away. And thus we seem to be living amid a succession of nine-days' wonders. To regard this state of things with regret or complaint would obviously be in a high degree irrational as well as unmanly. On the contrary, the prodigious progress of physical science and the attendant arts is a fit subject of congratulation, bringing, as it does, manifold amelioration in all that concerns our physical existence. Besides, I could not bring myself to indulge for one moment a sentiment of jealousy or disparagement of physical science; for often have I witnessed with admiration the single-hearted devotion of the man of science to the vast department of his investigations,single-hearted in his seeking after truth, and indignant at the utilitarian question which would limit the range of inquiry to obvious and immediate results. The genius of true poetry is not daunted by the speed of science. But there is an inquiry of grave import, which, in our exultation, we are apt to overlook. The peril incident to fallen humanity is forgotten,-that blessings come not unalloyed, and that, abused, they may be perverted into evils. It is fit, therefore, to ask whether the improvements upon which our age prides itself are so absolutely unqualified as to justify the rather-contemptuous compassion for the unilluminated condition of our forefathers. Is it all profit and no loss? Are we quite safe in reposing upon our gains with a confidence that nothing of our treasures has imperceptibly been allowed to pass away? In noticing what I believe to be some of the characteristic errors and frailties of our times, I am anxious to speak with modesty; and therefore I quote the language of an author by whom it has been well remarked that, "in regard to the supposed superiority

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of the present age, the mistake arises in various ways. A part of knowledge, perhaps the least important, is put for the whole; no balance is struck between what is gained in one department and what is lost in another; the worthiness of the ends pursued is not considered in determining the value of the means; the economy of wealth is taken as the measure of national welfare; legislation passes for jurisprudence. So, again, the study of nature may have flourished, the study of mind may have drooped; the arts of life may have advanced, domestic wisdom may have lost ground; education may have been diffused, learning may have declined. All our gains are counted; but our losses are not set against them. And, again, personal comfort, convenience, or luxury, mental or bodily, is openly proposed, not only as the best, but as the only, object of intellectual pursuit; whereas, formerly, the search of truth was supposed to bring its own recompense. Thus, a lower end is substituted for a higher; and by overstating the claims of our fellow-creatures, once too much neglected in these studies, we forget the more sublime relation between the human spirit and the God who gave it."

These traits in the spirit of our times are characterized by another writer, in an eloquent and philosophical passage bearing more immediately on the subject I am discussing. "Men have been pressing forward for some time in a path which has betrayed by its fruitfulness, furnishing them constant employment for picking up things about their feet when thoughts were perishing in their minds. While mechanic arts, manufactures, agriculture, commerce, and all those products of knowledge which are confined to gross, definite, and tangible objects,

have, with the aid of experimental philosophy, been every day putting on more brilliant colours, the splendour of imagination has been fading. Sensibility, which was formerly a generous nursling of rude nature, has been chased from its ancient range in the wide domain of patriotism and religion, with the weapons of derision, by a shadow calling itself Good Sense; calculations of presumptuous expediency, groping its way among partial and temporary consequences, have been substituted for the dictates of paramount and infallible conscience, the supreme embracer of consequences; lifeless and circumspect decencies have banished the graceful negligence and unsuspicious dignity of virtue." It is scarcely necessary to remark that an age thus characterized must be in a great degree unimaginative and its tendencies adverse to poetic culture. Look round upon society, and you behold on every side symptoms of restless curiosity, and the love of outward excitement stimulated to so high a pitch that the strenuous exercises of imagination and all spiritual thought are neglected as uncongenial or despised as visionary. We live in turmoil; and the man who dares to pause but for brief meditation is in danger of being trodden down by the throng that is pressing forward. Philosophy must deal with handicrafts, with steam, with the crucible, with magnetism, with storms, with manufactures, with exports and imports and the currency; but, if it seek its ancient track,—the human spirit and all the immaterial life that it sustains, the world.turns away from it as from useless scholastic speculation. It may be tolerated as a piece of monastic harmlessness, but no more, in the necessities of over-active existence. In a state of opinion where such principles are dominant, poetry of a

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high order will in vain claim from the many the affectionate homage which its votaries render. In the strife between the antagonist elements of our complex being the mastery is too often won by the sensual over the spiritual; and hence it is that man is said to live by sight rather than by faith,- -a life adverse alike to all that is religious and all that is imaginative. A great poet, standing by the seaside, conscious of the influence of natural objects, and conscious, too, of the apathy of a worldlyminded generation, boldly recoils from the materialism and infidelity of a Christian age as more uncongenial than the fond aspirations even of Paganism.

"The world is too much with us.

Late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away,-a sordid boon!
This sea, that bares her bosom to the moon,-
The winds, that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,—
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn."

There is another influence adverse to imaginative culture. It is not only that one part of knowledge, and that not affecting the highest and most permanent interests of mankind, has usurped too large a space in the public thought, but there has been a tendency to unequal cultivation of some of the chief faculties of the mind. This is not the occasion to examine that modern mental philo

sophy which, rife especially on the rank soil of France and in the years of its revolution, was disseminated in the latter part of the last century. Enough for my present purpose is it to say that it gave to one power of the mind a supremacy which has proved injurious to the just distribution of all. The calculating faculty of the understanding has been made the sole arbiter to which the other reflective faculties and imagination and the moral powers are to bow as vassals. This has led to a false confidence in a dangerous guide; for never is man more apt to go astray than when, casting away all other light, he follows implicitly the leading of mere reasoning. Reason, (I use the term in the sense of the logical faculty,) alienating itself in its usurpations from the other powers, becomes wilful, rash, and tyrannous. Thence comes a self-confidence in the age which casts off time-honoured associations with the past, and thus, to borrow a fine expression, "covenant is broken with the mighty dead." Thence come the thousand theories which unceasingly are flitting across the public mind:-theories of education, mental and bodily, theories of social and political regeneration, and theories of religion. Thence has come the revolution we have witnessed in the fashion of children's books; the healthy, imaginative, old-fashioned story-books displaced by preposterous devices to fill the young heart with pedantry. We are cramped by false and narrow systems of metaphysics, teaching that wisdom is to be drawn from one reservoir, when, the truth is, it is flowing from a hundred springs,-imagination, the affections, faith, prayer, and whatever else helps to guide and chasten intellectual action. There is a danger, it has been well said, "that the perfections and achievements of intellect