fined, but evanescent joys and in this he does well, for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being."*

To the imaginative mind," there is beauty everywhere." All forms and objects teem for it with spiritual meaning. The commonest clay may to its Promethean touch become instinct with a living grace;-for it, the simplest leaf seem trembling with a hidden sympathy;-the very air be full of music-whispers. Nature becomes to the poet a joyous and pervading presence-an overflowing spirit, with whom he can forever hold sweet converse-as with a tender and loving parent. And these pleasures which the sensitive soul finds thickly strewn around it, lie within the reach of all who will but open their inward eyes, who will but feed their native and unerring instincts. Why does the rose give forth its odor," asks an eloquent writer," and the scent of the lavender and of the mignionette steal viewless upon the still air around us, and the blooming bean and the new-mown hay outscent all the preparations of the apothecary, if it be not to wile us into the garden and the field, in order that we may breathe health, and at the same time cull pleasure and instruction there? Wherefore sings the breeze in the forest, why whispers the zephyr among the reeds, and how comes it that the caves and hollows of the barren mountains give out their tones, as if the earth were one musical instrument of innumerable strings, if it be not to tempt us forth in order to learn how ever-fair, ever-new, and ever-informing that great instructress is, who speaks to all the senses at one and the same instant? * And wherefore, when the sky is clouded, and the blackness of darkness shades the landscape, is the arch of hope, with its seven-fold glory set in the rain-cloud, if it be not for us to look, and admire, and learn?"+

*

Blessed is that prerogative of thought which draws light and beauty from the storm and the darkness;-which finds "a soul of goodness in things ill;"-which irradiates with its own exceeding splendor all things upon which it looks;-which feeds the mind with happy memories, lofty aspirations, fond imaginings, and their ever-glorious fruits of Trust, and Hope, and Love. Happy is he who most has cherished this joyous and life-giving attribute.

~In early childhood, we see this quality developed by kindly Nature, apparently even in advance of rational power. The doll and the hobby derive their value to the happy child,-solely from its faculty of investing them with a spirit and a life. Its toys and its sports all have a charm of meaning drawn from its lively fancy. And the earnest eye and parted lip of the young listener to some artless tale, attest the vivid senso of ideal presence which its thought inspires.

In maturer years, this principle, instead of being fostered and improved, is almost totally neglected or repressed. It is regarded as the useless endowment of prodigal nature, a devious propensity-carefully to be restrained, as unfavorable to the lessons of a necessary prudence. The enthusiasm of youth is laid aside by manhood, as the undignified relic of giddy days,-designed for no high end. Most deplorable of errors! Most ungrateful rejection of one of the greatest of God's great gifts! As well might we pluck out the eye, lest we should have too much of light. Danger of our imagining too highly-hoping and loving too deeply-daring too greatly!-As well might we fear of reasoning

* Channing.

† Mudie's "Observation of Nature."

too profoundly-of knowing too wisely. As well may we abjure the truth, as shun the beauty. We cannot see too far: we cannot crowd too much of life into the few years that form our earthly sojourn.

"But will not these visionary tendencies disqualify us for the sober and stern employments of duty, and interfere with that success in the business of life, which every rational mind must desire ?"-If "the business of life" is supposed to consist in straining every energy to the one design of pecuniary gain,-if a business talent is exhibited in the ready power of making the "best bargain" of our brother's necessitiesa skill in purchasing his invaluable birth-right with our superfluous mess of pottage, then would a cultivated fancy indeed but little qualify us to become "business men." But in every true fulfilment of the offices of life, how incalculably higher and stronger would be our purpose and our power.

"Shall we then listen to the wild impulses of an unrestrained imagination, rather than to the sober dictates of reason?—or which shall be most neglected?" Most unwise questionings. Which may best be spared from harmony-the tenor, or the treble? Which is most essential to sight-the eye, or the sunbeam ?-There is no rivalry between these faculties; there should be no divorce. The masculine and feminine principles of mind, they should ever grow in sweetest, closest union; and from that union ever spring all glorious things.*

It re

So intimate is the relation between them, in point of fact, that a high development of the one will indirectly advance the other, however much it may be neglected. The frequent and unrecognised demands of science upon the imaginative power, have given it exercise and strength, even though it has received no kindlier nor directer training. quired a mighty reach of fancy beyond the belief that suspended the starry lamps from a solid firmament-" to give light by night,"—when' reason showed that our sun was the nucleus of a family of habitable worlds like this we live upon, and that "the twinkling eyes of heaven" were other suns more glorious yet than ours. It was a higher flight when all this countless host was looked upon as forming a single harmonious system-upon whose wide-spread galaxy our sun itself was but a feeble and obscure borderer. And when at last the tube of Herschell revealed far-far off in infinite space, a multitude of separate fleecy cloudletsmighty systems-each like the universe of stars around us,-then did imagination spring with free and joyous pinion to where the lightning flash should spend a hundred thousand years in reaching;-for at such a distance are some of the visible nebulæ computed.

