waters of the brook, which chafed over pebbles, turfed with wild sage and numberless desert flowers, under the overhanging pines, in the tops of which the southern breeze played the grand cathedral service of the mountain solitudes, William performed, as priest, father and Christian, the touching ceremony of baptizing his babe. Adding the name Jessy to that of the mother, it was called Jessy Yensi. The sacred rite was performed on the sabbath, as the sun was sinking in cloud-curtained majesty behind the western mountains. The domestics, Ellswatta and Josepha, looked on with awe. William read the Scriptures, prayed, and sang a hymn; baptized his babe, and handed the nursling of the desert to Yensi. As she received the beloved infant in her arms, after it had been consecrated, as an inmate in the family of the Redeemer, while tears of tenderness and piety filled her eyes and fell from her cheeks, she declared, that she would no longer invoke the universal Tien, that the God of William and her babe should be her God, and that they would both call on the same name, when they prayed together for the dear babe even unto death.’—Shoshonee Valley, vol. i. p. 52, 53.

Of the emotions excited by all the incidents between the cradle and the grave, none can be compared for depth and tenderness to those, called forth by the birth and baptism of the first child of an affectionate and happy husband and wife. Those, for whom this work is more peculiarly intended, will be aware, to what incident in our common stock of remembrances the above extract refers. Delightful sentiments, and yet deeply tinged with sadness! What a mystery is this conjoined miniature image of the parents, the babe itself! What a mystery the world with its mingled lights and shadows, upon which the feeble stranger is entering! What a mystery the unknown bourne to which it is bound! What a mystery the God, to whom it is consecrated! Callous and cold must be the heart of parents, that this mutual pledge of love and duty will not unite in one unchangeable sentiment of love and identity of interest, until death.

My views touching the modes, in which the best results of education are to be obtained, whether just or erroneous, have at least the advantage of being entirely practical. I am sufficiently convinced, that there must be an adequate and happy organization and mental development, without which no education, however wise and assiduous, will ever effect anything more, than mediocrity of character and acquirement. In the present state of public opinion, as great mistakes are made by expecting too much from the training of schools, as were formerly committed by attempting too little. The opulent, and people in the higher walks especially, are tempted by their condition to believe, that wealth and distinction can purchase, and even command mind, and that cultivation of it, by which more enlarged and distinguished minds differ from the common measure of intellect; a mistake, than which no other is more universally, and palpably taught by every day’s experience. The Author of our being reserves, and will never impart his own high prerogative, to bestow mind; and he as often dispenses the noblest and richest endowment of it in the lower, as in the upper walks of life; though, as we have seen, he has indicated, in the order of nature, a process of unlimited improvement of organization and endowment.

But the substratum of a practical and well endowed mind, to begin with, being granted, I beg leave to add my conviction to that of M. Droz, a conviction, which, as I think, will resume its authority and influence, when most of the present tedious and endless systems and projects of education will have passed into their merited oblivion. It is, that strong, latent and distinguished character and acquirement receive in domestic education, that predominant and fashioning direction, which they retain through life. The peculiar impress of a parent, a family-friend, a single tutor, is often as distinctly marked upon the whole after life of the scholar, that becomes truly distinguished, as though he had been wax in the hands of a moulder. The numerous tutors of opulent families, and of public institutions, seldom impart the same advantage. Their different views and modes of discipline countervail, and neutralize each other. The Greeks and the great Romans taught at home, the master being a member and an honored one of the family. The master and the pupil walked, conversed, and pursued their amusements together; and the sweet associations of home and the shade and freedom from restraint were conjoined with the lessons. When the good Plutarch paints to us, with his inimitable naiveté, one of his favorite characters, he indicates as his first felicity, that it was his lot to have the training of an Aristotle, or some similar worthy. Consult the English Plutarch for the same fact. Could all the commencing circumstances of most of the great men, who have lived, be exactly traced, we should find the same truth disclosed. That the development of strong inclination for books, studies and literature depends almost entirely on domestic habits and pursuits, the family, in which our common remembrances centre, is a striking example. During the years, in which the minds of this family received their unchangeable impress, the members were almost as vagrant in their modes, as the Tartars. All their education, except domestic, was exceedingly imperfect and desultory. Books were often wanting; adequate teachers always. But the love of the parents for books and reading was a simple, natural, unaffected and intense impulse. They loved the thing for its own sake, and independent of all its results. The first instruments of pleasure, and things of estimated value, that greeted the infant eyes of the children, were books; not furniture, dress, and the imposing ostentation of a modern parlor. Pleasant conversations, disputes, between laughter and seriousness, about these books, were the first conversations that greeted their listening ears. These conversations were perceived to be of deep and heart-felt interest, and as little mixed with pedantry and formality, as the manifestations of instinct. The children saw, that to those, they most loved, admired, and were disposed to imitate, books were the grand sources of interest, converse and enjoyment. They as naturally imbibed similar tastes, as, to use a coarse illustration, the children of savages learn to love hunting. The first thing for which they contended, and with which they wished to play, was a book, or a picture. Their first lispings were trials of skill, touching the comparative progress, which they had made in their knowledge of the contents of these books, and the application of it to present use. These trials they saw to be the chief points of interest and amusement for their parents. Thus, habits of reading and application grew with their growth and strengthened with their strength; and many a criticism, if not erudite and profound, at least eliciting hearty praise and laughter, passed away unrecorded in their domestic privacy. Their neighbors admired, and, I fear, envied, and calumniated; but could not but take astonished note of such results in a family without wealth, without the common appliances, which themselves could so much better afford, and which they had been accustomed to consider the only price, at which intellectual improvement could be purchased. It was placed beyond question, or denial, that the members of that family had right views, quiet and unawed self-respect, and could converse rationally, upon every other topic, as well as books; that tact and discrimination pervaded their manifestations of thought and pursuit; and that they possessed an inexhaustible source of amusement, and satisfaction independent of wealth, fashion, society, distinction, or any external resource whatever—the habit of internal reflection, comparison and pleasant converse with themselves.

Parents, when you have imparted to your children habits and tastes, like these, you have bequeathed them an intellectual fortune, which few changes can take away; and which is as strictly independent, as anything earthly can be. You have unlocked to their gratuitous use perennial fountains of innocent and improving enjoyment. You have secured them forever against the heart-wearing gloom of ennui, insufficiency to themselves, and slavish dependence upon others for amusement. Spend as lavishly as you may, in multiplying fashionable instructers, and blazon, as much as you will, the advantages of your children; if they do not perceive, while the rudiments of their taste and habits are forming, that you consider literature, science and the improvement of intellect a matter of paramount interest and importance, you will never cause their stream to flow higher, than your fountain. An occasional parlor lecture, or a high wrought eulogy, will not convince them, or avail to your purpose. They must see this preference, as all others, which they will be inclined to copy, manifested in your whole deportment and conversation.

But, while I am convinced, that parents will find efforts to train their children to be highly intellectual, rowing against the current, unless they evince, themselves, by their habitual examples, that they consider it a higher attainment, to possess literature and conversational powers, than fashion, or wealth or the common objects of pursuit, in other words, that all efficient education must be essentially domestic, I would not be understood to undervalue public schools and colleges. I am aware, that in these places are best imparted the knowledge and adroitness that fit them for the keen scramble of ambitious competition. But in regard to those boys who leave their competitions behind the classes of the university, I think on examination, we shall find, that the germ and the stamina of this progress were early communicated by instruction and example at home. At table, around the evening fire, in the Sabbath walk, in the common family intercourse, in the intervals of the toil of your profession, whatever it be, the taste and the permanent inclination for literature and intellectual cultivation are imparted. This can never be, if behind all your eulogy of these things, you discover, that your ruling passion is money, or the sordid objects of common pursuit.

