purposes of benevolence that man was formed,-purposes which make every generous exertion more delightful to the active mind itself, than to the individual whose happiness it might have seemed exclusively to promote. By this double influence of every tender affection, as it flows from breast to breast, there is, even in the simplest offices of regard, a continual multiplication of pleasure, when the sole result is joy; and, even when the social kindnesses of life do lead to sorrow, they lead to a sorrow which is so tempered with a gentle delight, that the whole mingled emotion has a tenderness, which the heart would be unwilling to relinquish, if it were absolute indifference, that was to be given in exchange.

"Who that bears

A human bosom, hath not often felt

How dear are all those ties, which bind our race

In gentleness together, and how sweet

Their force, let Fortune's wayward hand the while
Be kind or cruel? Ask the faithful youth,
Why the cold urn of her whom he long lov'd
So often fills his arms, so often draws

His lonely footsteps, silent and unseen,
To pay the mournful tribute of his tears!

O! he will tell thee, that the wealth of worlds
Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego

Those sacred hours, when, stealing from the noise
Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes,
With Virtue's kindest looks, his aching breast,
And turns his tears to rapture !"*

Such, then, are the comparative influences on our happiness and misery, of the emotions of love and hatred; and it cannot, after such a comparison, seem wonderful, that we should cling to the one of these orders of emotions, almost with the avidity with which we cling to life. It is affection, in some of its forms, which, if I may use so bold a phrase, animates even life itself, that, without it, scarcely could be worthy of the name. He who is without affection, may exist, indeed, in a populous city, with crowds around him, wherever he may chance to turn; but, even there, he lives in a desert, or he lives only among statues, that move and speak, but are incapable of saying any thing to his heart. How pathetically, and almost how sublimely, does one of the female saints of the Romish Church express the importance of affection to happiness, when, in speaking of the great enemy of mankind, whose situation might seem to present so many other conceptions of misery, she singles out this one circumstance, and she says,— "How sad is the state of that being condemned to love no

* Pleasures of Imagination, second form of the poem, B. II. v. 609-624.

thing!" "If we had been destined to live abandoned to ourselves, on Mount Caucasus, or in the deserts of Africa," says Barthelemi, perhaps nature would have denied us a feeling heart, but, if she had given us one, rather than love nothing, that heart would have tamed tigers, and animated rocks."* This, indeed, I may remark, strong as the expression of Barthelemi may seem, is no more than what man truly does. So susceptible is he of kind affection, that he does animate, with his regard, the very rocks, if only they are rocks that have been long familiar to him. The single survivor of a shipwreck, who has spent many dreary years on some island, of which he has been the only human inhabitant, will, in the rapture of deliverance, when he ascends the vessel that is to restore him to society and his country, feel, perhaps, no grief mingling with a joy so overwhelming. But, when the overwhelming emotion has in part subsided,—and, when he sees the island dimly fading from his view, there will be a feeling of grief, that will overcome, for the moment, even the tumultuous joy. The thought that he is never to see again that cave which was so long his home, and that shore which he has so often trod, will rise so sadly to his mind, that it will be to him, before reflection, almost like a momentary wish that he were again in that very loneliness, from which to be freed, seemed to him before, like resurrection from the tomb. He has not tamed tygers, indeed, but he will find, in his waking remembrances, and in his dreams, that he has animated rocks,-that his heart has not been idle, even when it had no kindred object to occupy it,—and that his cave has not been a mere place of shelter, but a friend.

66

If," says the author of Anacharsis, we were told that two strangers, cast by chance on a desert island, had formed a union of regard, the charms of which were a full compensation to them for all the rest of the universe which they had lost, if we were told, that there existed any where a single family, occupied solely in strengthening the ties of blood with the ties of friendship,-if we were told, that there existed, in any corner of the earth, a people who knew no other law than that of loving each other, no other crime than that of not loving each other sufficiently,--who is there among us, that could dare to pity the fate of the two strangers,-that would not wish to belong to the family of friends, that would not fly to the climate of that happy people? O, mortals, ignorant and unworthy of your destiny," he continues, "it is not necessary for you to cross the seas to discover the happiness. It

• Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, Chap. LXXVII. VOL. II.-3 C

may exist in every condition, in every time, in every place, in you, around you,-wherever benevolence is felt."*

After these remarks, on the emotions of love and hatred in general, it will not be necessary to prosecute the investigation of them, with any minuteness, at least, through all their varieties. The emotions, indeed, though classed together under the general name of love, are of many varieties; but the dif ference is a difference of feeling too simple to be made the subject of descriptive definition. I have already, in my general analysis of the emotion, stated its two great elements,a vivid pleasure in the contemplation of the object of regard, and a desire of the happiness of that object; and in the contemplation of various objects, the pleasure may be as different in quality as the corresponding desire is different in degree. The love which we feel for a near relation, may not then, in our maturer years, be exactly the same emotion as that which we feel for a friend; the love which we feel for one relation or friend, of one character, not exactly the same as the love which we feel for another relation, perhaps, of the same degree of propinquity, or for another friend of a different character; yet, if we were to attempt to state these differences, in words, we might make them a little more obscure, but we could not make them more intelligible.

