whilst they are awake, are in one common world; but that each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. The waking man is conversant in the world of nature: when he sleeps, he retires to a private world, that is particular to himself. There seems something in this consideration that intimates to us a natural grandeur and perfection in the soul, which is rather to be admired than explained. I must not omit that argument for the excellency of the soul, which I have seen quoted out of Tertullian, namely, its power of divining in dreams. That several such divinations have been made, none can question who believes the holy writings, or who has but the least degree of a common historical faith; there being innumerable instances of this nature in several authors, both ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Whether such dark presages, such visions of the night, proceed from any latent power in the soul, during this her state of abstraction, or from any communication with the Supreme Being, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a great dispute among the learned: the matter of fact is, I think, incontestable, and has been looked upon as such by the greatest writers, who have never been suspected either of superstition or enthusiasm. I do not suppose that the soul, in these instances, is entirely loose and unfettered from the body: it is sufficient if she is not so far sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations with such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slackened enough to give the mind more play. The soul seems gathered within herself, and recovers that spring which is broken and weakened, when she operates more in concert with the body. EXERCISE CLXXIV. SONG OF THE MAY FASHIONS. Anon. FAIR May, to all fair maidens of May-Fair! May all be gay from Middlesex to Mayo, All poets have their impulses and passions; Be gracious, Maia, queen of merry May! Airy Muslina, don't your aid refuse, Oh! be propitious! Make me glib on With the Graces, Maudes, and Emmas,- Misdirecting Lady Maries; Or damages may have to pay, Paris still is Helen's passion, To suit young May, and charm the charmer's eyes, truth, derived as they are from the intuitive feelings of his heart, are clear and unclouded, except by the shadows which are thrown from the vast creations of his fancy. sweeps Set before him the meanest and most disgusting of all earthly objects, and he immediately traces the chain by which it is linked to the great harmonies of nature, through the most beautiful and touching of all human feelings, in order to show their mysterious connection, — and at last enables us to perceive the union of all orders of animated being, and the universal workings of the Spirit that lives and breathes in them all. His theories may rather be regarded as prophetic of what we may be in a loftier state of being, than as descriptive of what we are on earth. No man of feeling ever perused his nobler poems, for the first time, without finding that he breathed in a purer and more elevated region of poetical delight, than any which he had before explored. — To feel, for the first time, a communion with his mind, is to discover loftier · faculties in our own. EXERCISE CXCI. ODE. Wordsworth. [Immortality intimated by Recollections of Childhood.] THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. The things which I have seen, I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus síng a joyous song, As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity; Doth every beast keep holiday; Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy! Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all. This sweet May-morning; And the children are pulling, On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm; But there's a tree, of many one, A single field which I have looked upon, Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, The youth, who daily farther from the east Is on his way attended; At length the man perceives it die away, Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own: The homely nurse doth all she can And that imperial palace whence he came. Behold the child among his new-born blisses, See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, And this hath now his heart; And unto this he frames his song: |