It is a common and, I much fear, a well founded complaint, that some latent mischief in our system of education, political institutions, the ordering of our establishments, or in all these together, has generated, as a prevalent moral evil, filial unkindness and ingratitude. Scramble, competition and rivalry are the first, last, and universally witnessed order of things in our country. Nothing becomes a topic of conversation that is of absorbing interest, but acquisition and distinction. The manifestations of an intellect, sharpened for the pursuit of these things, is the subject of most earnest eulogy. Children, by our usages, are early cast upon their own resources, and taught to shift for themselves. The consequence seems to be, that the parental and filial ties are severed, as soon as the children are able to take care of themselves, almost as recklessly, in regard to subsequent duty, piety or affection, as those of the lower animals. When we see a spectacle so revolting, and unhappily so common, of sons who, as soon as they have realized the portion of goods that falleth to them, or of daughters, as soon as they have secured lovers or husbands, forgetting the authors of their days, it becomes us to search deeply for the defect in our discipline, or institutions, that originates the evil. The callous hearts of such children may no longer be appalled by the terrible execution of the Jewish law against such monsters. They may neither feel, nor care, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth, may be this want of filial piety to their parents. But, by a righteous reaction of the divine justice, more terribly vindictive than the threatened judgment of the Jewish law, thankless children bear in their hearts the certain guaranty of their own self-inflicted punishment. They part forever with the purest and noblest sentiments of the human heart; and they procure for themselves the sad certainty of being cast off in their turn, by their children, in the helpless period of their old age.

The history of literature proves, that none of the more unworthy sentiments of human nature have been so adverse to friendship, as the vanity of literary rivals. From many noble examples of a contrary kind, which we might cite, I select the intercourse between Racine and Boileau. When Racine was persuaded, that his malady would end in death, he charged his eldest son to write to M. de Cavoye, to ask him to solicit the payment of what was due of his pension, that his family might not be left without ready money. He wrote the letter and read it to his father. ‘Why did you not,’ said he, ‘request the payment of the pension of Boileau at the same time? Write again, and let him know, that I was his friend in death.’ This friend came to receive his last adieu. Racine rose in bed, as far as his weakness would allow. As he embraced his friend, he said ‘I regard it a happiness to die in your presence.’

The celebrated Voiture, one of the beaux esprits of the age of Louis XIII. had lost all his money, and had an immediate call for 200 pistoles. He wrote to the Abbe Costar, his faithful friend. This admirable letter presents us with a trait of that confidence and frankness, which sincere friendship inspires. It was this.

‘I yesterday lost all my money, and 200 pistoles more, which I have promised to pay today. If you have that sum, do not fail to send it. If not, borrow it. Obtain it, as you may, you must lend it me. Be careful, to allow no one to anticipate you, in giving me this pleasure. I should be concerned lest it might affect my love for you. I know you so well, that I am aware, you would find it difficult to console yourself. To avoid this misfortune, rather sell what will raise it. You see how imperious my love for you is. I take a pleasure in conducting in this manner towards you. I feel, that I should have a still greater, if you would be as frank with me. But you have not my courage in this point. Judge, if I am not perfectly assured in regard to you, since I will give my promise to him, who shall bring the money.’ The Abbe Costar replied—‘I feel extreme joy, to be in condition to render you the trifling service, you ask of me. I had never thought, that one could purchase so much pleasure for 200 pistoles. Having experienced it, I give you my word, that, for the rest of my life, I will retain a little capital, always ready for your occasions. Order confidently at your pleasure. You cannot take half the satisfaction in commanding, that I shall in obeying. But submissive as you may find me in other respects, I shall be revolted, if you wish to compel me to take a promise from you.’

Although I do not intend to cite in this place the story of Damon and Pythias, nor to harp upon discussions of a theme, upon which there has been more odious prosing, and more semblance of sentiment than all others, yet a subject, intrinsically of the first importance, and founded in nature, can never cease to have claims upon attention, in consequence of having been hackneyed to thread-bare triteness. There is such an affection, as friendship. It belongs to man, and is the highest honor of his nature, less gross and terrene, than the short epilepsy, the transient and fitful fever of the senses, commonly dignified with the name of love, and warmer, more exhilarating, and elevated, than mere esteem, and common liking; it excites, without inflaming; it thrills, without jealousy, corroding fear, or morbid solicitude. It is that sentiment, which a poet would naturally assign to intellectual beings of a higher order, who were never invested with the corporeal elements of mortality.

I wish those, most dear to me, implicitly to believe in friendship. I would a thousand times prefer, that they should err on the side of credulity, than of suspicion and distrust. I deprecate, above all things, that they should give up human nature. I consider real misanthropy the last misfortune. I would, rather, my children should meet with treachery and inconstancy every day of their lives, than resign themselves to the morbid and heartless persuasion, weakly considered an attribute of wisdom and greatness, that men are altogether selfish, and unworthy of confidence. It is a persuasion, that not only forever invests the universe in an Egyptian gloom, ‘that may be felt,’ but, by an energetic bearing on all the faculties and sources of feeling, causes the heart, that entertains such views to become what it believes to be the character of the species.

No scruples of false decorum shall withhold me from saying, that, amidst all the selfishness, which optics of the most charitable vision could not but discover on every side, I have seen friendship, pure, holy, disinterested, like that of the angels; nay, more—have been myself the subject of it. My heart swells, and will to its latest pulsation, with the remembered proofs. True, the instances, that have fallen within the compass of my experience, are very few. But they are sufficient to settle my conviction, that the sentiment, which has inspired the enthusiasm of eloquence, painting and song, in all time, is not the illusion of a weak and misguided imagination. Selfish as man is, we often see instances of the most generous and devoted friendship, even in this silver age, the age of revenue and political economy.

With my author I believe, that where the sentiment exists between a man and a woman, admitting each to possess the estimable endowments peculiar to each sex, and so exists, as not to be modified by any of those countless associations of another order of sentiment, that almost imperceptibly invest relations between the two sexes, it is more vivid, permanent and disinterested, more capable of making sacrifices, and more tender and delightful than it can be between persons of the same sex. Of this class are the most noble, touching and sublime examples of a constancy under every form of proof, that the history of the human heart records.

While every one is sensible, that there must exist between characters, that are susceptible of all the fidelity and beauty of this sentiment, a certain adaptation of circumstances, and conformity of disposition, mind, development and temperament, I believe with St Pierre, that it is desirable, that there should be a certain contrast as well as much fitness. Constant assentation, the same opinions, tastes, tempers and views have been found by experience, not to generate the most permanent, and pleasant unions of the sort. The moral, as well as the physical appetite, would grow weary of perpetual uniformity and unvarying similarity, and requires the spice, afforded by the mixture of various ingredients of affectionate contrariety. Both the love and friendship, most likely to endure, spring up between the placid and piquant, the tranquil and energetic, the monotonously sweet tempered and the sensitive, whose irritability is held in check by good sense, kindness and self-control;—between the temperament, connected with blue eyes and fair hair, and that of the keen, deep black eye, and raven locks. ‘Soldiers,’ says St Pierre, ‘on long and distant expeditions, should be associated with ministers, lawyers with naturalists, and in general, the strongest contrasts of profession’—all nature’s discord thus making all nature’s peace. But I am perfectly aware, that there will be great danger of making fatal mistakes, in acting on this principle. I am confident, that is true in the abstract; but let sentimentalists beware of trenching too confidently on ground, where the limits between safety and ruin are so narrow, and difficult to discern. Doves of a different feather may pair happily, but not doves and vultures. There must be a certain compatibility not only of character, but of age, condition and circumstances, as we are broadly instructed in the fable of the frog thinking to wed with the ox.

Any discussion of the details, touching the requisite circumstances of compatibility to form friendships with any chance of their being pleasant and permanent, as well as the obligations and duties involved by it, would require a volume, and would carry me utterly beyond my present purpose. Books are ample, if not interesting and just, in the information which they impart upon this subject. With my views of its obligations and duties in few words, I shall dismiss it.

