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They run riot with excess of imagination, are full to overflowing, and, in familiar language, "carry more sail than ballast." They resemble the fleetness of the race-horse, compared with the strength of the dragoon.

We perceive, from all these considerations, that the cultivation of the intellectual powers has a most important effect on the demeanor. Intelligence is displayed in the physiognomy of the limbs, as well as the countenance. The step, the attitude, the deportment, of a man of intellectual greatness, are indicative of his character. He who is distinguished by activity rather than power, has a lightness and agility of step, whilst the latter, ponderous with his own mental gravity, treads the earth, conscious of the dignity with which he is invested, and feeling that he is a giant amongst ordinary men. The one is the Voltaire of the species-the other the Lord Bacon. The one full of wit and vivacity-the other of thought and reflection.

It would have been appropriate to advert to a few instances in illustration of these sketches, drawn from public life and well known characters; but these must be deferred to a future occasion.

For the present, we trust, that some hints have been thrown out as materials for reflection, and that however imperfect the view which has been presented of the intellectual causes of manners, enough has been done to shew the important connexion of the two; and that we are entitled to conclude, that the more the mind is refined and its sentiments liberalized, the more agreeable, the more polished, and perfect will the manners become.

THE POET OF COCKAIGNE.

STILL the flesh warreth with the spirit. Equally with dulness Genius is surrounded by snares, and not sacred from the pitfall. The body of death hangs about it, albeit its aspirations aim at immortality. Time circumscribes it, though it would grasp at infinity. Sin besets and degrades it, even while asserting the primæval purity of spirit and the enduring pre-eminence of intellect. It is an antithesis-the victim of contradictions. In it the greatness and the littleness of man are made manifest and palpable. We at once adore and pity.

"Bright haired son of morn!" exclaimed the melancholy Herbert (all men of genius are melancholy)-"art thou the

poet's god? Apollo? He whose responses were heard at Delphi? Hear me, then, in thine own heaven. Surely the dome of a temple, thoughArt and all the muses had invested it with a glory and an awe over all the dwellings of earth, were less, far less, than yon azural magnificence. Surely the temple made with hands were less stupendous-less worthy of thee, than the vast palace which Nature-nay-nay--I rave -Nature hath built nothing here. The city coops me inThou wilt not hear in thy heaven-thou hast no oracle for me. Where the mountains bear the clouds-where the everlasting hills are reared up as pillars to the celestial arch-the columns of the sky expansed in illimitable ether-and the soul of man dilates with the spirit of the spot, till it feels as a deity-a demigod, not merely a denizen, but, as it were, the divinity of the scene-there wilt thou answer! For then the soul of man mates thee in thy sublimity, and Pride scorns not to hold communion therewith-it walks with thee in thy brightness, and thou speakest unto it as to a brother and a friend-thou clothest it with a vesture of light-thou teachest it the language of the gods-then it resumes its tabernacle of clay-a holy thing-such as inspired the prophets and dwelt within the poets of old."

Herbert was born in Cockaigne-he had been trammelled with business and drilled into the detail of trade. But his heart had ever yearned towards the country, and poetry had been to him the aliment of his existence. His spirit had fed upon Shakespeare, upon Milton,-strong meat both,—and he felt himself strong to atchieve greatness. The effusions of his fancy were many, and he had published a volume of poems which had been favourably reviewed by some of the periodicals of the day, but the copies remained on the bookseller's shelves. His book deserved a better fate, and competent judges declared that much poetical feeling and indubitable manifestations of genius were frequent in its composition. He pined in hope, and found his appeal to the public had been premature. The boyish effort of his muse, (it was printed at the age of eighteen,) though a powerful one, had not that meretricious and extrinsic attraction which wins the vulgar in literature, and brings in pence to the circulating library. Besides this, he was unknown, and had to acquire a name. Many other causes contributed to procrastinate its success. He was told that patience was a power, and by three-andtwenty his success would be beyond doubt. But the heart grows sick with hope delayed-yet he felt a strength—

"A flame within him, which, if not the same,

That kindles poets into faith and fame,

Was a strange something, and without a name."

I said, his heart had ever yearned towards the country, and the more so, for to him the country was an ideal paradise; never but once had he been more than twelve miles from this overgrown metropolis. He was a cockney-a cockney poet; but he recollected that Milton, though he went to Italy, was a Londoner-that Gower was a merchant and had never seen a mountain, and he was comforted. He knew that the northern critics had termed Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt cockneys, and he felt, if a cockney could write "Rimimi," there was no reason to despair, he might still succeed. Let but the public favor his attempts and he would give up the world-he would dwell with Nature-the country should be his home-his Eden: God made the country, and there he would dwell with God and hold communion with spirit. Unto him Nature should develope her secrets and disclose her mysteries.

