page, I formed the following reverie, too wild for allegory, and too regular for a dream." The present writer will also fancy himself isolated in a situation where he recently enjoyed a train of reflections something similar to those which form the subject of the following sheets. The sun had attained the highest verge of Cancer, and was already on its decline towards another equinox, when the "breezy call" of a morning scattering incense from a thousand springs, ordained to lure mortals from repose, guided my footsteps to a sequestered dell of trees, where I was sometimes wont to repair in order to enjoy in silence those moments which the busy commerce of the world are not always calculated to afford. The domain which here arrested my course was diversified in all the wildness and irregularity of nature. A river skirted its utmost boundary, whilst the umbrageous trees, which overhung its clear and murmuring stream, partially shaded the scenery of the more distant country, affording, however, at intervals a peep at rich pastures and woodlands beyond, undulating in picturesque forms of acclivity and vales. A range of lofty hills crowned with their summits the back-ground of the extended prospect. The grailed seat of a grotto, formed by the joint hand of nature and art, invited me to a domicile amidst objects of more than ordinary beauty. For some moments I inhaled the balmy freshness of the morning air, mingled with the fragrance of odoriferous shrubs. The early sun beamed splendour from the east, the feathered tribes, roused from their cells by the call of morning, filled the ambient air with a song of praise; and whilst some winged their path towards the blue ether, others fluttered with an unceasing chorus of praise among the spreading foliage, painted in matchless variety by the pencil of an all-powerful and unseen artist. The dew-drops, trembling upon the slender leaf, sparkled like crystals with a thousand translucent rays, vegetation again raised her drooping head, and displayed, in rich exuberance, her treasures; every circumstance combined at once to inspire pleasure, and to excite busy thought. Soliloquies naturally intrude upon the solitude of an individual, and, under such circumstances, few, it is probable, could withstand the spontaneous flow of impressions and images thus excited. While all Nature around, animated by the resplendent beams of a morning sun, sports each in his own instinctive sphere of recreation, we naturally diverge into speculations connected with the character and complexion of our intellectual susceptibilities. I here imagined the person who had long been in the habit of close mental application, whose intellectual energies have been practically trained to investigation and thought, whose susceptibilities are keen, to whom the world opens an extensive, rich, and illimitable field of inquiry. What a universe of obser vation and of thought does he not enjoy, utterly unknown to him whose sole attention is engrossed in a dull round of customary duties, almost mechanical in their influence, where the grasp of mental perception involves no original reach of thought! One of those individuals, whose tenor of mind, unless perturbed by the contingencies of trade, swim down the stream of life with tranquillity, has indeed his enjoyments, he feels plea sures and gratifications which he terms substantial in the customary routine of calculated profits; but he knows not what obstruction means; he never experienced the ardour and the pain of intense thinking,-is awakened to no enthusiastic perception of feeling. The chain of thought was opened, and spontaneously wandered through a succession of speculative questions connected with the subject. The citizen, for example, thus flowed the course of my speculations,—at his desk calculating his gains, or pursuing a dull round of customary duties, seldom bestows his meditations upon a train of thought or of sentiment which he deems purely visionary. The man of leisure who devotes the hours of his life to the mere amusements of a country life, who, amidst objects whose intrinsic beauty can ever animate and charm, knows no pleasures but the sound of the "echoing horn," and the intense anxiety with which the sportsman, heedless of all besides, pursues the keen recreations which urge him in his career, laughs at the fine-drawn speculations, at the feigned and visionary gratifications which await the man of cultivated, mental refinement-knows nothing, it is true, of the pleasures here imagined. The enjoyments produced by mental abstraction and association, are, to him "like a tale told by an idiot," which, if it " signifies" any thing but folly, is of so recondite and equivocal a nature as to be unintelligible to minds unsophisticated by the dreams of absolute enthusiasm. These and a thousand others, all differing it may chance from each other in certain shades of temperament, pass through life, who never framed to themselves the possibility of the enjoyments here spoken of. Multitudes who have enjoyed the benefit of education, who have sustained a character of high respectability in the several ways in which they have shone, would yet, it is more than probable, confess, were the question asked, that "the noiseless tenor of their way," was accompanied with gratifications as high as those which attended the hours of persons who have attained high eminence in literature, and who are famed for their intervals of abstraction. "The Miser himself," says Professor Ferguson, in his Essay on the History of Civil Society, I can consider his wealth as the source of happiness, and has challenged his heir to have more pleasure in spending than he in amassing, his fortune." ་་ "Why," says the Doctor, whose speculations "On Happiness" indicate a deep insight into human nature, may not the man whose object is money, be understood to live a life of pleasure, not only more entire than that of the spendthrift, but even as much as the virtuoso, the scholar, or the man of taste." What is there, indeed, it will be asked by the calculating individual, to invalidate the hypothesis that a person, whose senses are utterly deaf to the calls of literary speculations, may tread the journey of life, may descend into the vale of years, and experience in as high a degree the emotions of pleasure and of happiness as the first? The sportsman and the tradesman feel the keen delights of their several pursuits, as the Poet in his "frenzied" reveries, or as the Philosopher lost in a train of favourite ab straction. The question, indeed, is one which cannot, from its very nature, admit of absolute demonstration; any thing in the shape of mathematical proof is here entirely out of the question; these are matters in which it is agreed on all hands that much is to be felt and understood. A mind that, by a course of reading and reflection, has become so far initiated as to know from its own exercises, the nature, character, and complexion, and can consequently appreciate these pleasures, will easily credit them to exist amongst certain others in a degree far beyond their own private experience. While he judges from analogies of the intenseness with which they may exist, he is sensible that it is altogether vain to endeavour to implant an idea of their reality in the breast of a person whose imagination is barren, whose energies are torpid and cold, and whose exclusions of thought seldom, unless in the calculations of private interest, take their flight beyond the ephemeral pursuits in which they are actually engaged. Surrounded, for instance, with the circumstances, or with the objects which originated the train of thought in which I had engaged,-when all Nature concurred to exhilarate the soul with lively gratitude, and raise it to inspiration, when earth and air teems with fragrance and animation, and when gladness smiles upon the face of the country, variegated in the most beautiful forms, one of the class last pointed at would merely observe that it was a fine morning, whilst one of the former would probably feel the kindred energies of his soul expand under a sense of beauty, and his thoughts drawn forth in reverie. The latter would indeed discern a sort of beauty, so far as the colours, forms, and fragrance of the objects he views strikes upon his senses, but he remains wholly dead to any perception beyond: no ideas of harmony, congruity, and happiness, which rush through the imagination and awaken the energies of the former, would ever strike him. His ideas run, habitually, in another channel; no conception of any affinity between the sublime and the beautiful in nature, and the sympathies or the meditations of genius, as it often characterizes the human mind, enters for a moment into the calculations of a breast, which, however warmed with the benevolent dis page, I formed the following reverie, too wild for allegory, and too regular for a dream." The present writer will also fancy himself isolated in a situation where he recently enjoyed a train of reflections something similar to those which form the subject of the following sheets. The sun had attained the highest verge of Cancer, and was already on its decline towards another equinox, when the "breezy call" of a morning scattering incense from a thousand springs, ordained to lure mortals from repose, guided my footsteps to a sequestered dell of trees, where I was sometimes wont to repair in order to enjoy in silence those moments which the busy commerce of the world are not always calculated to afford. The domain which here arrested my course was diversified in all the wildness and irregularity of nature. A river skirted its utmost boundary, whilst the umbrageous trees, which overhung its clear and murmuring stream, partially shaded the scenery of the more distant country, affording, however, at intervals a peep at rich pastures and woodlands beyond, undulating in picturesque forms of acclivity and vales. A range of lofty hills crowned with their summits the back-ground of the extended prospect. The grailed seat of a grotto, formed by the joint hand of nature and art, invited me to a domicile amidst objects of more than ordinary beauty. For some moments I inhaled the balmy freshness of the morning air, mingled with the fragrance of odoriferous shrubs. The early sun beamed splendour from the east, the feathered tribes, roused from their cells by the call of morning, filled the ambient air with a song of praise; and whilst some winged their path towards the blue ether, others fluttered with an unceasing chorus of praise among the spreading foliage, painted in matchless variety by the pencil of an all-powerful and unseen artist. The dew-drops, trembling upon the slender leaf, sparkled like crystals with a thousand translucent rays, vegetation again raised her drooping head, and displayed, in rich exuberance, her treasures; every circumstance combined at once to inspire pleasure, and to excite busy thought. Soliloquies naturally intrude upon the solitude of an