kind, instead of the end to which they lead, are made the sole business of man's life, the | natural consequence must be, to render him familiar indeed with nature, but familiar on such terms that he is in danger of forfeiting his reverence for the creator, and losing sight of the connexion between the material and the moral world.

We are not so blindly wedded to the vagaries of imagination as to speak of this thirst for definite knowledge, as an evil. Far from it. But when the unenlightened, or the imbecile mind becomes infected with this fever of acquisition; when the juvenile philosopher is merely talking about what he ought to feel; when the puny artist no sooner beholds a tree, than he thinks it necessary to sketch it; when the student of nature tears in pieces every bird and insect that falls within his grasp; when books without number are eagerly inquired for, looked into, laid aside, and never understood; when the finished and fully-educated young lady displays her knowledge of the phraseology of foreign languages, and her ignorance of the spirit of her own; when the youthful metaphysician discourses eloquently upon the nature and laws of mind and matter, and hears with total vacuity of understanding that there is a moral law; we cannot help feeling that something is wanting of the ultimate end of education, and that the mind may be stored with knowledge, and yet be too ignorant of the right means of applying that knowledge to render its possessor wise.

The man of comprehensive mind, capable of appreciating all things according to their real value, will cultivate this knowledge of material things for the sake of the truths which it establishes, and the consequences to which it leads; and will no more content himself with this examination of external nature, than the sculptor will rest satisfied with having discovered the block of marble, out of which his figure is to be formed.

If the question might be asked without implying an ignorant and stupid want of reverence for knowledge in general, we should propose for the consideration of those who regret the absence of poetry from the world of letters, whether the defect so obvious in the literature of the present day, may

not arise, in the first place from the competition, and the consequent labour that is now actually necessary to secure the means of subsistence; and in the second, from the public mind being too fully occupied with the acquisition of mere knowledge, to allow time for receiving deep impressions, without which it is impossible either to write, or to feel poetically. If, for instance, in the cases already specified, the attention be wholly occupied in ascertaining the precise form of a leaf, where will be the impression of the majestic beauty of the forest? if in dissecting the organs of sense, what general idea can be formed of the melody of sound? if in examining the wing of the butterfly, what observation can be made upon its airy and fantastic flight? if in discovering the component parts of a cloud, how should the graceful involutions of the cloud be seen? if in chiseling out minute fragments from the side of the mountain, how should a deep sense of its grandeur pervade the soul? or if in merely counting the stars as separate spots of light, where will be the lasting impress of their glory?

The modern observer having had little time, and less inclination for the relative ideas which the contemplation of such objects affords to the poetic mind, they pass away from his thoughts as soon as his practical purpose has been fulfilled, and never afterwards are recalled as links in the chain of association connecting the material with the ideal world. When the wild winds of autumn sweep the many tinted leaves from the forest; like the ruder blasts of a less physical calamity, despoiling the fair pictures of spiritual beauty; the summer garniture of green and golden foliage lives no longer in remembrance. The woodland songster breathes no more; and the living voice that answered the universal language of nature from the fields, the groves, and the silvery waterfalls, is forgotten. The butterfly that lately fluttered round him like a winged flower escaped from Flora's coronet, a spotted specimen of a particular tribe-classed according to its name, lies before him faded, and lifeless, and dismantled of its beautythe memory of its aerial rambles extinguished with its transient and joyous life. The cloud has passed, and all its graceful and

fantastic wreaths of mingled mist and light, floating upon the pure ocean of celestial blue, like a spirit half earthly half divine, wandering on its upward journey to the realms of bliss, have vanished with the sun- | beams that gave a short-lived glory to its ephemeral existence. The lofty and majestic mountain no longer rises on the view; and his towering summit pointing to the sky, the deep ravines that cross and intersect his rugged sides like the foot prints of the retiring deluge-the light upon his golden brow, and the dark shadows that lie beneath like the frown of a mighty monarch whose will is life or death-all these have passed away from thought and memory, and a tiny particle of stone-a grain of granite remains in the hand of the modern philosopher, as his sole memorial of a mountain. Or when he grasps the telescope, and strains his eye to count the stars; before his labours cease, a dim line of light begins to mark out the eastern horizon, and one after another the stars retire before the brighter radiance of ascending day, like guardian angels who have watched the wanderer through his dark, and dubious, and earthly way, relinquishing their faithful trust before the unfol ding gates of Heaven. But the mere man of science retires into his closet, and pricks out the constellations in separate spots, better satisfied to have ascertained the perceptible number of stars in any given section of the hemisphere, than to have felt their light, their glory, and their magnificence, reigning and ruling over the midnight world.