Let it not be said, that we are indebted solely to the calculating power, even for the great discoveries which have enlarged our knowledge. If science discovers, it is art that invents; and invention ever lends to discovering its broadest wings. If observation revealed to Galileo the mimic system of Jupiter, or to Herschell another brother planet and its satellites away in dizzy distance, it was creative ingenuity that first gave them the means of these high discoveries.

But perhaps the last great triumph of intellect in these our days,-the patient calculation, which, solving a majestic problem, told with unerring certainty, where should be found an unseen world-thousands of million miles remote,-perhaps this may be pointed to as an instance of what pure science has accomplished unaided by such appliances. It is indeed a grand example of the mind's supremacy,-an exultant illustration of the power of human thought, to fathom the plans of nature, and enter, as it were, the council chamber of creation. But let us look at the

beginnings of this heaven-scaling achievement. A thousand shrewd philosophers had seen the falling apple, and had thence inferred some mystical attraction in the earth: reason could guess no further. And so it rested, till Genius came and looked upon it, and with the flight of inspiration, seized upon the law that holds together the universe. No feeble exercise of fancy was it that saw in the simplest phenomenon of every-day life, the operation of the principle that guided suns and infinite systems in their eternal courses. It was imagination that raised the wondrous dream-ladder-resting upon stones yet lost in heavenupon which Le Verrier mounted to a star!

We are not such merely reasoning beings as we are too apt to suppose. We cannot tell how much of truth may lurk in the wildest dream; we know not when we grasp a truth, how much of it has been revealed to us by the intuition of creative instinct. In vain would we strive with jealous care to separate these embracing principles, or to define the limits of their operation. Not so do they tend to act. Their loftiest triumphs are ever those of their united working. The highest flights of poetry are those which teach us highest wisdom; and science rises with but a flagging wing, when it rises alone; so much does the first assist the latter, so much the latter guide the first. Justly does Bulwer argue, (through Ernest Maltravers,) that "all philosophy is incomplete and unsatisfactory, which bounds its inquiries to the limits of the known and certain"—that induction should be" carried out to conjecture as well as to fact; and that Newton and Copernicus would have done nothing, if they had not imagined as well as reasoned,-guessed as well as ascertained."

And yet there have been those, who have called fancy the enfeebler of intellectual power, as though the one could be cultivated only at the expense of the other. Will it be said that Bacon would have been more profound a philosopher, had he been less a poet ?-or that Hobbes would have reasoned less acutely, had his ice-bound soul been irradiated by a gleam of human sunshine-a warming ray of faith in goodness? If he, the poet-sage of Athens, whose lofty teachings, dimly apprehended by his countrymen, yet fell upon their heart like the mystery of supernal music, and made them hail him "the divine,"-if he, beyond all his contemporaries, has colored with his thought all later time, and felt an influenceunacknowledged but immeasurable, and perhaps only less than that of Him of Nazareth-upon the literature and religion of the enlightened world, is it not because in him, above all other ancient writers, transcendant genius illumined and ennobled a mighty intellect?—because, in short, of all philosophers, he was the most imaginative?

What power of calculation shall compute the exquisite delight, the gentleness of thought, the depth of generous aspiration, enkindled in the human breast by the painting, the song and the poem? Who may estimate or comprehend the grace and glory given to earth by the love-labors of the great Artists of the Beautiful?-by the creations of a Homer, a Dante, a Milton,-of an Eschylus, a Sophocles, a Shakspeare,-of a Phidias, a Praxiteles, a Canova,—of a Raphael, an Angelo, a Titian,—of a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Weber,-(and may we not add,)—of an Epicurus, a Plato, a Jesus?

"But if the works of art have indeed such value, the man of wealth

They who have employed their genius in the execution, rather than in the original concep tion of an embodied beauty,- -as a Siddons, a Malibran, a Taglioni, a Paganini,-may also be properly styled artists, though they cannot claim rank with the great poets.

can at least purchase all these blessings; he can collect together without limit-books-and paintings-and statues-of rarest worth, and thus be even richer than those who have produced them." Not so. The wealth of empires cannot purchase these. Without the divine gift-poor millionaire,-you do but gather soulless forms. To you, the statue can ever be but a cold and moveless block-wondrously fashioned. Not for you will it warm to life: not to you will it speak all lovely and loving things. The story of the Venus gifted Pygmalion, truly typed the soultransporting union of Genius with its fair Ideal. The poet's eye shall drink, in one brief instant, from some delicate embodiment of Art, or smiling grace of Nature, a delight which a lifetime of mere ownership. cannot purchase. "It is not mere words to say that he who goes through a rich man's park, and sees things in it which never bless the mental eyesight of the possessor, is richer than he. He is richer. More results of pleasure come home to him. The ground is actually more fertile to him, the place haunted with finer shapes. He has more servants to come at his call, and administer to him with full hands."*

