3(14 IIEXr.Y KIRKE white's EE:\rAIXF:. 



vade all his views, and shed a solemn tinge over all his 

 thoughts. Sadness, arising from no personal grief, and 

 connected with no individual concern, they regard as 

 moon-struck melancholy, the effect of a mind overcast 

 with constitutional gloom, and diseased with habits of 

 vain and fanciful speculation. " Yve can share with the 

 sorrows of the unfortunate," say they, " but this mon- 

 astic spleen merits only our derision : it tends to no bene- 

 ficial purpose, it benefits neither its possessor nor societ3^" 

 Those who have thought a little more on this subject than 

 the gay and busy crowd will draw conclusions of a differ- 

 ent nature. That there is a sadness, springing from the 

 noblest and purest sources, a sadness friendly to the hu- 

 man heart, and, by direct consequence, to human nature 

 in general, is a truth which a little illustration will render 

 tolerably clear, and which, when understood in its full 

 force, may probably convert contempt and ridicule into 

 respect. 



I set out then with the proposition, that the man who 

 tliinks deeply, especially if his reading be extensive, will, 

 unless his heart be very cold and very light, become ha- 

 bituated to a pensive, or, with more propriety, a mournful 

 cast of thought. This will arise from two more particular 

 sources — from the view of human nature in general, as 

 demonstrated by the experience both of past and present 

 times, and from the contemplation of individual instances 

 of human depravity and of human suffering. The first 

 of these is, indeed, the last in the order of time, for his 

 general views of humanity are in a manner consequential, 

 or resulting from the special, but I have inverted that 

 order for the sake of perspicuity. 



Of those who have occasionally thought on these sub- 

 jects, I may with perfect assurance of their reply, inquire 

 what have been their sensations when they have, for a 

 moment, attained a more enlarged and capacious notion 

 of the state of man in all its bearing and dependencies ? 

 They have found, and the profoundest philosophers have 

 done no more, that they are enveloped in mystery, and 

 that the mystery of man's situation is not without alarm- 

 ing and fearful circumstances. They have discovered 