In a pecuniary point of view the claims of friendship are only limited by the sterner demands of justice. The common adage, which calls upon us to be just, before we allow ourselves to be generous, is worthy to be written in letters of gold; though it has been a thousand times wrested by selfish and cold hearts, into a pretext for their avarice. Whoever should think of lavishing his money upon a friend, in order to absolve himself from the more difficult calls of justice, would show a mind, too weak and incapable of discrimination, to honor that friend by his bounty. But, grant that the friends have delicacy, consideration and gentlemanly tact, and they may possess a common purse, without danger to the duties of either.

The fame and character of the one are strictly the property of the other. Let no one, who has the least particle of the base alloy of envy in his feelings towards him, whom he calls his friend, who is willing to hear, and countenance abatements of his qualities, talents, or virtues, dare to assume that almost sacred name. He is equally unworthy of it, if he stand by in neutrality when calumny is busily passing against him; and still more, if by smiles he gives his countenance, and half his consent to the story of detraction and abatement. It is a forfeiture of the right to the name, though it may be a less worthy one, to make the person, called friend, the subject of jest and ridicule. In regard to all these points, the duties are clear, distinct, palpable and not to be compromised. Every honorable mind feels, in witnessing any infraction of the laws of equity, or strict justice, a sentiment of recoil and disgust, difficult perhaps to define, but one which instantly designates the person guilty of it, as unworthy of the name of friend. Honest, frank and disinterested advice, especially in relation to concerns of great interest to the party, is a paramount obligation, whether the advised will bear, or forbear. This prerogative may, indeed, be claimed by unfeeling and rude bluntness. But, by a discriminating mind, the suggestions of a counterfeit, will never be mistaken for those of genuine friendship.

The time, the courtesy and the amount of intercourse, due from one friend to another, can never be brought under subjection to rules. Moral, like physical attraction, acting unconsciously, will regulate this portion of duty, with the unvarying certainty of the laws of nature. If persons, claiming to sustain this relation to each other, do not wish to be as much together, as duty and propriety will admit; if they allow this matter to be settled by the rigid tithing of etiquette, they are anything rather than real friends.

I have been struck by an incident in the life of a religious woman, I think it was Mrs Graham. There was a sacramental pledge between her and a friend, that, whichever of them should be first called from life, the other should visit her in the sickness, which she should consider her last, and not leave her, until she had received her last sigh. Sublime test of affection! What a tender, sacred office, after a life of friendship, thus, by a sacramental contract, to close the eyes of the friend beloved in life, and separated only by death! There can be no doubt that the feelings, called thus into action, are peculiarly fitted to mitigate the last sorrows; and in the simple grandeur of such a sentiment, so manifested, the departing friend will see a proof, that such affections are, in their own nature, immortal; and that such ties shall be renewed in the eternal regions of the living.

When friends are separated wide from each other by distance, duty, and the stern calls of our pursuits, I admire the custom of baptizing, if I may so say, our remembrances, by giving the names of our dear and distant friends to the hills, valleys, streams, trees or pleasant views in our walks; or the objects most familiar and pleasant to our view. The stern silence of nature may thus be compelled to find a tongue, and discourse with us of those we love.

In a word, the name, I am sensible, is too often a morbid mockery of cold and affected sentimentalism, both weak and disgusting, the cant term for the intercourse between the enlarged prisoners of boarding schools. But the sentiment exists, pure, simple delightful. Neither fawning, nor cant, nor flattery, nor any mixture of earth’s mould makes any part of it. Honorable, dignified, unshaken, it feels its obligations, and discharges them. The reputation, character and whole interest of the friend is its object; and his highest happiness its prayer. In holy segregation from the hollow intercourse, false phrases and deceitful compliments of fashion, and what is called the world, it is faithful and consistent, under all proofs and trials, until death; and when the eyes of the departed are closed, his memory is enshrined in the remembrance of the survivor. Thank God! I have seen, I have felt, that there are such friendships; and if there is anything honorable, dignified and attractive in aught, that earth presents, it is the sight of two friends, whose attachment dates from their first remembered sentiment; and has survived difference of opinion and interest, the changes of distance, time and disease, and those weaning influences, which, while they crumble the most durable monuments, convert most hearts to stone.

I have long been in the habit of measuring the character, mental power and prospects of the young, who are brought by circumstances under my observation, by the power which they evince, to resist the suggestion of the senses. In the same proportion, as I see them capable of rising above the thraldom of their appetites, capable of that energy of will, that gives the intellectual control over the animal nature, I graduate them higher in the scale of moral power and prospect. But if, in their course, they manifest the clear preponderance of the animal; if sloth, sensuality, and the inclinations, which have no higher origin than the senses, sway them beyond the influence of advice and moral suasion, be they ever so beautiful, endowed, rich, distinguished, be their place in general estimation ever so high, I put them down, as belonging to the animal, and not the intellectual orders. They can never reach higher worth and success, than that, which is the blind award of accident.

It seems to me, that writers on taste have not seen all the importance of uniting physical with moral ideas, to give them any deep and permanent interest. This subject might be enlarged to any extent, by carrying out the details, suggested by the striking, just, but necessarily very brief views of the author. We have here a clue, by which we may explore a whole universe of the highest and purest pleasures which can touch the heart, and which to the greater portion of the species have no existence.

There are travellers more learned, and equally capable of noting facts with M. de Chateaubriand. They have traversed the same countries, seen the same objects, and collected an immense mass of facts, which they have published, on their return, to be read by none, but kindred spirits, as dull as themselves. In his record of his travels in the same countries, we are beguiled onward, under the spell of a sustained charm. The imagination is constantly in action; the heart swells; images of grandeur and beauty, remembrances of pathos and power are evoked from every side, and the shadows of the past throng round us. Why is it so? The former see brute nature, in its lifeless and motionless materiality, divorced from mind and memory. The latter not only sees that universe with a radiant eye, but holds converse with a superincumbent universe, as much more vast, beautiful, touching, diversified, than the other, as mind is superior to matter. It is this creation of thoughts, remembrances, poetry, and affecting images, in his mind, intimately connected with the other, and overshadowing it, like an illumined stratum over a region covered with palpable mist, by virtue of which he makes nature eloquent. This is the charm spread over all the beautiful passages that abound in his writings; a peculiar aptitude to associate nature, in every position and form, with the universe of thought within him. Such is the endowment of all poets, orators, and painters, that have produced efforts worthy of immortality. Common writers see nature dead, silent, sterile—mere brute and voiceless matter. Endowed minds kindle it into speech, beauty and grandeur; interpreting it by the internal world in their own minds.

These illustrations of the importance of uniting moral with physical ideas, in regard to vision, landscape, painting and music, are as true, as they are eloquent and striking. Who has not had the vivid remembrance of home recalled in a distant land, by a tree, a feature in the landscape, a blue hill in the distance! How readily the shadowy images of memory are evoked! Every one is acquainted with the touching circumstance in the character of the Swiss soldiers serving in foreign countries. Great numbers of them used to serve, as stipendaries, in the French armies. It was forbidden to play, in their presence, the air Ranz des vaches. Homesickness and desertion scarcely failed to ensue from hearing it. The wild and plaintive air reminded them of ‘Sweet home,’ their mountains, their simple pleasures, and the range and lowing of their kine. The beautiful Scotch airs derive their charm from their association with mountain scenery, and the peculiar history and manners of a highly sensitive, intelligent and national people. The same may be said of the unrivalled Erin go Bragh, in relation to the Irish; in a word of the national music of every people. Associate any idea with sentiment and the heart, and it becomes touching, and sublime, and capable of stirring the deepest fountains of feeling, according to the remembrance with which it is allied.

I have heard persons, endowed with keen feelings, repiningly contrast the miseries which they endured from an excess of irritable and unregulated sensibility, with the apparently joyous apathy of fat and fortunate burghers, who seem to find no sorrows and no troubles in life, and who hear with incredulity and, in fact, with an entire want of comprehension, about sufferings resulting from witnessing misery, which we have no means of relieving, and the sorrows, from innumerable sources, to which those of a keenly sensitive nature are subject. I have never seen these contrasts of character in this light. I unhesitatingly believe that a righteous Providence has exactly and admirably adjusted the weights in either scale. The great mass, who are not disturbed with excess of feeling, are, from the same temperament, interdicted from a whole universe of enjoyments, into which those, who possess sensibility, and regulate it aright, have free access.

