Then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's use and end;
Why doing, suffering, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.*

Then say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought;
His knowledge measur'd to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.†

III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state;

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,

Had he thy reason would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven,
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms of systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher, Death; and God adore:
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always TO BE blest:

The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates on a life to come.

*We are told in the inspired Word that worldly wisdom is but foolishness with God. Those who would understand their natures, the relations which they bear to the world around them, must be willing to commence with the minutest objects about them; must bring a simple, humble mind yearning for information to the task, not the pride and willfulness of lordly assumption. They are most learned who in their appreciation of the infinitude of universal intelligence meekly acknowledge their ignorance.

+ The good man, the true man, finds a heaven here below, as well as in the future, but the perverted finds only torment.

Let the desponding try to cultivate the sentiment of Hope, or at least the spirit of acquiescence in the will of God. Let him learn to say, and to feel, "Thy will be done," and his troubles will depart and his happiness begin.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given

Behind the cloud-topp'd hill an humbler heaven,
Some safer world, in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
TO BE, contents his natural desire;

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire,
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

*

IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection, what thou fanciest such,

Say, here he gives too little, there too much;

* Without "fire-water," and without the selfish interference of bad white men, the Indian is comparatively happy. But he will not readily adopt the manners and customs of civilization and conform. He has little Imitation, little Constructiveness or Invention, little Benevolence; but large Firmness, Self-Esteem, Combativeness, and Destructiveness, with large perceptive and moderate reflective faculties. Our North American Indians have been much wronged, and, except the few who become civilized and absorbed in the whites, are likely to soon pass away and become extinct.

Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet say, if man's unhappy, God's unjust.
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there;
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the GOD of GOD.*
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit the sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel;

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order, sins against the eternal cause.†

V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine?
Earth for whose use ? Pride answers,
"Tis for mine;
For me kind nature wakes her genial power;
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose, renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me,
health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

But errs not nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?

"No," 'tis replied, "the first almighty cause

Acts not by partial, but by general laws;

The exceptions few; some change since all began;
And what created perfect?"-Why then man?

* Men of towering intellects and of the highest culture, unless they be softened by Christian grace, are apt to rush into excesses of rationalism. Certainly topics and subjects enough are furnished by the very nature of man's social and physical condition for the investigation of the most acute understanding; and in the investigation of these, true benefit may result to man. But those who ambitiously leave the sphere of material things and soar into the regions of speculation, are apt to lose themselves in the mazes of infinity, and but "wrestle to their own destruction," and the injury of those on whom their superior intelligence exerts a powerful influence. Faith begins where reason ends. As the reflective faculties, which are peculiar to man, are located above the perceptives-instincts-so the moral or spiritual faculties are located above the reflectives, or reasoning faculties. Man is not all instinct, all reason, nor all spiritual, but he combines them all, and each should be permitted to exert its due influ

ence.

+ Has this any application to our political relations?

告

If the great end be human happiness,
Then nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires.
Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,

* As men forever temperate, calm, and wise.

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?

Who knows, but He whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral as for natural things:

Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?

In both, to reason right, is to submit.

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,

Were there all harmony, all virtue here;

That never air or ocean felt the wind,

That never passion discompos'd the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.

The general order, since the whole began,

Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

VI. What would this man? Now upward will he soar,

And, little less than angel, would be more;

Now looking downward, just as grieved appears

To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.

Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the powers of all?
Nature to these, without profusion kind,
The proper organs, proper powers assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to their state,
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleased with nothing, if not blest with all?

The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)

Is not to act or think BEYOND mankind;

No powers of body or of soul to share,

But what his nature and his state can bear.

Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly./
Say what the use, were finer optics given,
To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven ?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart, and agonize at every pore?

Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,

Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

If nature thunder'd in his opening ears,

And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,

How would he wish that Heaven had left him still

The whispering zephyr and the purling rill !
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what he gives, and what denies? *

VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends:
Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight, betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
A hound sagacious on the tainted green;
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,

To that which warbles through the vernal wood!
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true,
From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew!
How instinct varies in the groveling swine,
Compared, half reasoning elephant, with thine!
Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier;
Forever separate, yet forever near!

Remembrance and reflection, how allied;

What thin partitions sense from thought divide!

*The poet has been answering certain general questions adduced by the skeptic, and now takes the five senses in order, asking, first, "Why has not man a microscopic eye?" That is, why was not the eye of man formed to examine the minutest objects? The answer is, because "man is not a fly." A fly has a microscopic eye, but can only take in a small portion of space at a time, but that is sufficient for its small purpose. Man has an eye which can take in a large space, and distinguish objects within it sufficiently for his purpose. Were the sense of touch very acute, we would be startled by the slightest motion, and it would be a source of constant agitation and pain to us. Again, were the nerves which appreciate odors exceedingly sensitive, man would experience much suffering in consequence; and again, all other things being the same as now, were the sense of hearing increased indefinitely, he would be overwhelmed by sounds,