"But still, all this is but imaginary,-the pleasure is only ideal." There is no such thing as "ideal" pleasure,-if that word means unreal. It is a mere truism, to say that enjoyment is actual enjoyment, that all pleasure that exists-really exists; and it is idle to inquire whether the cause be a material one or not. A real effect is admitted, and that involves a real cause. Nay, if the reality of pleasure is to be measured by its degree, then is that which springs from a spiritual cause infinitely more real than that from a material one. But if the term " ideal" be used in its correct sense of "existing in idea," then is the objection but the expression of a metaphysical fact. All joy is but the pleasurable impressment of idea. There is no pleasure but ideal pleasure; and the closest discerner of "matter-of-fact"-who thinks he earns the title by discarding all most high and glorious matters of fact, he still is indebted to the few ideas he does possess, for all the little enjoyments of which he is capable.

"But after all,-the real value of these things?"-persists the advocate of tangibilities: "However agreeable-imaginative pursuits, they will not clothe nor feed us. What kind of practical utility have they?" A great truth is the doctrine of utility-if it is only carried out. But its professed votaries are generally those who most restrict the application of their creed. Utility-if it have a rational meaning-must signify the capability of yielding happiness. As such, it is as strictly referable to the satisfaction of a mental-as of a bodily necessity; as referable to the flower, as to the fruit; as referable to the products of the creative-as of the investigative faculty. By no definition of this fundamental term, can reason exclude its sister attribute from sharing in this empire. All things are useful to us only as they give us pleasure. Our food is useful-simply because it satisfies a want; and even if, like the olden sage, we should "eat to life," (though by the way-no sane man ever did thus eat,) still will the utility of eating consist in the gratification of living. Grant, then, that cultivated taste can afford us enjoyment, and the admission is the strictest measure of its "utility."

It may be said, that "we can do without poetry, but we cannot without bread." Vain antithesis: futile distinction. We cannot "do" without poetry. Life utterly robbed of it, would cease to be life. There would be no 66 doing." The very dog can dream: what would man be

* Leigh Hunt.

if he could not? To what purpose will he feed the body, if the enjoying and informing spirit be starved? What would there be worth living for? What will it profit him to gain the world, if he have lost the soul which can alone give it value? What can he receive in exchange for that? He will "do" as well unfed. The tree of life no longer blooms for him. If "bread" be indeed, as political economists tell us-the standard of material value, what higher food shall form the measure of spirit-worth? If earth and stones are "wealth," what better title shall be given to those unearthly products, which bring "wealth to the mindwealth to the heart-high thoughts-bright dreams-the ambition to become worthier to love" and to be loved?

"Man shall not live by bread alone," said one, whom we profess to receive as Teacher; but oh, how feebly is the great truth realized! How still does stooping avarice seek to have the very stones made "bread.” How little can it know that the mind truly lives by every word and thought proceeding from the source of truth and beauty.

And the value of these immaterial pleasures does not end with their immediate fruition. They have a permanent usefulness: they leave a lasting benefit to the mind;-improving the taste, and making it more keenly sensitive to all other true enjoyments. There is no satiety; and hence the truthful saying,

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases."

And this is a presentation of "utility," which the most "practical" of reasoners can comprehend. If he can see no other merit in the fine arts, let him learn that they soften and ennoble the human characterboth in the individual and in the mass; that they render man less capable of crime, and that they thus form no inefficient preventives of the scourge and the axe,-the dungeon and the gallows. As they have been fostered, have nations advanced in intelligence and refinement; as they have been neglected, have the opposite results ensued. The philosophic Polybius in noticing the singular contrast between the Cynætheans and the other Arcadians, in delicacy, gentleness, and humanity, attributes the superiority of the latter, solely to their high and universal cultivation of music, and to the total want of it among the former.

By many persons, the "poetic temperament" has been supposed to act unfavorably on the social and domestic feelings; and examples have been appealed to, in support of the opinion. A mighty bard of recent times has formed a frequent and familiar illustration of the position-a bard whose deep-toned lyre seemed strung only to teach the falsity of "faith and hope and charity," the utter "vanity of all things." The inference is founded on a defective view of the variety and complexity of imaginative power, and the extension of its appropriate action. It seems not to be considered, that this poet's genius was essentially limited within a very narrow range of thought-however vivid its conception or strong its passion within that range. It was no healthy nor vigorous fancy that could see beneath the loveliest face "a grinning skull," and yet be blind to the divinity enshrined in that cunningly carved temple. It was no really strong and expansive power of conception, that could brood forever over the wrongs of self, almost unconscious of the deeper wrongs of others. It was the deficiency-and not the excess of this great quality that formed the blight upon the soul of BYRON. In proportion as he did enjoy the divine vision, was he a better man than he would