I shall not attempt, therefore, to define what is really indefinable. The love, which we feel for our parents, our friends, our country, is known better by these mere phrases, than by any description of the variety of the feelings themselves; as the difference of what we mean by the sweetness of honey, and the sweetness of sugar, is known better by these mere names of the particular substances which excite the feelings, than by any description of the difference of the sweetnesses; or rather, in the one way, it is capable of being made known to those who have ever tasted the two substances; in the other way, no words which human art could employ, if the substances themselves are not named, would be able to make known the distinctive shades. Who is there, who could describe to another the sensations of smell which he receives from a rose, a violet, a sprig of jasmine, or of honeysuckle, though, in using these names, I have already conveyed to your mind a complete notion of this very difference.

It is not my intention, then to give you any description of the varieties of emotion, comprehended under the general terms of love and hate,—or, to speak more accurately, it is

Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis, Chap. LXXVIII.

not in my power. To your own mind, the greater number of these must already be sufficiently familiar. A few very brief remarks on the general guardianship of affection, under which man is placed, and on the happiness of which it is productive, are all which I shall attempt to offer to you.

The helplessness of man at birth, and for the first years of life, is what must have powerfully impressed every one,-however unapt to moralize on the contrasts of the present, and the past, and the future,--those contrasts, which nature is incessantly exhibiting, not more strikingly, in what we term the accidents of individual fortune, or the dreadful revolutions of nations, which occur only at distant intervals, than in the phenomena, which form the regular display of her power, in every generation of mankind, and every individual of every generation. That glorious animal, who is to rule all other animals, to invade their deepest recesses,―to drive the most ferocious from their dens, and to make the strength of the strongest only an instrument of more complete subjection, -what is he at his birth!—A creature, that seems incapable of any thing, but of tears and cries,-as Pliny so forcibly pictures him in a few words, "Flens animal cæteris imperaturum."* If we were to consider him, as abandoned to himself, we might, indeed, say, to use a still stronger phrase of Cicero, that man is born not of a mother, but of a stepmother. "Hominem, non ut a matri, sed a noverca natum, corpore rudo, fragili et infirmo, animo autem anxio ad molestias, in quo tamen inesset obrutus quidam divinus ignis." Is the divine spark, which seems scarcely to gleam through that feeble frame, to be quenched in it forever? It is feebleness, indeed, which we behold:-but the Creator of that which seems so feeble, was the Omnipotent. That Power, which is omnipotent to bless, has thrown no helpless outcast on the world. Before it brought him into existence, it provided what was to be strength, and more than strength to the weakness which was to be entrusted to the ready protection. There are beings who love him, before their eyes have seen what they love,-who expect, with all the affection of long intimacy, or rather with an affection, to which that of the most cordial friendship is indifference and coldness, that unsuspecting object of their regard, who is to receive their cares, without knowing of whom they are the cares; but who is to reward every labour and anxiety, by the mere smile, that almost unconsciously answers their smile, or the unintentional caress, to which their love is to affix so tender a meaning. How beautiful is the arrangement, which has thus adapt

• Lib. VII. proem.

ed to each other, the feebleness of the weak, and the fondness of the strong, in which the happiness of those who require protection, and of those who are able to give protection, is equally secured; and man deriving from his early wants the social affections, which afterwards bind him to his race, is made the most powerful of earthly beings, by that very imbecility, which seemed to mark him as born only to suffer and to perish!

The suddenness of the change, which, at this interesting period, takes place, in many instances, in the whole character and mode of conduct of the mother, is as remarkable as the force of the fondness itself. The affection, which the child requires, is not an affection of a passive sort; it is one which must watch and endure fatigues, and the privation of many accustomed pleasures. But nature, who, in adaptation to the wants of the new animated being, has provided for it the food best suited for its little frame, by a change in the very bodily functions of the mother, has provided equally for that corresponding change, which is necessary in the maternal mind. "How common is it," says Dr. Reid, "to see a young woman, in the gayest period of life, who has spent her days in mirth, and her nights in profound sleep, without solicitude or care, all at once transformed into the careful, the solicitous, the watchful nurse of her dear infant, doing nothing by day but gazing upon it, and serving it in the meanest offices,-by night, depriving herself of sound sleep for months, that it may lie safe in her arms. Forgetful of herself, her whole care is centered in this little object.-Such a sudden transformation of her whole habits, and occupation, and turn of mind, if we did not see it every day, would appear a more wonderful metamorphose, than any that Ovid has described."*

Such is that species of love, which constitutes parental affection, an affection, however, that is not to fade, with the wants to which it was so necessary, but is to extend its regard, with delightful reciprocities of kindness, over the whole life of its object, or rather is not to terminate with this mortal life, but only to begin then a new series of wishes, that extend themselves through immortality. Affection is not a task that finishes, when the work which it was to accomplish is done. The dead body of their child, over which the parents bend in anguish, is not to them a release from cares imposed on them. It awakes in them, love not less, but more vivid. It speaks to them of him, who still exists to their remembrance, and their hope of future meeting, as he existed

On the Active Powers, Essay III. c. iv