Let not the reader think that it was early in the morning when our poet addressed the Orb of day; no, it was twelve at night. Business had occupied him till that time, and his mind was relieving itself with aspirations of a more elevated nature. The weariness, which the drudgery of the day had occasioned, fretted his spirit with impatience, and he yearned towards an ideal state of happiness-a leisure purchased by literary success, which should leave him free to his poetical pursuits, and to supply, by study, the defects of education. Of languages he knew little or nothing, neither did Shakespeare. A drowning man will catch at straws-the waters had gone over him, and however presumptuous or vain, this was hope-an absolute hope to him. Besides which that kind of learning, (and after all it is but one kind) was not absolutely requisite to success, and he had no doubt, if time and opportunity concurred, of soon being able to read the antient poets in their own language-to drink the draught of inspiration at the fountain head! For the present he said, with Burns—

"What's a' your jargon o' your schools,

Your Latin names for horns an' stools;
If honest nature made you fools,

What sairs your grammars?

Ye'd better ta'en up spades and shools,
Or knappin hammers.

A set o' dull conceited hashes,

Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in stirkes and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak!

An' syne they think to climb Parnassus,
By dint o' Greek.

Give me a'e spark o' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire;

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And again he said with the same bard of honest rusticity-
"There's ither poets, much your betters,

Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,
Hae thought they had insured their debtors,
A' future ages;

Now moths deform in shapeless tetters,

Their unknown pages."

Then he rejoiced in spirit and exclaimed-it is not learning --not the mere science of words which makes a name immortal -but it is the flame of genius which from heav'n descendsthe god within the breast that deifies the individual spirit of

man

"By our own spirits are we deified."

Again he drooped-Did Burns "drudge thro' grub and mire at plough or cart?"-Willingly would he make exchange of the counter and the desk for such "homely attire;" if, uncooped from the city's pestilent atmosphere, he might approximate closer to Nature's altar, and so gain a better chance of catching a spark from her consecrated fire,

"Leeze me on rhyme! it's ay a treasure,

My chief, amaist my only pleasure,
At hame, a-fiel, at wark or leisure,

The Muse, poor hizzie,

Tho' rough and raploch be her measure,

She's seldom lazy."

His soul was set upon this die, and rather than not possess this treasure, he would it were the only treasure he ever should possess. We talk of Bloomfield, of the Northamptonshire peasant; and Burns, the ploughman; and Chatterton, the Bristol wight,-the sleepless boy that perished in his pride; and Gray indulges in a lamentation over the hearts once pregnant with celestial fire, buried in the neglected spot of his country church-yard; the Hampdens of the village -the mute Miltons, and the guiltless Cromwells. But the Hampdens-the mute Miltons, and the guiltless Cromwells of the town are more to be pitied.

If the poet of the forest and the field be neglected by man, Nature neglects him not. She is an impartial mistress: he may talk with her, neither will she refuse her sublimest secrets to his enquiry. At her altar he may kneel, and lay thereon his heart and soul as a sacrifice,-then will the sacred, the vital spark descend from above, and kindle them into a substantial life, so that whatever they breathe shall live. But here,

cooped in the town, with scarce elbow-room, constrained and straightened on every side with competition,-free respiration impeded, the free air trammelled,-when, where, and how, may he woo the silence and sweet solitude?-And only in silence and solitude will the spirit descend. It may find the poet at the plough, and throw its inspiring mantle over him; but here there is no place for the poet to offer up his vows,-none wherein to receive the prophetic aflatus. Still the spirit of man, conscious of what high cummunings it were capable, pants upwards to receive the celestial visitant,-in vain.O, this is misery-and this misery was Herbert's. Even so his spirit panted, he felt within his bosom a fluttering as of wings, and he said, "Oh, that they were as the doves',-then might I flee away unto the mountains, and be at peace!" And he thought how happy was Wordsworth on Rydal Mount, -how happy was the laureate in Keswick,-there were they -hearts within the heart of nature. If he were as the latter, he said, he would not turmoil his feelings with Quarterly Reviewing, nor elaborate an authentic history of the Peninsular War; but he would excogitate the wild and wondrous tale, --he would write another Thalaba,—and his ambition should be to surpass Roderick the Last of the Goths. If he were as the former, as the former he would live, consecrated to the muses, and enshrined in hallowed seclusion. Like him, he would speculate upon the heart of man, and declare the divine mysteries of the human imagination. He would send his mind abroad upon an "excursion" into all the "dim-discovered tracts" of human intellect; he would gauge its depths, and declare its altitudes, and with poetic theory make the snailpaced philosopher a fool. Heaven directed Enthusiasm should grasp at truths, to which Reason could not climb,-truths far above her reach and Time's, which only Eternity may demonstrate, when faith shall be lost in sight; and imagination,the etymology of which has reference to objects of vision,shall be the only faculty worth cultivating. There shall indeed be loftiest objects for its contemplation, sublimest subjects whereon for it to brood, a celestial incubation, and beget strains of no earthly music, and breathing thoughts, and burning words. Nay, there, like an enraptured seraph, shall it transport its glance into new worlds-worlds of its own creation, and create new forms, new beings, as its habitants, giving to things unknown a local habitation and a name, in the supernal orbs of created excellence and ardor, for the instruction and delight of angelic essences.

The night was now far advanced, yet Herbert sought not the pillow of repose: the godlike faculty of imagination was awake;-could he sleep?

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