Man seems to contain, according as he is contemplated in different lights, inexplicable contradictions of character; and to be at one time all tenderness of heart; and at another an odious compound of insensibility and cruelty; according to the circumstances with which he is surrounded, and the positions in which he is placed. Who could believe, that it was the same being, that now dissolves into tears at the rehearsal of a tragedy, on reading a romance or witnessing a spectacle of misery, and now hurries from these emotions to see a bull-fight; and in passing to the show, encourages two bullies in the street to form a ring, to bruise each other! Who would believe, that it has always been considered an attribute in the more susceptible sex, to regard duellists with a partial eye; to give a secret place in their kind feelings to those who are reckless of their own and another’s blood; and more than all to look propitiously on soldiers encrimsoned with the fresh stains of the battle field? Nay, more, who reads without astonishment, and almost without unbelief, that a whole people, in the days of the pagan Roman emperors, days of the utmost luxury of taste and refinement, days, in which, in all probability, traits of kindness, generosity and magnanimity were no more uncommon than now, the ladies of the greatest and most splendid city in the world thronged with an irrepressible curiosity, and an intense desire, to see naked gladiators lacerate, and stab each other, and old and feeble men torn in pieces by lions and wild beasts, when merely a movement of a finger would save them!

The ministers of the gospel, who attribute the abhorrence, which the same spectacles would excite in the population of a Christian city, to the humanizing influences of our faith, forget that such a city has seen, times without number, its inhabitants pouring forth from its gates, to witness miserable victims burnt to death at an auto da fé, and shouting with joy at the spectacle.

Protestant ministers exult, in contrasting the influences of the reformed faith with results like these; and yet witness their congregations thronging in crowds to see a wretched criminal swinging in the agonies of strangulation. The same people thrill with horror, as they hear, around their evening fire, how those whom they call savages, dance, and yell round the stake, at which a captive enemy is burning. To the red man it seems the extreme of cold-blooded ferocity, to execute a criminal with a halter, by the hands of a person who bears no ill will to the victim.

Far be it from me to question one of the sublime trophies of the gospel, or to doubt its refining and humanizing influences. But the whole aspect of history and society compels me to believe, that fashion and prevalent opinions exert an influence, that will bring men to tolerate almost anything. I much fear, that the spectacles of the Roman Amphitheatre might be revived, if a certain number of any community would pertinaciously conspire, to write in favor of them, and countenance them by their presence.

To present, in contrast, the favorable side of human contradictions:—I have seen a man plunge into the water, and put his own life at fearful jeopardy, to rescue a stranger from drowning. I have witnessed instances of disinterested and heroic sacrifice, which present men in the aspect of angels, in every walk of life. Such sublime samples of the capability of our nature are the appropriate theme of oratory, painting and song; and cannot be too much blazoned. Pity it is that history did not select more instances, and dwell upon them with more partial eulogy, instead of amplifying the revolting details of war.

Two instances of affecting manifestation of tenderness are deeply impressed upon my memory, simply because they were elicited by common cases of suffering; and had in them nothing of romance, or of uncommon tendency to excite the feelings.

I was passing in the streets of one of our northern cities. On the marble door steps of a sumptuous mansion sat a ragged boy, with a look at once dogged and subdued, manifesting long acquaintance with sorrow and want. Near him sat an aged woman, apparently his mother, decrepit, worn and squalid, with her face turned from me. The boy was devouring with voracious greediness a piece of dried herring. Fair and richly dressed children were passing to their morning school. Most of them jeered him, in passing, calling on him to get down from the steps, and asking him if he was very hungry? ‘Yes, and you would be hungry, and sad too, if you was poor and a stranger, and had to take care of an old mother, and had walked as far as I have.’ One of the boys lingered behind, as if ashamed of his feelings. I noticed his broad, high forehead, and eye speaking a soul within. His eyes filled with tears, as he handed the boy money. My own eyes moistened, as I witnessed the angelic expression of this noble boy, who I dare affirm, had not the spirit to do such things by halves.

The other was in another extremity of our country, where money and cotton, sugar and slaves, balls and theatres are the all-absorbing objects of interest. A large group of gaily dressed gentlemen and ladies were promenading, in company with an heiress and her intended husband, who were shortly to be married, and they were merely discussing the preparations. A poor, pale boy, apparently a stranger, came up to them, with his written petition for charity; and with the low and subdued tone of voice appropriate to shame, bashfulness and misery, began to tell his little story. The splendid laughers walked on with an incurious carelessness. One of the group lingered behind. He was struggling with the difficulties of obtaining a profession, and aiding in the support of a distant family. But, he bestowed on the boy one of his few remaining dollars. When I see such instances of native tenderness of heart, I thank God that men are not totally depraved.

Every one who has had extensive acquaintances, and been exposed to frequent requests for letters of recommendation, and to procure the intervention and aid of opulent friends, must feel the importance and justice of these remarks. We ought not to refuse such letters from indolence, selfishness, or the commonly alleged fear of troubling our friends. But then, the case must be such, as will bear us out, in being measured and scrupulous, in regard to the existence, the actual truth and justice, of what we advance; otherwise our inter-position will soon be rendered cheap and inefficient; and will react, in creating want of respect for the writer, instead of good feeling toward the person recommended. Such, in a great measure, is the result, in the current value of these letters, as they are emitted, according to the common forms of society.

A most affecting proof, that the human heart is not intrinsically bad, and that the obduracy and cold-blooded selfishness of the world is adventitious, and the result of our modes and our training, is, that the sisters of charity, the truly beneficent everywhere, create a deep sensation of respect in beholders. Efficient charity is almost the only thing, that no one feels disposed to question, or slander. A corpse was borne slowly by me, to the place of its long sleep. An immense procession followed with sorrow and respect impressed upon their countenances. I asked, whom they were burying. ‘A single woman without wealth or connexions.—But her life has been marked by beneficence.’ If that sex, which so instinctively desire to appear to advantage, knew, in what light a lady, distinguished by fortune and cultivation appears while traversing the dirty and dark lanes of a city, to seek out, and relieve cases of misery, they would practise charity, were it from no higher motive, than to create a sensation, and appear lovely. Every one knows the example of the sublime, quoted by Longinus from Moses. A passage in the Gospel seems to me still more sublime. He went about doing good. All other homage, than that which the heart pays to beneficence, is adventitious. This is real.

Of all the pleasures of our earthly sojourn, after those of a good conscience, the most varied, and yet equable, healthful and permanent are those of reading. ‘I have never,’ says a respectable writer, ‘passed a comfortable day without books since I was capable of reading.’ It is certainly pleasant, to be able to converse with the wise and instructed of all countries and all times without formality, without embarrassment, and just as long as we choose; and then dismiss one of them without any apology, and sit down with another. We travel without expense with them. We inhabit the tropics, or the polar circle, the table summits of mountains, or the wide plains, at our choice. We journey by land or by sea. We select congenial minds, and make them converse with us about our congenial pursuits. We throw away no voice. We never dialogue in wrath; and intelligence converses with intelligence, divested of terrene grossness and passion. When detained on long journeys, in some remote interior tavern, by a storm, or inability to find a conveyance, how keenly, while reading almanacks of the past years, and old fragments of books, found on the dusty shelf of the ordinary, have I felt the value of books, as a perfect cure for the impatience of such a position. In this state of privation and intellectual fasting, we master dull and tiresome books, which, under other circumstances, we should not have dreamed of reading. Then the mind is taught to pay the proper homage to these intellectual resources.

The pleasures of winter reading, in the sacred privacy of the parlor, are thus finely described by Thomson, the painter of nature.

