THE GROWTH OF INTELLECT. 395 overruling, in our rude, unskilful ignorance, the processes she is carrying on in her wisdom for the happiness, the virtue, and the power of the human soul she is rearing up for life. Shepherd. Oh! but you're wise, sir, Mr De Quinshy-oh! but you're unco wise! English Opium-Eater. Look at a child on its mother's breast. Tickler. Hem! English Opium-Eater. The impulses, and movements, and quick impressions of sense-or of a sentient being living in sense—are the first matter of understanding to a high intellectual nature. Shepherd. Mr Tickler, nae yawning-hearken till Mr De Quinshy. English Opium-Eater. By these touches of pleasure and pain it is wakened from the sleep of its birth. By sounds that merely lull in it the sense of pain, or reach it with emotions of delight, it is called to listen in that ear which will one day divide with nicest apprehension all the words of human discourse, and receive in the impulses of articulated sound the communicated thoughts of intellectual natures resembling itself. Shepherd. The bit prattler! English Opium-Eater. That eye, which watches the approach or departure of some living object yet unknown, which traverses its little sphere of vision to look for some living toy, is exercising that vision which shall one day behold all beauty, and read wisdom in the stars of heaven. And that hand, with its feeble and erring aim now so impotent and helpless, shall perhaps one day shape the wonderful fabrics of human intelligence-shall build the ship, or guide the pencil—or write down wisdom-or draw sounds like the harmonies of angels from the instruments its own skill has framed. And what are the words to which those lisped-out murmurings shall change? Shall Senates hang listening to the sound? Shall thronged and breathless men receive from them the sound of eternal life? Shall they utter song to which unknown ages shall listen with wonder and reverence? Or shall they only, in the humble privacy of quiet life, breathe delight with instruction to those who love their familiar sound—or the adoration of a spirit prostrate before its Creator in prayer ?1 1 This is a fine expansion of Leibnitz's remark, Præsens est gravidum futuro. 396 LOVE IS THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF EDUCATION. Shepherd. That's real eloquence, sir. Fu' o' feelin-and true to nature, as the lang lines o' glimmerin licht-streamin frae the moon shinin through amang and outower the taps o' the leafy trees. English Opium-Eater. Let us hear with scorn, O gifted Shepherd of the mind of such a creature being a blank, a Tabula Rasa, a sheet of white paper. Tickler. Like Courtenay's.1 English Opium-Eater. On which are to be written by sense, characters which sense-born understanding is to decipher. If we must have an image, let it be rather that of a seed which contains a germ, ere long to be unfolded to the light, in the shape of some glorious tree, hung with leaves, blossoms, and fruit; and let it be "Immortal Amaranth, the tree that grows fast by the throne of God." Shepherd. Beautifu'-philosophical—and religious! English Opium-Eater. How does it lift up our thoughts in reverent wonder to Him who framed this spirit and this its natural life; and through the intervention of sense, and from the face of a material world, discovered to that intelligent and adoring Spirit the evidences of his own being, and the glory of his own infinite perfections! Shepherd. Baith sound asleep! That's shamefu'. "That strain I heard was of a higher mood." Tickler. Let us two leave Mr De Quincey and Mr Hogg for a time to their metaphysics, and have a game at chess. [NORTH and TICKLER retire to the chess-board niche. Shepherd. Pronounce in ae monosyllable-the power o' education. Praise ? English Opium-Eater. LovE. Shepherd. Hoo often fatally thocht to be-Fear! English Opium-Eater. Love! Look on the orphan, for whom no one cares for whom no face ever brightens, no voice grows musical; who performs in slavish drudgery her solitary and thankless labours, and feels that, from morning to night, the 1 The Right Hon. Thomas P. Courtenay, Vice-President of the Board of Trade, is said to have remarked that, in reference to the business of his office, "his mind was like a blank sheet of paper." scowl of tyranny is upon her—and see how nature pines, and shivers, and gets stunted, in the absence of the genial light of humanity. Shepherd. Like a bit unlucky lily, chance-planted amang the cauld clay on a bleak knowe to the north, where the morning sun never, and the evening sun seldom shines, and bleakness is the general character o' the ungenial day. It struggles at a smile does the bit bonny stranger white-lily-but you see it's far frae happy, and that it 'ill be sune dead. The bee passes it by, for it's quite scentless; and though some draps o' dew do visit it-for the heavens are still gracious to the dying outcast-yet they canna freshen up its droopin head, so weak at last, that the stalk could hardly bear up a butterfly. English Opium-Eater. Even the buoyant-the elastic-the airy-the volatile spirit of childhood cannot sustain itself against the weight of self-degradation thus bearing it down. with the consciousness of contumely and contempt. The heart seems to feel itself worthy of the scorn it so perpetually endures; and cruel humiliation destroys its virtue, by robbing it of its self-esteem. Shepherd. God's truth. English