We repeat, that no mind can be poetical whose exercise is confined to mere physical observation, and whose sphere of action excludes all those modes of receiving and retaining impressions which are either immediately or remotely connected with the feelings, the passions, and the affections.

The nature of our being admits of two important distinctions-physical and moral. And it is the great merit of poetry, that it constitutes an indissoluble bond of union between the two. We could not have been sensible of the different nature of good and evil, but for our capacity of receiving pleasure and pain. It is thus we learn to love whatever is conducive to our happiness-to hate or avoid whatever is productive of

pain; and it is this love, or this hatred, extending though an illimitable number of degrees and modifications, which constitutes the very essence of poetry and which, were poetry struck out from the world would disappear along with it, and leave us nothing but a mere corporeal existence, unconnected with the attributes of an imperishable and eternal life.

It may be a subject of something more than curiosity, to ask what the world would be without poetry. In the first place we must strike out beauty from the visible creation, and love from the soul of man. We must annihilate all that has been devised for ornament or delight, without a bodily and material use. We should no longer need a centre of light and glory to illuminate the world, but the same principle of light uniformly diffused, without reflection, and without shadow, would supply the practical purposes of man. The moon might hide her radiance, and the stars might vanish, or remain only as spots of black upon a dusky sky, to guide the nightly traveller, and lead the adventurous bark across the sea. Half the feathered songsters of the woods might plume their wings for an eternal flight, and the rest might cease from their vocal music, and let the woods be still. Rivers and running streams might glide on without a ripple or a murmur-reflecting no sunshine-adding nothing to the harmony of nature; and the ocean might lie beneath a heaven without clouds or colour, stretched out in the waveless repose of never-ending sleep. The trees might rear their massive trunks without their leafy mantle of varied green, the flowers might bow their heads and die; and the wild weeds of the wilderness that weave themselves into a carpet of rich and varied beauty, might perish from the earth and leave its surface barren and unclothed. Of animal life, the beasts of burden, and the fleshly victims of man's appetite, would alone remain; while in man himself, we must extinguish his affections, and render void his capacity to admire; and having moulded the creation to a uniform correspondence with his earthly and coporeal nature, we must leave him to the exercise of his faculties-first, to see, without beholding

beauty-to hear, without distinguishing harmony from discord, or to distinguish without preference-to esteem the effluvium of the stagnant pool as delicate an odour as the perfume of the rose-to taste without regard to flavour-and to feel with equal indifference the downy pillow, or the rude couch where the hardy peasant seeks repose. Then in the higher regions of his mental faculties, to observe, without any sense of sublimity-to calculate without arriving at an idea of infinity-to measure, without reference to illimitable space-to resist, without forming a conception of absolute power-to build without reflecting upon duration-to pull down, without looking forward to annihilation. And in the vacant sphere of passion and affection, to receive benefits, and remain insensible to favourto stand on the brink of destruction, without terror-to await the result of experiment, without hope to meet without pleasure-to part without grief-and to live on with the same uniformity of existence, without emotion-not idle, for that would imply a sense of the pain of labour, and the pleasure of repose; but perpetually active, yet active without desire. Such would be the world, and such the condition of man, were all that appertains to the nature of poetry extinct.

Were it possible to concentrate the dark features of this gloomy picture into a small compass, it would be in the simple idea of the exclusion of beauty from nature, or of the perception of beauty from the soul of man. Beauty is not necessary to our bodily existence. Nature would afford the same corporeal support, did we look upon her varied character with a total absence of all sense of admiration. Why then is this ineffable charm diffused through all creation, its essence so mingled with man's nature, that where he finds food for admiration, he finds intellectual enjoyment; and where he finds it not, he thirsts for it as for a fountain of excellence, until he works his way through difficulty and dangers to participate, even in the smallest measure, of its inexhaustible supply of pure and natural refreshment.

That this insatiable desire for beauty forms a part of the constitution of man, is sufficiently proved by his still following the same

principle in art, after he ceased to recognise it in nature. As the facilities for bodily enjoyment are multiplied, improved, and refined, man becomes luxurious and artificial in his habits. He withdraws from all familiar acquaintance with natural things, and surrounds himself with all that is curious in human invention, and exquisite in the work of human hands. But still the principles of beauty, derived from external nature, pursue the slave of art, and he studies how to imitate the variety, the splendour, and the magnificence, which the meanest peasant may enjoy in greater perfection, without invention, and without price.