Whoever has attempted to concentrate his thoughts in fixed contemplation upon the origin of the human race, the object of our present existence, and our prospects beyond it, upon the character and plan of the divinity, and the mode of his being, must have felt a painful vagueness, a dizzying sense of the weakness of our powers, very naturally preparing us for superstitious and terrific views of the first cause. But when, in the clear light of reason, I look upon his creation, on his star-spangled firmament, and the glory of his works, I should as soon doubt my own existence, as the perfect wisdom and goodness of the author of my being. All religion, which does not strengthen our confidence in this, must be a dreary illusion. Horrible dreams, dating their origin from the associations of childhood, and the rant of wild and visionary ministers, may sometimes interpose, in the uncertain moments between sleeping and waking, as among the gloomy presentiments and partial delirium of ill health. But every rational mind must finally settle to repose in that glorious persuasion, which instantly irradiates the moral universe with perennial sunshine. ‘The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.’ In this or any other world, in our present or any other forms of conscious being, we may advance upon the unexplored scenes with a full confidence that we can never travel beyond the beneficence and equity of the infinite mind.

One of the standing themes of Christian pulpits is the puerile and absurd views, which the common creed of the Greeks and Romans presented of the rabble divinities of their Pantheon; deities, who fought, intrigued, made love, and intoxicated themselves; deities, who had great power in a valley, and none on the adjoining hills; deities, who were conquered, and transferred with their territory, and became in consequence subservient to their conquerors. I have heard discussions of this kind in the discourse of the sabbath morning: and, in that of the evening, views of Christian theology, scarcely less narrow and unworthy of the Supreme Being. I am compelled to believe, from reading and observation, that the mass of the people, in all churches, have had no other conception of the divinity, than that of a being molded much like themselves. We cannot avoid discovering, that their ideas of a God are gross, material, local, partial; that they behold him, as the God of their place, party and passions. Converse with the fiercer sects, and you perceive, that their views immediately become vague, as soon as they contemplate the Almighty occupied with concerns beyond their sect. It seems beyond their thoughts, to realize, that their denomination bears to the species little more than the proportion of a drop to the ocean: and that the Supreme Being cannot be rationally supposed more concerned about them, than any other equal number of his children.

Nothing can be more philosophical, or consoling, than the Scripture views of what has been called a particular providence. But, as we hear it generally expounded from the press, the pulpit, and in common conversation, it offers views of the divine Being and government, scarcely less weak, monstrous and unworthy, than those entertained by the ancient pagans. What a conception, to suppose that a perfect law, as wise and equitable in its general operation, as infinite wisdom and goodness could ordain, could be continually infringed, to meet countless millions of opposing prayers and interests! What a view of God, to imagine, that earnest and concurrent prayers can at any time divert him from his purpose, and change his plans! What palpable misinterpretation of the Scriptures, to suppose, that they give any countenance to such debasing conceptions of God! Hear rigid sectarians converse, and you discover, that they think little of the divine providence, which has no reference to their individual interests and concerns. From the tone of their conversations, it is but too manifest, that they have an interior confidence, that they can obtain of the divine power, almost what they will.

The testimony of church history and the experience of time testify, that the million, under all degrees of light, shrink from the difficult and philosophical idea of the real Jehovah of the Bible; and form, instead, the easy and natural image of a limited, partial, changeable God, whom importunity can easily induce to swerve from his purpose; and who is, in many respects, such a being as themselves. It is the embodied conception of their own narrow views, assigned to a local habitation. To him the countless millions of other lands, and other forms of worship, are not, like them, as children. Unable to rise to the Supreme Being, they have brought Him down to them.

A few minds, from age to age, elevated by endowment and circumstances far above their cotemporaries, have not only embraced, in common with others, the easy and simple sentiments of Him, which the heart entertains, but have raised their contemplations so high, as to behold Him in the light of truth—have seen Him, in some sense, as He is—have been filled with awe and confidence, in the view of his immutability, and with filial and cheerful resignation, in seeing in the universe, its order, mutations and variety, in the mixed condition of man, in a word, in every feature of the natural and moral creation, as in a mirror, a perfect transcript of the divine perfections—a pattern of an archetype without a shade of defect. Instead of bringing the Divine Being down to them, they have raised themselves up to Him. The veil, that screens his glory from the feeble vision of the multitude, has been removed. Being assured, that He has made of one blood all nations, that dwell on the earth, they have seen it to be impossible, that He should look upon one portion of his children with more favor than on another. They have seen, in the superior light and advantages of one part of the species over another, not the indication, of what is technically called special favor, but the natural result of the operation of his universal laws. They have seen, that if the inhabitants of one region are enabled to rise higher in the intellectual scale, and pay him a more spiritual and worthy homage—the simple inhabitants of distant, barbarous isles have an organization admitting them to be as happy as their natures will admit, and as full of enjoyment as their measure can contain. If they are unable to offer an intellectual worship, the service of their minds, their hearts are formed for fervent admiration and worship of the thunderer—the being, who raises fruits and flowers, and hangs out his bow on their clouds. They see, in all this, that God, also, hath set one thing over against another.

The wisdom of allowing any place to the imagination, among the faculties to be nurtured, I have often heard called in question. The extremes of opinion frequently meet in the same point. The most earnest declaimers against the indulgence of the imagination are commonly found among the class of strict religionists. It is, at the same time, a strong and prominent trait in the system of Mr Owen ‘the philosopher of circumstances,’ and his followers, that we ought to eradicate this faculty, if possible, or at least suppress its exercise; and reduce all mental operations to the cultivation of the reasoning powers. For me, I hold, that we are as much indebted to the author of our being for granting us this faculty, as any other. I see nothing wrong, or unphilosophical in cultivating it to the utmost extent; provided our imaginings would be innocent, if we could render them realities; unless it can be shown, that the indulgence of this faculty enervates the mind, and unfits it for encountering the stern duties and trials of life. So far from believing this to be the natural tendency of its allowed exercise, my experience has led me to suppose, that persons, strongly endowed with this faculty, are most likely to show energy for the discharge of common duties; and constancy and cheerfulness in encountering trials. Are the southern people of Europe, for example, less firm in conflicting with danger and sorrow, or more feeble and remiss in the discharge of duties, than the northern nations, admitted to be far less imaginative? Within the range of my experience, I find those possessed of the most vivid imagination, the most prompt to duty, and the most cheerful in sorrow. The moody advocates of pure and exclusive reason lay feeling, one of the strongest impulses to duty, out of the question; and would extinguish one of the surest supports in sorrow, the power of creating a bright internal world for ourselves, when the external world is involved in unavoidable gloom.

They who decry the indulgence of the imagination, must, of course, object to the endowment of poets and painters; and equally to the pleasure derived from reading poetry, and contemplating paintings. The whole empire of these kindred studies is that of the imagination. Let us try the alleged puerility of indulging this faculty. No one will deny, that it is the highest wisdom to seek to be as happy, as we innocently may. When a mental faculty is employed in creating within us a celestial world, peopled with nobler beings, acting from higher motives, and showing a happier existence; and in substituting the beautiful possible for the tame real; if we find innocent happiness in this celestial castle-building, are we not employing reason, only in a different direction from the common? When any one can prove to me, that it is puerile, to make ourselves happy, and from sources always within our own control, then I will admit, that ideal pleasures are unworthy of a reasonable being. Prove only, that the indulgence of the faculty enervates the mind, and indisposes it for duty and constancy in suffering, and I will grant at once, that it should be stifled, or its action restricted or suppressed. So far from believing this to be the fact, I would counsel him, whom I most love, to seek in her whom he would select for his wife, a cheerful and active imagination. It is an egregious mistake, that mathematicians and practical men have generally been found destitute of a good development of this faculty. Contrary to the vulgar and hackneyed theme of pulpit declamation, I have found on examination, that some of the most energetically charitable women, I have ever known, were veteran novel readers; as have also been some of the most profound lawyers that have ever adorned the judgment seat in our country.

It is not exactly true, that this faculty can be subjected to the complete control of the will. I know of no point in metaphysics, connected, also, with an important question in rhetoric, upon which less light has been thrown, than the question, how far, and in what way the imagination can be cultivated: and by what methods brought under the control of the will. A system of useful and practical rules for this result is, as far as my reading extends, a desideratum. Dr Johnson, it is well known, believed, that a man’s muse was sua dextra, his own will, industry and habits, and that by a vigorous effort over himself, he could write, for example, at any time. This may be true in efforts, in which imagination is not required; but, where the vivid exercise of this faculty is requisite to excellence, it is not true. Let the most amply endowed poet suffer under mental depression, dyspepsia, a concurrence of small misfortunes and petty vexations. Let him write in a smoky apartment, and look abroad upon a leaden sky, marked with the dulness of winter, without its storms and congenial horrors. He may repair to his rules. He may apply the whip and spur, and invoke the nimble fancies from the vasty deep, and the muses from their hill, but they will not answer, nor come at his bidding.

The imagination may be cultivated to a certain extent; and brought by rules and intense concentration of mind, in a certain degree, under the control of the will. Those, who would nurture it, ought intensely to study those rules. But, after all, to be able to exercise it in high measures of vivacity, is an endowment, in the bestowment of which nature has been more capricious than in almost any other. Even when possessed in copious measures, its province lies so intermediate between corporeal and mental influence, between the prevalent temperament of the period of its action, and the concurrence of external circumstances beyond our control, that we can easily see, why the wise ancients, who thought more justly upon these subjects, and more profoundly than the moderns seem to be willing to apprehend, attributed the successful efforts of the muses to a superior and celestial influence. He, who pushes the theory of our control over this faculty beyond truth, adopts an error, nearly if not quite as dangerous, as he, who holds, that we have no control over it at all.

A thousand external circumstances, which it would require a volume to enumerate, must concur with a certain easy and strong excitability in the physical and mental frame; and that excitability called into action by the right sort of stimulants, to impart happy and vigorous action to the imagination. Milton affirmed, that his muse was most propitious in the spring. As far as I can judge, the season of reproduction, and the awakening of the slumbering powers of nature, in the aroma and brilliancy of vegetation and flowers, acts too voluptuously on the senses, to give the highest and best direction to the imagination. The Indian summer days of autumn, with the associated repose of nature, the broad and crimson disk of the sun enthroned in the dome of a misty sky, the clouds sleeping in the firmament, the gorgeous coloring of the forests, the flashing fall of the first leaves, and the not unpleasing sadness of the images, called up by the imperceptible decay of nature, and the stealthy approach of winter, seem to me most favorable to heavenly musing. A cloudless morning, a beautiful sun, the glittering brightness of the dew drops, the renovated freshness of nature, morning sounds, the mists rolling away from the path of the sun, a bland southwest breeze, good health, self-satisfaction, the recent reception of good news, and the right train of circumstances all concur to put this faculty into its happiest action.

Every one is acquainted with the unsparing ridicule bestowed on Bayes, in Buckingham’s Rehearsal, for announcing, that he always took physic, before he wrote. Yet the dull coxcomb had reason and truth on his side. Mental action is more dependent upon corporeal, and the ethereal powers upon the right disposition of that organized clod, the body, than most are willing to acknowledge. Who has not felt, when first going abroad from severe sickness, the new aspects of nature, a fullness of heart, and the crowding of innumerable images upon the thoughts, which have no place in the mind, after a turtle feast or a full dinner? When the digestive powers are oppressed with morbid accumulation, the wheels of mental movement, as every one knows, move heavily. Students, orators, painters, poets, imaginative men must live as near famine as may be, and the most useful stimulants are coffee and tea. Every one has read, that Byron’s inspiration was gin. It may be, that the detestible combination of terebinthine and alcoholic excitement may have aroused from the mouldy and terrene dormitories of his brain the images of Don Juan, and the obscene, irreligious, anti-social, and fierce thoughts, that abound in his works. But I would hardly believe, on his own assertion, that he wrote the Prisoners of Children under such an influence. The muse of alcohol is accursed; and her influence is too corroding, dreggy, and adverse to life, to originate ideas worthy of being handed down in immortal verse. If these baleful aids were resorted to at all, I should consider opium a thousand times preferable to alcohol.

I know, from my own experience, that this reality of actual and present existence may be imparted to the creations of the imagination, by long habits of subjecting it to the control of the will. The enjoyment, resulting from reality, may be more intense, but it is, also, more tumultuous and feverish. I know of no happiness, more pure, prolonged and tranquil, more like what we may imagine to be the bliss of higher intelligences, than to be able to create this sunshine of the soul, this fair and celestial world within ourselves, and make ourselves free denizens of the country. From these fairy mansions labor, care and want are excluded. The obstacles and impediments of time, distance, and disease, both of body and mind, are excluded. The inhabitants, walking in the light of truth and the radiance of immortal beauty, from sin and death forever free, unite the wisdom of angels to the simplicity and affectionate confidence of children.

No people, in my estimation, are farther from true wisdom, than they, who denounce these pleasures of the imagination, as the puerile follies of weak minds. They who are most prompt to bring the charge, are generally destitute of the faculty, and its kindred endowments themselves; and seem to desire that other minds should be reduced to their own scale of sterility. Puerile, to avail ourselves of the power of rendering ourselves innocently happy! To me the puerility belongs to those who mostly abstain from contemplating the few gleams of sunshine, that we can behold between the cradle and the grave. ‘But these joys are unreal!’ What is there in the vain show of life, that is not so? See the greedy scramble of ambition, after honor, wealth and distinction, the painted baubles of insects, who hold all by the frail tenure of life! Life itself, what is it, but a dream, sometimes illumined by the rainbows of imagination and hope?

A being endowed with such intense emotions, as man; and so placed, as to have them so strongly called forth by the relations he contracts: so much in the dark in regard to his origin, his end and everything about him, conscious, that he must shortly leave home, all that he loves, the view of the earth and the sky, and that body, which long habit has taught him to consider as himself, to molder back to the soil, should naturally be expected to have this tendency to melancholy. Beautifully said the fabulist, ‘that he who formed us, moistened the clay of our structure not with water but tears.’ The natural expression of the human countenance in sleep is shaded with a slight veil of melancholy. It has been observed, that the national music of all people, and, more especially, of the uncivilized tribes, is on a key of melancholy. Most of the voices of the animal tribes are of this cast. The strain of the nightingale is the deepest expression of this sentiment. Religion should be the grand re-agent, in bringing light and cheerfulness to a universe of sadness and death, by presenting new views of that universe, its author, his beneficence, and the ultimate hope of the soul.

With the honorable exception of some towns and districts in our country, the epitaphs and monumental inscriptions are utterly beneath criticism. The greater portion are from Watts, and the other minor poets, too often little more than extravagant, coarse, miserable conceits. Here and there, a beautiful quotation from the Bible, such as ‘Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord;’ ‘Man cometh forth, like a flower, and is cut down,’ only serve to render the worthlessness of the remainder more conspicuous by contrast. What adds to the unpleasant effect is, that no inconsiderable portion of them are absolutely misspelt, to say nothing of the punctuation. Strange, that survivors should incur the expense of a slab, and permit a stone-cutter to select, spell, and point the inscriptions. It is to be hoped, that some competent writer will, ere long, take in hand this matter, so vital to the literary reputation of our country, and introduce a thorough and general reform, by wiping away this national stain, and introducing that beautiful and sublime simplicity, which ought always to characterize monumental inscriptions.

Akin to the bad taste of this sort, is the slovenly manner in which our church-yards are kept, in whole sections of the country. Who has not felt pain, at seeing many and even most of these places sacred to memory, in the western county especially, uninclosed, trampled upon by cattle, and the narrow heap of turf disturbed by swine?

Of writers, whose works have been immortalized by the muse of melancholy, I am acquainted, in the French language, with Chateaubriand, who has produced occasional passages of this class not to be surpassed; and Lamartine, whose poetry breathes a rich and deep strain of melancholy. Young’s Night Thoughts, Blair’s Grave, and Porteus ‘on Death,’ are celebrated English specimens of this class of poetry. In our country the Thanatopsis of Bryant ranks quite as high as either of the former writers in this walk. Some of the lines are of exquisite beauty, as paintings of the trophies of the tomb. Another age will do justice to many of the thoughts in the Sorotaphion of a young poet, who has written on the remote shores of Red River.