individual, and, under such circumstances, few, it is probable, could withstand the spontaneous flow of impressions and images thus excited. While all Nature around, animated by the resplendent beams of a morning sun, sports each in his own instinctive sphere of recreation, we naturally diverge into speculations connected with the character and complexion of our intellectual susceptibilities. I here imagined the person who had long been in the habit of close mental application, whose intellectual energies have been practically trained to investigation and thought, whose susceptibilities are keen, to whom the world opens an extensive, rich, and illimitable field of inquiry. What a universe of observation and of thought does he not enjoy, utterly unknown to him whose sole attention is engrossed in a dull round of customary duties, almost mechanical in their influence, where the grasp of mental perception involves no original reach of thought! One of those individuals, whose tenor of mind, unless perturbed by the contingencies of trade, swim down the stream of life with tranquillity, has in deed his enjoyments, he feels plea sures and gratifications which he terms substantial in the customary routine of calculated profits; but he knows not what obstruction means; he never experienced the ardour and the pain of intense thinking,-is awakened to no enthusiastic perception of feeling. The chain of thought was opened, and spontaneously wandered through a succession of speculative questions connected with the subject. The citizen, for example,-thus flowed the course of my speculations,— -at his desk calculating his gains, or pursuing a dull round of customary duties, seldom bestows his meditations upon a train of thought or of sentiment which he deems purely visionary. The man of leisure who devotes the hours of his life to the mere amusements of a country life, who, amidst objects whose intrinsic beauty can ever animate and charm, knows no pleasures but the sound of the "echoing horn," and the intense anxiety with which the sportsman, heedless of all besides, pursues the keen recreations which urge him in his career, laughs at the fine-drawn speculations, at the feigned and visionary gratifications which await the man of cultivated mental refinement-knows nothing, it is true, of the pleasures here imagined. The enjoyments produced by mental abstraction and association, are, to him "like a tale told by an idiot," which, if it " signifies" any thing but folly, is of so recondite and equivocal a nature as to be unintelligible to minds unsophisticated by the dreams of absolute enthusiasm. These and a thousand others, all differing it may chance from each other in certain shades of temperament, pass through life, who never framed to themselves the possibility of the enjoyments here spoken of. Multitudes who have enjoyed the benefit of education, who have sustained a character of high respectability in the several ways in which they have shone, would yet, it is more than probable, confess, were the question asked, that "the noiseless tenor of their way," was accompanied with gratifications as high as those which attended the hours of persons who have attained high eminence in literature, and who are famed for their intervals of abstraction. "The Miser himself," says Professor Ferguson, in his Essay on the History of Civil Society, "can consider his wealth as the source of happiness, and has challenged his heir to have more pleasure in spending than he in amassing, his fortune." ་་ "Why," says the Doctor, whose speculations On Happiness" indicate a deep insight into human nature, may not the man whose object is money, be understood to live a life of pleasure, not only more entire than that of the spendthrift, but even as much as the virtuoso, the scholar, or the man of taste." What is there, indeed, it will be asked by the calculating individual, to invalidate the hypothesis that a person, whose senses are utterly deaf to the calls of literary speculations, may tread the journey of life, may descend into the vale of years, and experience in as high a degree the emotions of pleasure and of happiness as the first? The sportsman and the tradesman feel the keen delights of their several pursuits, as the Poet in his "frenzied" reveries, or as the Philosopher lost in a train of favourite ab straction. The question, indeed, is one which cannot, from its very nature, admit of absolute demonstration; any thing in the shape of mathematical proof is here entirely out of the question; these are matters in which it is agreed on all hands that much is to be felt and understood. A mind that, by a course of reading and reflection, has become so far initiated as to know from its own exercises, the nature, character, and complexion, and can consequently appreciate these pleasures, will easily credit them to exist amongst certain others in a degree far beyond their own private experience. While he judges from analogies of the intenseness with which they may exist, he is sensible that it is altogether vain to endeavour to implant an idea of their reality in the breast of a person whose imagination is barren, whose energies are torpid and cold, and whose exclusions of thought seldom, unless in the calculations of private interest, take their flight beyond the ephemeral pursuits in which they are actually engaged. Surrounded, for instance, with the circumstances, or with the objects which originated the train of thought in which I had engaged,-when all Nature