When this vessel was completed, he was attached to her as chief engineer, and in that capacity, accompanied her on her cruise along the coast, visiting our principal naval stations. In 1839, he was selected as one of the board of Naval Officers, Engineers, and Contractors, to which the duty was entrusted, of planning the frigates Missouri and Mississippi, and designing their steam machinery. He was then appointed to superintend the construction of the engines and boilers of the first named of these vessels, and in 1842, joined her as chief engineer. On returning from a cruise in this much-admired but ill-fated frigate, in the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico, he was detached from her, and was employed in designing the engines and boilers for the several propeller steamers, which were at that time in the course of construction for the revenue marine. His professional resources, his assiduous devotion to the duties assigned to him, with his celebrity and success in disposing of them, could not be permitted to pass without their proper recognition, and in the year 1842, he was raised, with the general approbation of his associates and competitors, to the position which he still occupies, as engineer-in-chief of the navy of the United States. Mr. Haswell was the first engineer appointed in the naval service, as early as the year 1836, and was instrumental in procuring the passage of the act of Congress, authorizing the organization of the engineer corps in that department. For carrying out the objects of that important enactment, he rendered the most material assistance; and it is, in a great measure, owing to the salutary measures by him suggested and put in exercise, that the country is indebted for the efficacy and high character which now distinguish the engineering corps of our navy. The rules and regulations for the admission and promotion of engineers, promulgated by the Navy Department, in 1845, have not only commended themselves, by their successful operation in our own service, but have been considered so eminently well adapted to accomplish the purposes for which they are designed, that they have been made the basis of similar codes in other countries. The labors of the engineer-in-chief are multifarious, and would be oppressive to any one of less zeal, assiduity, energy, and devotion to science, than Mr. Haswell. Besides the daily and ordinary routine of planning and drafting the machinery for the steamer, in the course of construction, and that intended, renew, replace, and improve the machinery of the old steamer in commission, he is called to examine and report upon numberless new projects in connection with naval science, which the ingenuity and enterprise of our citizens urge with all the enthusiasm and favor of inventions, upon the attention of government. In executing this most important and interesting branch of his duties, Mr. Haswell manifests a just appreciation of the works of his co-laborers in science, reasonably modified and controlled, as it ought to be, by a just sense of his official responsibilities. He is patient in examination, cautious in arriving at conclusion, and decided in his expression of them, however they may touch the interests or excite the hostility of the parties affected by them. But, with the obvious tendency to be on the safe side, as a conservator of public interests always ought to be where really meritorious and practicable improvements are submitted to his judgment, he does not hesitate to speak his approval in no measured terms. We have now before us, just issued from the press, a very elaborate and well-considered report from his pen, made to the Treasury Department, in reference to the apparatus attached to the boilers of the revenue steamer Legaré, by captain Ericsson, for the purpose of furnishing them with a continual supply of fresh water. It is a model composition of its class, and shows, that in practising with his compasses and pen cil, Mr. Haswell has not neglected the use of his pen. In passing, we may say that this is not the only proof of his abilities in this way, as his invaluable little manual for the use of engineers and mechanics, of which our friends, the Harpers, have just exhausted the fourth and much improved edition, abundantly testifies. Thus much for the public career of Mr. Haswell-and here we must pause. His face, fronting our title page, must speak for itself, and we will not intrude so far upon private life, as to say what we might wish to say of his personal character and merits. They who most deserve esteem and applause shrink from any public expression of it; but we cannot offend by our good wishes, or the utterance of them. We may be allowed, then, to hope, for the subject of this hasty sketch, that he will realise, in his future career, the promises of the past, and establish a reputation in his profession which shall be as permanent as it is already distinguished. MY OLD COAT. BE faithful still, O Coat, beloved though poor! Ten years my hand hath brushed thee, and no more If cruel Fortune to thy threadbare stuff Should new encounters send, Like me, philosophise, to make thee tough: Good is my memory: I remember well The very time when first 'twas mine to don thee; In song my comrades passed their comments on thee. Their arms they still extend; Thou hast a patch behind-I see it