The first lines of the inscription on the famous Roman statue of Sleep are the sublimest concentration of melancholy thought:

‘It is better to sleep, than wake; and best of all to be in marble.’

The same may be said of that of the orphan nun, who died in the prime of youth and beauty: ‘I was alone among the living. I am alone here.’

But it is in the book of Job, that poetic images, upon which has been thrown the shade of a sublime melancholy, are set forth, with a power and pathos that leave little more, to succeeding writers in that walk, than to study, combine, and reproduce their features. How perfectly has this author given utterance to the groans of one in utter despondency and bereavement! Here the heart speaks its own language, with a simplicity and truth to make its way to every other heart. These features fix the date of this poem at a period antecedent to the settled art of writing, and plagiarizing the shadow of a shade, more conclusively than volumes of criticism. He copied not; but drank at the fountain; feeling deeply, and expressing what he felt.

When in my travels I pass through a town, or village, which I have not seen, if I have sufficient leisure, the first place which I visit, is uniformly the church-yard. The feeling that I am a stranger, that I know not the scenery, and that it knows not me, naturally induces a sort of pensive meditation, which disposes me for that sojourn. I form certain estimates of the taste and moral feeling of the people, from the forms and devices of the slabs and monuments; and the order in which the consecrated ground is inclosed, and kept. The inscriptions are ordinarily, in too bad a taste to claim much interest, though there are few church-yards, that cannot show some monuments, which, by their eccentric variation from the rest, mark character. All this is a matter of trifling interest, compared with the throng of remembrances and anticipations, that naturally crowd upon the spirit of a stranger in such a place. Youth with its rainbows, and its loves; mature age with its ambitious projects; old age in the midst of children, death in the natal spot, or the house of the stranger; eternity with its dim and illimitable mysteriousness; these shadowy images, with their associated thoughts, pass through the mind, and return, like the guests at an inn. While I look up towards the rolling clouds, and the sun walking his unvarying path along the firmament, how natural the reflection, that they will present the same aspect, and suggest the same reflections, that the trees will stand forth in their foliage and the hills in their verdure, to him who comes after me, when I shall have taken my place with the unconscious sleepers about me! I never fail to recollect the charming reflections in a number of the Spectator, that treats upon a visit to Westminster Abbey, the most impressive writing of the kind, as it seems to me, in our language.

Here is the place to reflect upon the folly, if not the guilt, of human hatred and revenge, ambition and avarice, and the million puerile projects and cares, that are incessantly over-clouding the sunshine of existence. What an eloquent lesson do these voiceless preachers read, upon the wisdom of most of those thoughts and solicitudes, that disturb our course through life!

The heart cannot but be made better by occasional communion with these tenants of the narrow house, where—

It is questionable, how far they could lay claim to be the real friends of humanity, who would reason away this last, best solace of human wretchedness, even were it proved an illusion. But man is just as certainly and necessarily a religious being, as he is a being constituted with appetites and passions. Grant, that there are people, who seem wholly destitute of the religious sentiment. Such are the real Atheists from internal conviction; for observe, there are many, who assume to be such, to pass for free and independent thinkers, and who are most likely, in their dying moments, to require absolution and extreme unction. But if there are men thus monstrously constituted, so are there individuals apparently as destitute of the common appetites and passions. We take no account of such exceptions, in indicating a general rule; and say, that man is constituted a religious being, and possessed of certain appetites and passions; although there may be selected a few individuals, who seem entirely without either.

Religion is the key stone of the arch of the moral universe. It is the fountain of endearing friendship; and on it are founded those sublime relations, which exist between the visible and the invisible world; those, who still sojourn here, and those who have become citizens of the country beyond us. It is the poesy of existence, the basis of all high thought and virtuous feeling; of charities and morals; and the very tie of social existence. Let no person claim to be good, while laying an unhallowed hand upon this ark of the covenant of the Eternal with the children of sorrow and death.

Treatises upon the evidences of religion may be useful for theological students; and I have heard people affirm, that they have been rescued by such works from the gloom of unbelief. But, believing, as I do, that we were constituted religious animals, if such a term may be admitted, and that the religious sentiment is a part of our organization, I have quite as much confidence in the arguments of the heart, as of the head. I undertake not to pronounce, whether M. de Chateaubriand were a good christian, or not. But I affirm, that I have nowhere seen my own views of the process, by which the original endowment of the religious sentiment is called into action, so eloquently described, as in the following extract from that writer.

‘My mother, after being thrown, at the age of seventy-two years, into a dungeon, where she saw a part of her children perish, expired at last upon a couch of straw, to which her miseries had consigned her. The remembrance of my errors infused great bitterness into her last days. In death she charged one of my sisters to recall me to that religion, in which I had been reared. My sister transmitted me the last wish of my mother. When this letter reached me beyond the seas, my sister herself was no more. She had died from the consequences of her imprisonment. These two voices, proceeding from the tomb, this death, which served as the interpreter of the dead, deeply struck me. I did not yield, I admit, to great supernatural lights. My conviction proceeded from the heart. I wept, and I believed.’

The belief naturally originated by the sentiment of religion, or what may be called the faith of the heart, is presented in the last fruitless attempt of the old man, to cheer the despair of Paul in the exquisite tale of Paul and Virginia. ‘And why deplore the fate of Virginia? Virginia still exists. There is, be assured, a region, in which virtue receives its reward. Virginia now is happy. Oh! if from the abode of angels, she could tell you, as she did, when she bade you farewell, “O Paul, life is but a trial. I was faithful to the laws of nature, love and virtue. Heaven found I had fulfilled my duties, and snatched me forever from all the miseries, I might have endured myself; and all, I might have felt for the miseries of others. I am placed above the reach of all human evils, and you pity me! I am become pure and unchangeable, as a particle of light, and you would recall me to the darkness of human life. O Paul! O my beloved friend! Recollect those days of happiness, when in the morning we felt the delightful sensations excited by the unfolding beauties of nature; when we gazed upon the sun, gilding the peaks of those rocks; and then spreading his rays over the bosom of the forests. How exquisite were our emotions, while we enjoyed the glowing colors of the opening day, the odors of our shrubs, the concerts of our birds! Now at the source of beauty, from which flows all that is delightful on earth, my soul intuitively sees, tastes, hears, touches, what before she could only be made sensible of through the medium of our weak organs. Oh! what language can describe, those shores of eternal bliss, which I inhabit forever! All, that infinite power and celestial bounty can confer, that harmony, which results from friendship with numberless beings, exulting in the same felicity, we enjoy in unmixed perfection. Support, then, the trial which is allotted you, that you may heighten the happiness of your Virginia, by love, which will know no termination, by hymeneals, which will be immortal. There I will calm your regrets; I will wipe away your tears. Raise your thoughts towards infinite duration, and bear the evils of a moment.”’

Phrenologists affirm, that along the centre of the crown is situated the organ of veneration, or religious sentiment; that, where it is large, the subject is strongly endowed with religious feeling, and the contrary, when it is otherwise; that, with some few monstrous exceptions, all possess this organ in a larger or smaller degree; and that, as the sentiment springing from the action of this organ is directed towards proper or improper objects, enlightened by reason, rendered gloomy by fear, or superstitious by credulity, is the religious character of the person. Neither my subject, nor my inclination calls upon me to agitate a system, which has generally been met only with unsparing ridicule, instead of manly argument. With its doctrines or merits I intermeddle not in this place. But, as far as the system declares, that those people, whom we call pious, whose tone of mind seems to dispose them to strong religious feeling, are so inclined from organization, rather than volition, or argument, I most confidently believe. Morals, whatever is taught by the science of ethics, dogmas, ceremonies, commonly phrased religion, make, in my mind, no part of it. I consider religion to be simply love, originating from instinctive impulses of veneration in the mind, for whatever is powerful, beneficent, and worthy of love. Its native tendency is to expend its affection, first upon the unknown and incomprehensible power, from whom we derived our being, whom the heart, without argument, intuitively perceives to be good. Its next and associated tendency is philanthropy, or the love of what bears the impress and image of God. If we possess not this original organization, no argument will ever persuade us to be religious. If we have it, we may be liberal, or bigoted, Christians or Mahometans, earnest or cold, according to our proportion of endowment, our training and circumstances. We may even adopt the flippant arguments of the unbelieving, and enlist ourselves under their banner. But the original principle is still within us, uneradicated, and uneradicable; and ready, if circumstances should favor the change, to present us in the form of devotees, or, as the phrase is, converted. The whole wisdom and excellence of religious training consist in enlightening this noble sentiment, and giving it a right direction. I am the rather confirmed in these views, by having remarked, that the chief, palpable and tangible influences of religion, which I have witnessed in all the sects, that I have had occasion to observe, have seemed to me to result from the affectionate spirit of their worship, creating in them strong dispositions to love one another.

Open the gospels and the epistles, and what is the first impression from perusing these unique and original writings, so wholly unlike any other recorded compositions, and bearing upon a theme of such astonishing import? The simplicity and fervor, with which the spirit of love is impressed upon the pages. The strong and before unwitnessed manifestation of this spirit was the striking aspect, which the first Christians presented to pagan beholders. ‘See!’ said they, ‘how these Christians love one another.’ Every time, I peruse the writings of the New Testament, this peculiar badge of discipleship seems more visibly impressed upon them. In what other institution, but that of Christianity, was it ever practicable to possess all things in common? Where has been the community, in which no one felt want, when a disciple had wherewith to satisfy it? In what other chronicles do we meet with such affecting and sublime examples of devotion to each other, and a constancy of affection, which showed itself proof against all other human passions, selfishness, hope, fear, earthly love, and the terror of death? What tenderness and singleness of heart in their affection for each other! How beautifully they demonstrate, that the sentiment, which actuated them, had gained a complete triumph over all considerations, arising from objects below the sun? He on whose bosom the loved disciple leaned must certainly be admitted to know the peculiar and distinguishing feature of his religion. This feature stands forth embodied in all his teachings. Philanthropy is the predominant trait in the life of him, who went about doing good. Consider the basis of religion to be a sentiment implanted in our constitution, and this result would naturally be expected to flow from its development.

True religion, consisting in an enlightened and affectionate direction of the heart towards the divinity, and manifesting itself in love to the human family, and in consequent obedience to the universal and unchangeable laws of the Creator, can only be expected to result from the highest discipline of the mind, and the ultimate exercise of the purest reason. But the sentiment, from which this religion springs, in some form or other, as naturally impels the heart towards God, and its faith and aspirations towards immortality, as fishes desire to find their home in the water, or birds in the air; and as everything, that has life, obeys the peculiar instincts and impulses impressed by the divine hand. Why else, should every people under heaven, in all time, have been found with a religion in some form, and hopes and fears beyond the grave? Consider religion in this light, and its hopes are as sure, as those objects, towards which the instincts of all other animals prompt them.

Do I undervalue morals, since I do not deem them a part, of what should be properly called religion? I trust, I cannot be so mistaken. Ethics may be taught, as a science, and, however important, seems to me no more a part of religion, than mathematics or natural philosophy. Love will create morals; and its perfection the perfection of morals, that we ascribe to angels. All that has been urged from the pulpit, in regard to faith and works, as cause and effect, may, with still more justice, be applied to love and duty. Love is the faith of the heart, and its original impress, when rightly trained in the science of ethics, and enlightened by pure and simple reason, produces its results in the best exemplification of the christian character.

That person has no right to complain of the shortness of life, who lies in bed, either sleeping, or dozing, until nine; and thus voluntarily consigns to unconsciousness a twelfth part of his existence. As little reason has he for indulging a querulous spirit on this score, if he spends without object a considerable portion of his time with people, about whom he knows nothing, except that they are incapable of furnishing a moment’s pleasure, or instruction to any one. If each one noted down at night the incidents of the day, that had occupied his time, and how much of it he had appropriated to each, I fear all that portion, that we call people of leisure would be able to show but a lean schedule either of utility or enjoyment, as the result.

Complaints of the brevity of life are equally interdicted to all those, who do not wisely improve every hour of the brief and uncertain present. He, who regretted his stinted fortune, would find, and deserve little sympathy, if, in the very moments of complaining, he was seen inconsiderately squandering from that limited fund. To form a resolution to mark every moment of life, that we might, with a succession of pleasant ideas, would probably triple the duration of most human lives. To sleep no more than nature requires, to rise early, to discipline ourselves to preserve an elastic and active spirit and a vigorous will, are parts of this resolution. It is a much greater part, than is commonly apprehended, to waste as little time as possible on those, who are incapable of understanding us, and whom we are as little capable of understanding. Reciprocal good feeling is much more likely to be created, and sustained by those who are determined to avoid this course, than those who, from mere unmeaning civility and common etiquette, bring their incompatibilities together, to make common stock of a mutual weariness with each other, which soon ripens into concealed, if not expressed ill feeling.

They, who are accustomed to think in this direction, will easily fill out the fine outline of the author’s views touching the right mode to arrest the flight of time. To add to this sketch would require an extent of detail, for which I have here no place. The general principle of this process seems to consist in meeting pain and adversity with a spirit so philosophic and firm that they will recoil from it; and to dwell upon every innocent enjoyment, as though it were our first, and would be our last; to prolong it by investing it with all possible moral relations; and to discipline the mind never to become hackneyed, sated, wearied, and callous to the sense of objects in which man is bound to feel an interest, alike by his duty and his nature.

Never was a more stupid maxim, than that common one, that nil admirari is the proper motto of a philosopher. To preserve a freshness, a juvenile sensibility of the heart for the admiration of whatever is new, beautiful and striking, for all the pleasures of taste and the understanding, seems to me the true secret of the highest wisdom. Who can fail to be inspired with disgust at witnessing the common spectacle of cognoscenti, men of virtu, travelled fools, who have been everywhere, and seen everything; and by the contemptuous sneer, with which they effect to see, hear, feel and speak of all, that passes under their present observation, instruct you, that they are too wise, and of a taste too refined, to be pleased with what satisfies untravelled people. For my part, when I hear them boast of the music, paintings and architecture of continental Europe, and England, as though all the sources of beauty were there, I can only say, that nature is always at hand, to mock at all the puny efforts of art; that she delights to mould living faces and forms in remote country cottages, that no beau idéal can reach; that the songs of the birds, that return from other climes to their forsaken groves with the first sunny days of spring constitute a music richer to the heart, than the most fashionable opera; and that a pure spring landscape is a pictured thousand times more splendid, than any that ever adorned the walls of the Louvre. He, who preserves, to his utmost age, his youthful sensibility of heart, and who is willing to be pleased with whatever will impart innocent pleasure, will find innumerable and never failing occasions to give his heart up to the full impulses of joy.

‘I pity,’ says Sterne, ‘the man, who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry ’tis all barren; and yet so it is; and so is all the world, to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare said I, clapping my hands cheerly together, that were I in a desert, I would find in it the wherewith to call forth my affections. If I could not do better, I would fasten them on some sweet myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress, to connect myself to. I would court its shade, and greet it kindly for its protection; I would cut my name upon it, and swear, it was the loveliest tree in the desert. If its leaves withered, I would teach myself to mourn; and when they rejoiced, I would rejoice with them.’

I consider it no unimportant part of the process of prolonging our earthly sojourn, to lay in, if I may so speak, as great a stock as possible, of pleasant remembrances. I appeal to the experience of every one, if the sudden recollection of a foolish thing that we have said, or done, returning upon us after a lapse of years, has not brought back with the convulsive shudder of shame, a long train of associated remembrances, which have carried us back whole days upon the scene? How long seem the periods, in which these incidents occurred! Pleasant recollections are no less efficient, in prolonging the periods, in which they occurred, adding their duration to the sum of the fugitive existence that is stealing from us.