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here; and the writer feels she shall be treated with 
indulgence if she speaks with enthusiasm of the 
volumes which first disclosed to her knowledge 
the taste and character of their author: a poetic 
spirit breathes through these, and through all his 
writings, and gives a charm which is felt even in 
the strict language of scientific description. 
“Poetry,” says a fine modern writer, “has a 
natural alliance with our best affections. It de- 
lights in the beauty and sublimity of the outward 
creation, and of the soul. Its great tendency and 
purpose is to carry the mind beyond and above the 
beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift 
it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more 
profound and generous emotions. It reveals to us 
the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness 
of youthful feelings, revives the relish of simple 
pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which 
warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youth- 
ful love, strengthens our interest in human nature 
by vivid delineations of its loftiest feelings, spreads 
our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us 
by new ties to universal being; and through the 
brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to 
lay hold on the future life. It is objected to po- 
etry, that it gives wrong views, and excites false 
expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows 
and illusions, and builds up imagination on the 
ruins of wisdom. ‘That there is a wisdom against 
which poetry wars,—the wisdom of the senses, 
which makes physical comfort and gratification the 
supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life,-— 