yet- Two days Lisette to such long work applied: Have I e'er scented thee with musk and amber, Who hath e'er seen me in an antichamber Make thee await some great man's leave to pass. I in thy button-hole gay field-flowers wear: No longer fear those days of courses vain, Soon must I doff my coat forever here That way my thoughts will tend: Wait yet-we'll close together our career; THE CULTURE OF IMAGINATION. "There are two things in the outer creation, which, according to the great Hermes, suffice for the operation of all that is wonderful and glorious-Fire and Earth. Even so, my child, there are in the human mind two powers that effect all of which our nature is capable-REASON and IMAGINATION. Now mankind, less wise in themselves than in the outer world, have cultivated, for the most part, but one of these faculties. They have tilled the earth of the human heart, but suffered its fire to remain dormant, or waste itself in chance and frivolous directions."-BULWER'S Godolphin. A SURVEY of the powers of mind, in comparison with their actual exercise and range of cultivation, cannot fail to impress us with a conviction that there is a defect in their relative measure of attainment. The directions given to mental exertion have been determined by the more pressing, and at the same time, more transient requirements of occasion, rather than by the great wants of humanity,-by the necessities of the individual more than of the race,-in short, by accidental circumstance, rather than by any enlightened system of education, derived from the contemplation of man's nature as a complex whole. Hence, most of us feel that we do not attain the happiness within our reach,— that there is a strange want of correspondency between the actual and the possible, that our life is by no means a full expression of its own capabilities. Man has been variously described as a laughing-a talking-a rational animal. And yet it would seem that neither his laughter, nor his speech, nor, perhaps, even his vaunted reason-so widely separates him from the lower creation, as does that wondrous quality of thought which we term (though not most appropriately) Imagination. It would be difficult accurately to discriminate the limits of this element of mental action, or to exaggerate its influence and importance. It ministers in the most ordinary as in the most valuable offices of human occupation. The solemn teachings of history, the high abstractions of science, the delights of social communion-all derive their life and their efficacy mainly from the imaginative principle. It embraces so much of our thinking part, that where it roams, there is our presence, our consciousness, our being. As the handmaiden of Memory, it leads us to the buried past ;-the very nurse of Hope, it pictures for us the unborn future. With wingless flight it "wanders through eternity," and unheeding time and space, finds home in a world of light and melody more glorious than ought that bodily "eye hath ever seen, or ear hath heard." It is to this principle that our theology has given the name of soul, as though it alone were worthy to partake of the immortality of its Creator. And, indeed, it is this that, more than any reasoned process, gives us assurance of our spiritual existence, and its continuance beyond the grave;-forever rising up within us to contradict the tendency of science to materialism. The trees that bloomed in Eden-the crowning charm of that fair garden-endowed with the mystic boons of knowledge and of life, form no unfitting types of man's twin attributes-the investigative and creative faculties of mind: those sunward-expanding principles which, thirsting ever after truth and beauty, have for their empires Philosophy and Poetry, and which, in their high development, take the names of Talent and Genius. Wisdom for the intellect, the winged thought for the soul: for the Reason, knowledge; for the Imagination, life! Man has nourished the rational faculty, but he has too much neglected the living fruit. Hence are we swayed by cold and calculating policy more often than by charitable impulse. Hence are our theories so much wiser than our practice. The head has outgrown the heart; not that we know too much, but that we feel too little. To this must we attribute "the abuse of all invention for abridging and combining labor, to the exasperation of the inequality of mankind. From what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which should have lightened, have added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam? Would it not be among the most inconceivable of paradoxes to a higher and happier intelligence, that one portion of a brotherhood-and that, the most needy-should attain a more oppressive poverty," a lower depth" of wretchedess, by the agency of those very appliances of ingenuity which demonstrably add vastly to the aggregate power and riches of the whole? How impossible a result, if our philanthropism were as world-embracing as our mechanism,-if our conceptions of the universal pain and pleasure kept progress with our intellectual growth,-if our faculty of projecting thought and consciousness beyond the circle of self, were as well developed as our capability of determining "the fitness of things" within that narrow circle. To illustrate these assumptions, we must distinguish between the proper modes of action of these