possess it; but it repays us for the price, and when we have exercised forbearance, and interchanged kind offices, and spoken, and borne to hear the truth, and been faithful, and gentle, and sincere, we find a recompence in our own bosoms, as well as in the affections of our friend.

There are yet other modifications of love, such as that which constitutes the chain of domestic union-the love of brothers and sisters; and lastly, and most to be revered as the foundation of family concord and social happiness, we might almost say of moral feeling, the love which subsists between parents and children, uniting on one hand the tenderest impressions we have received, with the first lessons we have learned; on the other, the warmest affection, with the weightiest responsibility. The weakness and waywardness of a child watched over by parental love, directed by parental care, and reclaimed by parental authority, are so frequently alluded to in the Scriptures, when describing the condition of man in reference to his Maker, and in themselves harmonize so entirely with that relation, that we use the name of "Heavenly Father," not only in obedience to scriptural

37

THE POETRY OF GRIEF.

THE poetry of grief is exhibited under so great a variety of forms, all capable of so wide a difference in character and degree, that it will be necessary to speak of the sentiment of grief, first, under that mild and softened aspect which assumes the name of sadness or melancholy, and then as a gloomy passion, absorbing every faculty of the soul.

Of all the distinctive characters assumed by grief, from simple sadness to wild despair, melancholy is the most poetical, because while it operates as a stimulant to the imagination, its influence is so gentle as to leave all the other intellectual powers at full liberty to exercise their particular functions. Burton speaks of melancholy as engendering strange conceits -as quickening the perceptions, and expanding

the faculties of the mind; and Lord Byron, scarcely less intimate than this quaint old writer with the different mental maladies to which our nature is liable, describes the "glance of melancholy" as "a fearful gift.'

What is it but the telescope of truth

Which strips the distance of its phantasies,

"And brings life near in utter nakedness,

Making the cold reality too real ?"

When melancholy takes possession of the soul, we lose as it were the perspective of our mental vision. We forget the relative proportions of things, and mistaking the small for the great, or the distant for the near, magnify their importance, examine their particular parts, and fill our imaginations with their nature and essence. This is in fact "making the cold reality too real;" for though there is much of truth in the vivid perceptions of melancholy, it is truth misplaced, truth with which the wise man has little to do, but which ministers powerfully to the wretchedness of the "mind diseased."

Being in our nature as liable to pain as we are susceptible of pleasure; and by the neglect of our privileges, and abuse of our faculties, subjected to the experience of even greater suf

fering than enjoyment; it necessarily follows, that those views of the condition of man which are tinctured with the sombre hues of melancholy, should be regarded as the most natural as well as the most interesting. There is little poetry in mirth, or even in perfect happiness, except as it is contrasted with misery; and thus all attempts to describe the perfection of heavenly beatitude fail to interest our feelings. The joys of heaven are, according to the writers who have ventured upon these descriptions, chiefly made up of luxuries which in this world money alone can purchase, and money is connected in our ideas with toil and strife, with envy, and jealousy, and never-ending vexation ; or they consist of fountains always pure, flowers that never fade, and skies which no cloud has ever obscured-things which we find it difficult to conceive; or of perpetual praises sung by an innumerable host of saints-an employment which we are not yet able to separate from ideas of monotony and weariness. Far more touching and more descriptive of that state to which the experienced soul learns to aspire as to its greatest bliss, are those descriptions and allusions abounding in the Holy Scriptures, and particularly in the Book of Revelations, where a