CANTO in. PROGRESS OF THE MIND. 123 



" The Seraph, SYMPATHY, from Heaven descends, 

 And bright o'er earth his beamy forehead bends; 

 On Man's cold heart celestial ardor flings, 

 And showers affection from his sparkling wings; 470 

 Rolls o'er the world his mild benignant eye, 

 Hears the lone murmur, drinks the whisper'd sigh; 

 Lifts the closed latch of pale Misfortune's door, 

 Opes the clench'd hand of Avarice to the poor, 

 Unbars the prison, liberates the slave, 

 Sheds his soft sorrows o'er the untimely grave, 

 Points with uplifted hand to realms above, 

 And charms the world with universal love. 



what is generally understood by the word sympathy, so well ex- 

 plained by Dr. Smith of Glasgow. Thus the appearance of a cheerful 

 countenance gives us pleasure, and of a melancholy one makes us 

 sorrowful. Yawning, and sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated 

 by sympathy; and some people of delicate fibres, at the presence of 

 a spectacle of misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their 

 bodies, that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw. 



The effect of this powerful agent in the moral world, is the foun- 

 dation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains and pleasures 

 of others, and is in consequence the source of all our virtues. For in 

 what consists our sympathy with the miseries or with the joys of our 

 fellow creatures, but in an involuntary excitation of ideas in some 

 measure similar or imitative of those which we believe to exist in the 

 minds of the persons whom we commiserate or congratulate! 



