XX INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 



Our cheerful faith that all that we behold 



Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon 



Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; 



And let the misty mountain winds be free 



To blow against thee ; and in after-years, 



When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 



Into a sober pleasure when the mind 



Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 



Thy memory be a dwelling-place 



For all sweet sounds and harmonies, oh ! then, 



If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, 



Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts 



Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, 



And these my benedictions ! 



Such is the united testimony of our greatest 

 poetical minds; and such is my firm faith, that 

 God has not only implanted in the depths of our 

 hearts a pure and quick moral sense of his good- 

 ness, and of the excellency of virtue, but has so 

 constructed the world, that the same saving, puri- 

 fying, and ennobling principles, are reflected upon 

 us from every natural object. " Between the Poet 

 and Nature," says Schlegel, "no less than between 

 the poet and man, there is a sympathy of feeling. 

 Not only in the song of the nightingale, or in the 

 melodies to which all men listen, but even in the 

 roar of the stream and the rushing of the forest, 

 the poet thinks that he hears a kindred voice of 

 sorrow or of gladness ; as if spirits and feelings 

 like our own were calling to us from afar, or seek- 

 ing to sympathize and communicate with us from 

 the utmost nearness to which their natures will 



