feelings, purity of mind, and refinement of humanity, are, for the most part, martyrs to events, they have no force 'to control. That to speak of things, as they are, and to relate circumstances, as they occur, is beyond the capacity of ninety-five men out of an hundred: for most men blend falsehood with truth so carelessly, or so maliciously, that to separate the one from the other is more difficult, than to divide the tintings of Augustan marble. As a companion to which, we are fated to lament, how large a portion of mankind are credulous enough to believe any thing; envious enough to wish any thing; and malicious enough to say any thing. And that, in this awful suspense of truth, it is a luxury of the highest order to have an enemy of a noble mind; and a prophecy of immortality itself, to be able to walk erect, during a long progress of adversity. For wretched, pre-eminently wretched, are those, who stand, poor and friendless, on the brink of the grave, without the golden consolation, arising from a life of excellent intentions. Years do not always bring experience; and youth, for the most part, is more the season of virtue, than manhood: for,—with shame be it spoken,—for one crime which love commits, the desire of fame, of wealth, and of distinction, commits ninety, and an hundred, and a thousand at the end of those. Some men speak truth with as worthless an intention, as others speak falsehood: and while some would be sincere, if it appeared to be their interest; others would be honest, if they dared to be poor. Some lose the world's esteem more by their sentiments, than their actions; others more by their actions than their sentiments: but more than both from their views being misconceived, or their motives misunderstood. Men fall out readily with those, with whom fortune falls out first; but divine is the allegory of Homer, where he describes the children of Jupiter, flying after injustice, and accusing her at the throne of heaven. As a recompense for this invidious cruelty of mankind, the solitude, which visits the cultivated mind in misfortune, is like the solitude of a man, who makes his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the society of himself. A sweet and peaceful constancy unfolds new perceptions of beauty; and he feels himself in possession of a wealth, far more intrinsic than all the golden tripods, that decorated the temples of Apollo or Jupiter Ammon: health; imagination; judgment; and consciousness of virtue.-Blest with these, Fortune scatters over his regrets the veil of oblivion; Time sheds a lustre over his " snowy locks;" Fame erects to him a monument; Honour sketches the design; and Justice prescribes, and dignifies the epitaph. Retiring from life with pleasure, with gratitude, and expectation, In happier scenes to dwell, He bids the cheerless world farewell. The rising and setting of the sun; the splendour of Orion in a night of autumn; and the immensity of the ocean,—far beyond the pencil of painters, or the imagery of poets,-awaken ideas of power, awful and magnificent. Raised above the level of human thought, the soul acknowledges a wild and terrible grandeur; while recognising in the heavens, a Sea, covering sea, Sea without shore ; Chaos seems, as it were, to have yielded to order; and infinity, in one solemn picture, astonishes every faculty of the mind. But, Who shall tempt, with wandering feet, The dark unfathomed infinite abyss, And through the palpable obscure find out In the ocean we contemplate a Being, capable of measuring all its waters "in the hollow of his hand1;" and who seems to our finite imaginations to have exercised, in forming it, the greatest possible exertion of omnipotence. Philosophy itself acknowledges, in its contemplation, all the fire and enthusiasm of poetry. In man, and in the works of man, we observe no permanent order. The laws of Nature, on the contrary, for ever are the same: operating with equal constancy, whether in the Scythian, the Atlantic, or the Indian; the Antarctic or Pacific. When the waves swell with storms; the sky darkens with clouds; and rocks reverberate, till echo wearies in repeating their sounds; how vast is the conception of a power, alone capable of commanding obedience to his mandate: "Silence, ye troubled waves; and thou, deep, peace;" Hushed to repose, a calm and sedate majesty glides, as it Isaiah, xl, 12. CHAPTER V. NoT the larger objects of landscape only have the power of administering to our pleasure;-earths and stones1, their component parts, possess the same faculty; if we begin by investigating the first principles of geology, and finish with the conclusion, that the entire substance of our globe is metalline and consequently a combustible compound. But the subject, I am aware, is uncongenial to your taste; I shall, therefore, turn to the consideration of those sounds, odours, and colours, which, contributing, with more or less effect, serve to increase those general sensations of harmony, which are received from the various objects and appearances of nature. Who has not listened, with satisfaction, to the song of the lark, the hum of bees, and the murmuring of rivulets? Mecenas was cured of continual watchfulness by the falling of water; and Pliny relates an anecdote of a Roman nobleman, who would recline upon a couch beneath one of his beech trees, and be lulled to slumber by 1 In some districts of Peru the Indians have no idea of stones. When any of them, therefore, voyage to Borja or Lamas, they are filled with admiration at the sight of them; picking them up, and preserving them for a time, as if they were diamonds. Vid. Peregrination of Father Sobreviela in 1790 to the lake of Gran Cocama, p. 10. Present State of Peru, 1805, 4to. p. 420. the falling of rain. Of a fine summer's evening, too, how delightful is it to pause upon the side of a hill, which overlooks a favourite village, and listen to the various sounds, which come softened by the distance. II. If some sounds in nature are beautiful, many are there, also, which assume the character of sublimity; and some, which partake of the nature of both. Such are those gentle breathings of the wind, after a storm, resembling sounds produced from the combustion of hydrogen gas; and which Gray, with much felicity, compares to the voices of "Eolian harps;" admitting of agreeable interruptions, like the cadences, which divide one harmonic period from another. To such sounds Mason alludes in the following passage: Can music's voice, can beauty's eye, A charm, so suited to my mind, As drops this little weeping rill; Soft trickling down the moss grown hill? While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Those notes, which are, at intervals, heard from animals and birds, are equally gratifying to the soul. "The wild dove," says an Arabian poet', "soothes me with her notes; like me she has a dejected heart." 1 Serage Alwarach. |