closely, to apply it more generally to human nature at large, will probably reward our labour. call before our eyes

For this purpose we may up the painful, though too common picture, which the mind, where the glow of fancy triumphs over reason, and the mere impulse of sensibility supersedes reflection and settled principle, exhibits in its progress through the world.

To the mind of high-wrought feelings, and heated imagination, the entrance of life is fairy ground. The objects which solicit her attention, viewed through the medium of that elevated hope which youth alone inspires, shine with a brilliancy of tint not their own. The face of universal nature impresses the soul with a secret influence, a delicious rapture, which gives a new charm to being; and the heart, intoxicated with its own sensations, expands with an unbounded warmth to all existence. The desert of the world is decorated with the fleeting visions of a raised and glowing fancy, while the eye rests with unsuspicious wonder, on the splendid prospects which the magic of earlier expectation calls up on every side. Filled with that strong enthusiasm which elevates while it deludes, the mind soon is taught to feel, that in the crowd of pleasures, which court her acceptance, something is still deficient. The finer and more

exalted ideas, which stimulate incessantly to action, are still without an object worthy of all their energy. The powers of the soul languish and are depressed, from the narrowness of the sphere in which they have yet moved; the master-strings of the heart are yet untouched, the higher, stronger, passions of the breast are to be roused, before the keenness of expectation can be gratified. The charms of friendship, the delicate and intoxicating sensations which attend the first delicious emotions of the tender passion, rush on the imagination with violence, to which even the energy of youthful ambition is feeble and impotent in comparison. It seems that but a dream of pleasure, a prospect of bliss, has been presented to the view, which friendship and love alone can realise and render perfect. The enthusiast now looks eagerly round for the objects, which a heart, yet unacquainted with the realities of things, and wound up to its highest pitch, tells him are alone able to fill that void which still akes within the bosom. In the moment of delusion, the connexions are formed which are to stamp existence with happiness or misery in the extreme. A blind impulse overpowers deliberation, and the heart expands itself for the reception of inmates, whose value it has not for a moment paused to ascertain.

The measure of happiness is now, for a moment full. The mind, conscious that the energy of sentiment no longer languishes in inaction, feels those wishes completed which the vividity of imagination had before but imperfectly suggested, and yields without reserve to the novel emotions which begin to make a part of its existence. On every side the heart is cheered with the smile of affection, on every side the arms of friendship are expanded with inviting openness. The want of deception creates a little world around, where nothing meets the eye but the mutual efforts of emulative exertion, and the smile of beneficence exulting over its own work. And love, sacred love, who that has truly felt thy first pure and delicious influence, but learns, even if the object be delusion, that the few moments which thy power can confer, are of more value than whole existences, unanimated by thy holy and vital flame.

But this rapture is not to last. The time is to come when the prospect which depended on the influence of passion, however noble, and prejudice, however honest, shall melt away from the view. The mind, raised to a pitch of enjoyment above the reality of sublunary happiness, is in danger, when the face of things at once appears in proper colours, of sinking to a

degree equally below it. He, who in the glow of his earlier feelings feasted his eye with increasing transport, on the gay and captivating scenery, with which the creative power of an ardent imagination had overspread the barrenness of reality, now begins to find a thousand little deceptions wear away. The insipidity and nakedness of many an object, which at a distance had attracted his eagerness, and roused the keenness of his passions, press so close upon him, that even prejudice and enthusiasm fail to operate the accustomed delusion. The little vanity, so often interwoven with the best natures, receives a variety of unexpected and grievous wounds. As the mists which clouded the exertions of its better judgment retire on every side, he discovers with astonishment that, a dupe to self-deception, he has, like a blind idolater, fallen prostrate before the gaudy images his own hands have formed and decorated. He perceives that he has walked in a world of his own creation, that life and man are still before him to study, and only recovers his cooler senses to feel the loss of that mental elevation, that brilliant perception of things, which, though ideal, were so dear to him. But perhaps this is not all; nor does the discovery which scourges vanity, and detects the harmless fallacies of judgment, alone

await him. Perhaps the hour of deception has treasured up disappointment more heavy and intolerable. What are his sensations, if the truth, he now begins anxiously and fearfully to learn, is brought immediately home to his own bosom, and he is doomed to feel, that the exalted and glowing ideas of friendship, which first expanded his soul, shrink even in his view and leave his breast void and desolate; when in the heart which his earliest ideas had imaged as the residence of that sacred passion, the trial of experience detects hollowness and falsehood; when it is his bitter lot to mark the progress of alienated affection, to watch the subsidence of cooling attachment, to feel the ties connected in an honest and unsuspicious bosom with all his first enjoyments of happiness, beginning one by one to untwine; when he is to groan under the pang of the heart which accompanies the tearing out of the thousand little habits of confidence, the innumerable kindly affections which long custom had rooted in the soul, and made a part of the pleasantness of existence; or when he is to experience the agony of the moment, when he in whom the bosom fondly trusted, insults the confidence he has cruelly violated, and aggravates, by unfeeling mockery, the distress his perfidy has excited!