concurred to exhilarate the soul with lively gratitude, and raise it to inspiration, when earth and air teems with fragrance and animation, and when gladness smiles upon the face of the country, variegated in the most beautiful forms, one of the class last pointed at would merely observe that it was a fine morning, whilst one of the former would probably feel the kindred energies of his soul expand under a sense of beauty, and his thoughts drawn forth in reverie. The latter would indeed discern a sort of beauty, so far as the colours, forms, and fragrance of the objects he views strikes upon his senses, but he remains wholly dead to any perception beyond: no ideas of harmony, cougruity, and happiness, which rush through the imagination and awaken the energies of the former, would ever strike him. His ideas run, habitually, in another channel; no conception of any affinity between the sublime and the beautiful in nature, and the sympathies or the meditations of genius, as it often characterizes the human mind, enters for a moment into the calculations of a breast, which, however warmed with the benevolent dis page, I formed the following reverie, too wild for allegory, and too regular for a dream." The present writer will also fancy himself isolated in a situation where he recently enjoyed a train of reflections something similar to those which form the subject of the following sheets. The sun had attained the highest verge of Cancer, and was already on its decline towards another equinox, when the "breezy call" of a morning scattering incense from a thousand springs, ordained to lure mortals from repose, guided my footsteps to a sequestered dell of trees, where I was sometimes wont to repair in order to enjoy in silence those moments which the busy commerce of the world are not always calculated to afford. The domain which here arrested my course was diversified in all the wildness and irregularity of nature. A river skirted its utmost boundary, whilst the umbrageous trees, which overhung its clear and murmuring stream, partially shaded the scenery of the more distant country, affording, however, at intervals a peep at rich pastures and woodlands beyond, undulating in picturesque forms of acclivity and vales. A range of lofty hills crowned with their summits the back-ground of the extended prospect. The grailed seat of a grotto, formed by the joint hand of nature and art, invited me to a domicile amidst objects of more than ordinary beauty. For some moments I inhaled the balmy freshness of the morning air, mingled with the fragrance of odoriferous shrubs. The early sun beamed splendour from the east, the feathered tribes, roused from their cells by the call of morning, filled the ambient air with a song of praise; and whilst some winged their path towards the blue ether, others fluttered with an unceasing chorus of praise among the spreading foliage, painted in matchless variety by the pencil of an all-powerful and unseen artist. The dew-drops, trembling upon the slender leaf, sparkled like crystals with a thousand translucent rays, vegetation again raised her drooping head, and displayed, in rich exuberance, her treasures; every circumstance combined at once to inspire pleasure, and to excite busy thought. es naturally intrude upon of an individual, and, under such circumstances, few, it is probable, could withstand the spontaneous flow of impressions and images thus excited. While all Nature around, animated by the resplendent beams of a morning sun, sports each in his own instinctive sphere of recreation, we naturally diverge into speculations connected with the character and complexion of our intellectual susceptibilities. I here imagined the person who had long been in the habit of close mental application, whose intellectual energies have been practically trained to investigation and thought, whose susceptibilities are keen, to whom the world opens an extensive, rich, and illimitable field of inquiry. What a universe of observation and of thought does he not enjoy, utterly unknown to him whose sole attention is engrossed in a dull round of customary duties, almost mechanical in their influence, where the grasp of mental perception involves no original reach of thought! One of those individuals, whose tenor of mind, unless perturbed by the contingencies of trade, swim down the stream of life with tranquillity, has indeed his enjoyments, he feels pleasures and gratifications which he terms substantial in the customary routine of calculated profits; but he knows not what obstruction means; he never experienced the ardour and the pain of intense thinking,-is awakened to no enthusiastic perception of feeling. The chain of thought was opened, and spontaneously wandered through a succession of speculative questions connected with the subject. The citizen, for example, thus flowed the course of my speculations,—at his desk calculating his gains, or pursuing a dull round of customary duties, seldom bestows his meditations upon a train of thought or of sentiment which he deems purely visionary. The man of leisure who devotes the hours of his life to the mere amusements of a country life, who, amidst objects whose intrinsic beauty can ever animate and charm, knows no pleasures but the sound of the "echoing horn," and the intense anxiety with which the sportsman, heedless of all besides, pursues the keen recreations which urge him in his career, laughs at the fine-drawn speculations, at the feigned and visionary gratifications |