MELANCHOLY HOURS. 



MELANCHOLY HOURS.— No. L 



" There is a mood 



(I sing not to the vacant and the young), 



There is a kindly mood of Melancholy, 



That wings the soul and points her to the skies." 



Dyee. 



Philosophers have divested themselves of their natu- 

 ral apathy, and poets have risen above themselves, in 

 descanting on the pleasures of Melancholy. There is no 

 mind so gross, no understanding so uncultivated, as to 

 be incapable, at certain moments, and amid certain com- 

 binations, of feeling that sublime influence upon the spi- 

 rits, which steals the soul from the petty anxieties of the 

 world, 



" And fits it to hold converse with the gods." 



I must confess, if such there be -who never felt the 

 divine abstraction, I envy them not their insensibility. 

 For my own part, it is from the indulgence of this sooth- 

 ing power that I derive the most exquisite of gratifica- 

 tions. At the calm hour of moonlight, amid all the 

 sublime serenity, the dead stillness of the night, or when 

 the howling storm rages in the heavens, the rain pelts 

 on my roof, and the winds whistle through the crannies 

 of my apartment, I feel the divine mood of melancholy 

 upon me ; 1 imagine myself placed upon an eminence, 

 above the crowds who pant below in the dusty tracljs of 

 wealth and honour. The black catalogue of crimes and 