Opium-Eater. Look on that picture-and on this. See the child of the poorest parents, who love it, perhaps, the better for their poverty Shepherd. A thousan' Wordsworth nobly says— a million times the better as "A virtuous household, though exceeding poor." English Opium-Eater. With whom it has been early made a partaker in pleasure and in praise-and felt its common humanity, as it danced before its father's steps when he walked to his morning labour-or as it knelt beside him at morning and evening prayer; and what a contrast will there be, not in the happiness merely, but in the whole nature of these two beings! Shepherd. A rose-tree full in bearing, balming and brightening the wilderness—a dead withered wall-flower on a sunless cairn ! English Opium-Eater. Change their lot, and you will soon change their nature. It will, indeed, be difficult to reduce the glad, and rejoicing, and self-exulting child to the level of 398 ALL ARE DEPENDENT ON SYMPATHY. her who was so miserably bowed down in something worse than despair; but it will be easy—a week's kindness will do it to rekindle life, and joy, and self-satisfaction, in the heart of the orphan-slave of the work-house to lift her, by love, and sympathy, and praise, up to the glad consciousness of her moral being. Shepherd. Ay-like a star in heaven set free frae the cruel clouds. English Opium-Eater. So essential is self-estimation, even to the happiness, the innocence, and the virtue of childhood; and so dependent are they on the sympathy of those to whom nature constrains it to look, and in whom it will forgive and forget many frowning days for one chance smiling hour of transient benignity! Shepherd. I defy the universe to explain the clearness, and the cawmness, and the comprehensiveness, to say nothing o' the truth and tenderness o' your sentiments, sir, in spite o' metapheesicks, opium, and lyin in bed till sax o'clock o' the afternoon every mornin. You're a truly unaccountable cretur. English Opium-Eater. I have read little metaphysics for many years and I have reduced my daily dose of laudanum to five hundred drops. My chief, almost my sole study, is of the laws of mind, as I behold them in operation in myself, and in the species. Shepherd. And think ye, sir, that sic a study-pity me, but it's something fearsome!—is usefu' to men o' creative genius, to poets, and the like, sic as me and English Opium-Eater. The knowledge acquired by such study alone can furnish means to execute the enterprises of nobler art and spiritual genius. Shepherd. I howp, sir, you're mistaen therefor I never, in a' my life, set mysel doun seriously to study human nature, and to commit ony o't to memory, as I hae often tried, always in vain, to do the Multiplication Table English Opium-Eater. "Impulses of deeper mood Have come to you in solitude." But they had all passed you by, unless your heart, your imagi nation, and your reason, had all been made recipient by divining dreams, which, when genius dreams, are in verity processes, often long, dark, and intricate of thought, terminating finally in the open air, and on the celestial soil of eternal truth. Shepherd. Aiblins, I've been mair studious than I was sensible o' at the time, when lyin by the silver springs amang the hills-for a shepherd's life is aften sedentary; and gin a body 'ill just let his sowl alane, leeve it entirely to its ainsel, and no trammel't in it's flights, its wonderfu' hoo, being an essence, it 'ill keep hummin awa outower far distant braes, gangin and comin just like that never-weary insect the unquarrelsome bee, that draps doun instinctively on ilka honey-flower that scents the wild, and wheels hame to its hive by air-ways never flown afore, yet every ane o' them the nearest and directest to the straw-roofed skep in the lown sunny neuk o' the garden, that a' day lang murmurs to the sunshine a swarming sang, and at nicht emits a laigh happy hum, as if a' the multitude were but ae bee, unable to keep silence even in the hours o' sleep. English Opium-Eater. Yes-those high minds which, with creative genius, have given, in whatever form, a permanent being to the conceptions of sublime Imagination; whether they have embodied their thoughts in colours, in marble, or in imperishable words, have all trained and enriched their genius in the same self-meditation. This is true of those whose arts seem to speak only to the eye:—The same derivation of its strength is yet more apparent in respect to the productions of those arts which use Language as the vehicle of representation. That eloquence which, in the words of great historians, yet preserves to us, in living form, the character of men and nations-which, from the lips of great speakers of old or modern times, has swayed the passions, or enlightened the reason of multitudes-that Poetry which, with a voice lifted up from age to age, has poured forth, in awful or dazzling shapes, imagery of the inmost passions and feelings of men, and made almost the soul itself a visible Being Shepherd. That's capital-indeed wonderful-on Coffee. English Opium-Eater. The very powers which Bacon imparted to the science of Nature, he drew from the science of Mind. It was in the study of the Mind itself that he found the true principles which must guide Natural Philosophy. Shepherd. Na-there you're beyond my depth a'thegither. If I gang in to dook wi' you in that pool, I'se be droon'd to a moral. |