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ledge during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 

 did not tend to repress the development of the imagina- 

 tion but rather, to impart greater comprehensiveness 

 and elevation to the poetic inspirations of that age. It 

 would be easy to show, that the discoveries of modern 

 times have exercised a similar genial influence on the 

 imaginative productions of our day. I shall cite but 

 one example. In Lord Byron's sublime apostrophe to 

 the ocean, there is a peculiar truthfulness and charm 

 derived from the recognition of the comparative stahility 

 of the ocean as contrasted with the instability/ of the 

 solid parts of the earth. And yet, this idea has only 

 derived life and reality from the scientific investigations 

 of the present century. 



It is, therefore, a great error, to suppose, as has been 

 done, that the imaginative faculties must necessarily be 

 extinguished within the atmosphere of our scientific 

 halls. On the contrary, I do not hesitate to say, that 

 the painter or the poet, is a better painter or a better 

 poet from being also well versed in science; and to him 

 the vapour-veiled mountain, and golden-tinted cloud, 

 and ocean-worn cliff, will become invested with fresh 

 beauty and fresh wonder, when he has made himself 

 acquainted with those physical laws which fling the mist 

 over the mountain, and drench the evening cloud in 

 gorgeous colors, and have heaved up that granite mass, 

 a barrier to the advancing billow, and a shelter to the 

 sea-bird in its clefts. Who does not admire the surpass- 

 ingly sublime and pathetic apostrophe to Light, which 

 opens the Third Book of the 'great English epic poem! 

 And yet, who does not feel, that the exalted genius of 

 its nnmortal author could have invested it with a higJier 

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