to his earth-born visions, a refinement and sublimity, which belong only to that imaginative realm, over which the queen of night presides. It is the same moon upon which the eyes of countless myriads are nightly gazing, but which never yet inspired one unholy thought, awakened one mean or sordid feeling, or called forth one passion inimical to the maintenance of "peace on earth and goodwill towards men." It is the same moon which personifies in her refulgent orb that bright link of spiritual connection between this troubled life, and one that is without anxiety, and without tears; hanging her single lamp of ineffable radiance above our nightly slumbers, like a beacon of hope to lure us to a better land-returning again, and again to this earthly sphere, to warn us of the danger of delay, to cherish our heavenward aspirations, and to teach us that there is a love, (Oh! how unlike the love of man!) as constant and untiring in its faithfulness, as slow to avenge disobedience and neglect.

182

THE POETRY OF RURAL LIFE.

BEFORE entirely quitting the fascinating employment of tracing out the poetical associations of particular objects in nature, it is necessary to add a few remarks upon the effect produced upon the mind by rural scenery in general.

The great difficulty in the task I have undertaken, a difficulty which presents itself most strikingly at this stage of the work, is to avoid the folly of being too sentimental, or rather to escape the charge of wishing to lead the mind away from what is substantially useful, to that which is merely visionary. If the major part of society in the present day consisted of lovestricken poets and languishing girls, mine would indeed be a scheme unnecessary and ill devised; but as the tendency of our present

system of education, our conversation, habits, and modes of thinking, is towards the direct opposite of sentimentality, we may fairly presume, that in the opinion of all candid and competent judges, this work will be considered harmless, to say the least of it; and that the writer will have due credit given for an earnest endeavour to assist in rescuing the spirit of poesy from the oppression of vulgar tyranny, and in guarding the temple of the muses from the profanations of avarice and discord.

The character of the cultivated portion of the present race of mankind is too practical, too bustling, too commercial, I might almost say, too material, to admit of the least apprehension that ideas should be brought to stand in the place of facts, that learning should be superseded by sensibility, or that vague notions about the essences of things should be preferred to a just and circumstantial knowledge of the actual substances of those things themselves.

It is unnecessary to state, that happiness, in one shape or another, is the great end we have in view, in all our pursuits and avocations; whether that happiness consists in amassing or expending money; in our personal

and sensual gratifications, or in the aggrandisement of others; in maintaining the station to which, by birth or education, we have become attached, or in raising ourselves to a higher scale of society; in obtaining and securing to ourselves the refinements and luxuries of life, or in cultivating the mental powers; in looking far and deep, both into the visible and the intellectual world, for those principles of consistency, beauty, and harmony, which owe their development to an almighty hand; and in recognising the work of that hand in every thing around and within us, from the simplest object of sense, to the most sublime and majestic source of contemplation.

The question is not, under which of these forms mankind is most addicted to look for happiness, but under which of these forms the happiness therein found, is likely to be most conducive to the cultivation and refinement of that part of his nature which is committed to him as a sacred trust, and will have to be rendered up, either elevated or debased, for eternity. I know that poetry is not religion; and that a man may dwell in a region of poetical ideas, yet far from his God: but we learn from the Holy Scriptures, whose whole language is that

of poetry, as well as by the slightest experimental knowledge of the subject, that poetry may be intimately associated with religion, and that, so far from weakening its practical influence, it may be woven in with our familiar duties, so as to beautify what would otherwise be repulsive, to sweeten what is bitter, and to elevate what we have been accustomed to regard as mean or degraded.

It is not thus with sordid or artificial life. Poetry neither can, nor will dwell there. The atmosphere is too dense, and those who inhale it acquire a taste for its impurities, upon the same principle as that on which the victim of habits more gross and vicious learns to love the odour of the deleterious bowl, because it is associated with the gratification of his brutal appetites.

I am far from wishing that all men were poets; or that the practical and necessary rules of education, should give place to the lawless vagaries of fancy, or the impulse of feelings uncontrolled but I do wish that these rules and the attention they require, did not occupy the whole season of youth, without leaving time even to feel that they are essential. I do wish that men and women too, would