differing powers. It is the office of the rational faculty to investigate relations, and to decide upon their correspondence of the imaginative, to distinguish qualities with reference to their power of giving pleasure. The one regards agreement, the other agreeableness. The one may be considered as acting through reflection, the other as acting through consciousness: the one as being in its simplest element, perception,-the other, sensation. It is the sensitive principle that must ever form the incentive to the teachings of the perceptive one. The latter but discerns; it is the other that impels. In vain do we discover a path that is direct and open, if we are furnished with no motive for walking therein. It is not sufficient that it leads to an object: that object must be itself desirable. The Will must be addressed as well as the Understanding. Conviction is ever useless till accompanied by persuasion. These considerations are of importance to prevent our seeking from the one principle, results appropriate to the other. By recalling the difference of their operation, we shall be the better able to appreciate the peculiarities of each, as well as to discern how incompetent to the production of action or of happiness, is either separately. We shall find that if one power leads "Talent convinces,-Genius bat excites; This tasks the reason, that the soul delights. On cloud itself reflects its wondrous dies; And to the earth, in tears and glory given, Clasps in its airy arch the pomp of heaven !"-BULWER. This distinction has been well marked by Hume in one of his Moral Essays: "Reason being cool and disengaged is no motive to action, but directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery: Taste, as it gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition." the mind chiefly to analysis, the other leads it to synthesis: that if one is the parent of science, the other is the parent of art. The Imagination may thus be regarded in a simple, yet comprehensive point of view, as that part of our nature which perceives and gives expression to the Beautiful: to the beautiful wherever it exists,-whether in motion or in form, in color or in sound, in sentiment or in action. It has thus a twofold function, it both receives and it produces; it has both a passive and an active employment, and the latter is at once the fruit and the nourishment of the former. Taste; its expression-Poetry; and the one springs from a high develThe perception of beauty is opment of the other. It is the intense impression of a new-found loveliness, which, yearning after sympathy, impels the loving soul to body forth its lofty Idea in whatever form of statue, of painting or of poem it may have conceived it, that other souls may share with it the ecstacy of admiration. It is but the sensitiveness of the imaginative faculty that gives it its creative power. The true poietes is but one of deeper feelings-of a more refined and impressible taste than other men. spirit of the fleeting breeze, he sweeps over the heart-chords of humanity, Like the that he may awaken in other tastes a unison with the thrillings of his own and it is thus that he becomes the Artist, and is hailed by the world's gratitude-creator. Taste is universal; it exists in some degree in every soul-a part of its immortality. It is, in the high thought of Channing, the germ of a future glory, the infant energy, which, confined by an earthly prisonhouse, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being." It is the spirit's prayer for union with a something without and above the unit-self. Like the delicate heliotrope, it is forever struggling with irrepressible and insatiate longing-towards the source that yields it warmth and light. Its action is summed up in one deep word, and that is, Love. As the great laws of Attraction in the material world, so is that of Love in the spiritual,-the principle that, pervading all things, binds them together, and draws them into harmony. And the petty hate and the discord are but the limited repulsions which, acting through their little spaces, serve doubtless to work out the great purposes of nature and of destiny. The poet has sung that "Life is love;" and the sentiment bears within it a deeper truth than perhaps even the poet has fathomed-prophet though he be, of philosophy. Life is but action; and action ever springs from impulse, which is desire. It is desire a sense of beauty-that makes both the life and the principle of our spiritual nature: we really "live" only as we enjoy. The high province of Imagination is to elevate and refine mankind. It acts by apprehending the poetry around and beyond us, and by assimilating it to our own nature, it makes us partakers of that poetry,—the exponents of that grace and that beauty. "Its great tendency and purpose is to carry the mind above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. * paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, It is not true that the poet as it were, life's etherial essence,-arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more re "There are two avenues from the little passions and the dear calamities of earth-Art and Science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates. astronomer who catalogues the stars, cannot add one atom to the universe: the poet can call a universe from the atom."-Zanoni. *** The |