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!
Ye matrons, too, the poet's greeting share;
May many a May to matron and to maid
Return without a grief, without a shade;

May all be gay from Middlesex to Mayo,
May never sigh be heaved or heard a heigh-ho!

All poets have their impulses and passions;
And mine it is to sing a song of Fashions,
Of bonnets, frills, and parasols, and capes, -
Of gauzes, guipures, marabouts, and crêpes,-
Of dresses, ribands, stomachers, and bustles,
And all that floats or flounces, waves or rustles;
Of trimmings, flowers, feathers, fringes, shawls,
For fêtes and dinners, operas and balls.

Be gracious, Maia, queen of merry May!
As smooth as velvet make my summer lay;
And if you be a millinery muse,

Airy Muslina, don't your aid refuse,
But come with Fancy in your gauzy train,
And leave the Gallic for the British plain;
Like your best needle let my verses shine,
And with your thimble shield each fearful line.

Oh! be propitious! Make me glib on
Cambrics, and profound on ribbon,
Learned in lamas, bright on satin,
Chemisettes and corsets pat in;
Aid me, lest I make a hash mere
Of mantilla, scarf, and Cashmere,-
Thus involve me in dilemmas

With the Graces, Maudes, and Emmas,-
Lest I get into quandaries,

Misdirecting Lady Maries;

Or damages may have to pay,
For leading Bell or Blanche astray;
Dishing Kate, deceiving Ellen,
Or misguiding Madam Helen,
By some costume which afar is
From the present mode of Paris.

Paris still is Helen's passion,
Paris still the glass of fashion.
Come Iris, too, with all your vivid hues!
Come Flora, with the dew-drops on your shoes!
For there will now be need of vernal dyes,

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,
The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,

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,
And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief;
And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng;
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep;
And all the earth is gay.

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity;
And with the heart of May

Doth every beast keep holiday;
Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel I feel it all.
Oh! evil day! if I were sullen,
While the Earth herself is adorning,

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;
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm :--
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

But there's a tree, of many one,

A single field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home :
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy;

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy ;

The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own:
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind;
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,

The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate man,
Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pygmy size.

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart;

And unto this he frames his song: