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 there for 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 imagination, 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.

400

KNOWLEDGE IS ITS OWN REWARD.

English Opium-Eater. But the yet highest character of all high study, is when viewed in its reflection on the mind. The discoveries of Astronomy have perfected Navigation. But it was not the prospect of that augmentation of human power that was in the mind of Galileo when he watched the courses of the stars, and strove in thought to explore the mechanism and motion of worlds. It satisfied him that he could know. Shepherd. That's a fine thocht, sir. I'm no sleepy.

English Opium-Eater. In the trance of long and profound meditation, the power that rose in his spirit, and the illumination that flowed in upon his mind, standing alone amidst surrounding darkness, were at once the requital of all his painful vigils of thought. These were the recompense that was with him, when the prisons of jealous and trembling power were closed upon the illustrious Sage, as if the same walls could have buried in their gloom his mind itself, and the truth which it enshrined.

Shepherd. Galileo and Milton met at Florence, or somewhere else in Tuscany. I wush I had been o' the pairty, and had got a keek through the Italian's telescope.

English Opium-Eater. Are we under any necessity, Mr Hogg

Shepherd. Nane whatsoever.

English Opium-Eater.of remembering the same fruits. of astronomical knowledge, in order to venerate the name of Newton? Or, do we imagine that he himself saw in his sublime speculations nothing more than the powers they would furnish to man? We never think of such advantages. We conceive of his mind as an intelligence satisfying its own nature in its contemplations, and our views of what he effected for mankind terminate when we have said, that he assisted them to comprehend the sublimity of the universe.

Shepherd. Chalmers never spoke better-nor sae weel-in his Astronomical Discourses,-yet in preaching he's a Paul.

English Opium-Eater. A world as full of wonders-ay, far fuller, my dear Shepherd-is disclosed to the metaphysical eye-yours or mine-exploring the manifestations of spirit— and all its heavenly harmonies. All sorrow and all joy, the calamities which have shaken empires, the crimes which have hurried single souls into destruction, the grounds of stability, order, and power, in the government of man, the peace and

A FALSE DISTINCTION.

401

happiness that have blossomed in the bosom of innocent life, the loves that have inwoven joy with grief, the hopes that no misery can overwhelm, the stern undaunted virtue of lofty minds, if such thoughts have any power to produce tenderness, or elevation,—if awe, and pity, and reverence, are feelings which do not pass away, leaving the mind as unawakened and barren as before-if our capacities are dilated by the very images of solemn greatness of which they are made the repository-then is such study important, not merely by the works which may spring from it, when genius and science meet, but by its agency on the mind itself engaged in it, which is thereby enlarged and elevated.

Shepherd. I would like to hear ye, sir, conversin wi' Coleridge and Wordsworth.-Three cataracts a' thunderin at ance! When you drap your voice in speaking, it reminds me o' that line in Cawmel

"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below."

I never could understaun' distinctly the distinction between the Useful and the Fine Arts. I begin to suspeck there is nane in nature.

English Opium-Eater. Distinction-drawing is generally deceptive. Madame de Stael praises in monuments their noble inutility. Yet how can that which moves affection be useless? It is a means of happiness. Schools surely are useful, yet they tutor the mind only.

Shepherd. That's as plain as a pike-staff.

English Opium-Eater. Again, shall we call a LanguageMaster useful, and yet the poem useless out of which he teaches his pupils ?

Shepherd. There would assuredly be nae logic in that, sir. English Opium-Eater. What is a Music-Master? Why, his trade is useful to himself-he teaches one pupil a useful trade, and another, we shall say, a useless accomplishment. Yet is he not useless himself in teaching the useless accomplishment, because he gains thereby useful money. Shepherd. Ane can never gang far wrang, I see, doubtfu' discussion, to bring in the simile o' the rainbow. English Opium-Eater. What is a Poet who indulges pleasure, and purposes pleasure merely to others; yet in the mean time sets printers and booksellers in motion?

VOL. II.

2 c

in

ony.

Shepherd. Dinna be angry we me, sir, for requeestin you, gin ye hae nae objections, to define Utility.

English Opium-Eater. It can be nothing but Production of Enjoyment. Yet these things of which the essence and sole existence is enjoyment, though they do not end with the present enjoyment, but by their influence on the mind are causes of future enjoyment, are held useless!

Shepherd. I jalouse there maun be something at the bottom of the question which ye haena yet expiscated. How stauns Poetry?

English Opium-Eater. Utility, it may be said, regards the Persons of Mankind, Poetry their Dreams.

Shepherd. That's rather antithetical-but very vague. It'ill hardly do, sir.

English Opium-Eater. Mr Hogg, I beg your attention for a few minutes. There is a great root of Utility-the bodily life. Whatever springs out of this is useful-agriculture, weaving, and brickmaking, in the first degree. Secondly, things subservient and subordinate to these-the protection of property by laws, the king, and the army. Then, as it is impossible to eat, or live in peace in your house without public morals, or to hold the state, the great and universal shield of men's bodies, together without them-Morality and Religion. This is one Utility-that of the body.-Some inquirers seem hardly to know another. But man, James, has two natures, and his Utility has two roots. The above is reversed, beginning from his immortal and ever-happy soul, resting upon, rooted in, Deity. Proceed hence, and you derive at last the body, and earth, which, as we are constituted, are means to this soul, and necessary conditions to its fulfilling its own birth and destiny. But, begin from the body, which is to last from day to day—or from the soul, which is to last for ever— in either way you comprehend a Totality, the whole Being; arts for his body, science and morals for his soul. Imagination -Poetry-seems to elapse-to elude grasp-between. is neither the body nor the soul; but a light that plays about both.

It

Shepherd. Something sublime in a' that, sir; but rather unsatisfactory at the hinner end, when you come upon the preceese pint o' Poetry.

English Opium-Eater. Imagination of the arts seems separ