Perception of beauty is one of the most decided characteristics, by which man is distinguished from the brute. We discover no symptoms of admiration in animals of a lower grade than ourselves. The peacock excites no deference from the splendour of his plumage, nor the swan from her snow white feathers, and the verdant fields in their summer bloom, attract no more, than as their flowery sweets allure the insect tribe, who in their turn are followed by their foes. To man alone belongs the prerogative of appreciating beauty because admiration is graciously designed as the means of leading him on to moral excellence.

There are philosophers who argue against the existence of positive enjoyment. I am ignorant, and I feel no anxiety to learn what they can say to prove that admiration,— true admiration, untainted by the remotest touch of envy, is not positive enjoymentthat, when the soul expands with a conception of excellence, unseen, unknown, unfelt before-of excellence, not merely as it relates to fitness for physical purposes; but of that which combines the principles of intellectual beauty, with the attributes of our moral nature-excellence which leads us into a new world of thought to expatiate in fields of glory, and to drink of the waters of immortality, it knows no positive enjoyment. For never was the enlightened mind excited to the highest sense of admiration, without feeling an extension of being beyond the narrow limits of mortal life; and this expansion naturally conducts us into a sphere of illimitable felicity. Hence arise the different heavens which mankind have con

structed for themselves out of the materials of earthly enjoyment, and hence our internal evidence of the belief, that the true heaven promised to the faithful, will comprehend all that we pine for of happiness, all that we admire of beauty, and more than all that we can conceive of excellence.

This intense perception of beauty-this tribute of the heart to excellence-this admiration of physical and thence of moral good, which dignifies the mind with the noblest aims, is so nearly allied to poetic feeling, that we question whether one could exist without the other; and if the diminution of poetic fervour be symptomatic of a decreased capacity of admiration, we have to look, not only to the depreciated character of our literature, but of our taste, and our morals. Nor is this view of the subject too widely extended to be supported by reason, since the first step to improvement is to admire what is better-the nearest approach to perfection, to admire all things worthy, in their true proportion-and to admire that most which is supremely good.

Is it then a thing of small importance that we should cease to admire? that we should lose, not only the most brilliant portion of our literature, but the happiest moments of our existence? We have observed what a void would be left in the natural world by the extinction of poetic feeling, we have now to consider what a void would be left in the world of letters by the absence of poetry as an art. We must not only seal up the fountain from whence flows the melody that has softened down the asperities of our own passions; but turning to the page of history, and tracing back the connexion of civilization with poetry, we must strike out from the world the influence of the mighty genius of Homer, in refining the manners of a barbarous people, in transmitting to posterity a faithful record of their national and social character, and in kindling in other minds the sparks of embryo genius, from that ancient period down to the present time. And if the influence of this single poet be insufficient to establish the general importance of poetry, we have that of other poets, inferior perhaps in their individual power, but deriving importance from

their number, and the greater facility with which their influence has been diffused.

It may be answered, that we have still the works of these poets to refer to for amusement and instruction. And are we to rest in this low and languid satisfaction, which extends to nothing but our poetry? We have the same conveniences of life which belonged to our forefathers; are we satisfied with them? The same use of machinery; are we satisfied with that? We have the same knowledge of the surface of the globe-we can count the same number of stars-and class the same kinds of animals and plants; and are we satisfied? We have the same knowledge of chemistry, electricity, hydrostatics, optics, and gravitation; and yet we are not satisfied. No:the principle of improvement-the desire of progress, extends through every manual occupation, through every branch of science, and through every variety of art, and leaves the region of poetry a void, for future ages to wonder at, and despise. It is our ambition to impress upon the page of history the advance that has been made in every other field of intellectual operation; but we are satisfied that history should record a time when the genius of the English nation cast off the wreath of poesy, and trampled her brightest glories in the dust-when the harp of these once melodious isles was silentand when the march of Britain's mind was unaccompanied by the music of her affections.

Next in importance to the impressions derived immediately from nature, are those derived from books, which if less obvious to the senses, and consequently less distinct, instruct the mind with greater facility and precision; and we behold another cause of the absence of deep impressions, in the excessive reading which characterises the present times. It is not certainly the most gracious mode of pointing out the evil, for those who multiply books to complain of their being read; but by excessive reading we desire to be understood to refer to that voracious appetite for books which exceeds the power of digestion.

Time was when a well-written book had an identity in the hearts of its readers—a