AiND IMAGINATION. 



529 



and shares it ; and where it is not to be found it fancies it. How bften, 

 waking to the roar of the midnight tempest, while dull and gluttonous 

 indolence snores on in happy forgelfulness, does the imagination of those 

 who are thus divinely gifted mount the dizzy chariot of the whirlwind, 

 and picture evils that have no real existence ; now, figuring to herself 

 some neat and thrifty cottage where virtue delights to reside, she sees it 

 swept away in a moment by the torrent, and despoiled of the little harvest 

 just gathered in ; now, following the lone traveller in some narrow and 

 venturous pathway, over the edge of Alpine precipices, where a single 

 sHp is instant destruction, she tracks him alone by fitful flashes of light- 

 ning ; and at length, struck by the flash, slie beholds him tumbling headlong 

 from rock to rock, to the bottom of the dread abyss, the victim of a double 

 death. Or possibly, she takes her stand on the jutting foreland of some 

 bold, terrific coast, and eyes the foundering vessel straight below ; she 

 mixes with the spent and despairing crew ; she dives into the cabin, and 

 singles out, perhaps, from the rest, some lovely maid, who, in all the 

 bloom of recovered beauty, is voyaging back to her native land from the 

 healing airs of a foreign climate, in thought just bounding over the scenes 

 of her youth, or panting in the warm embraces of a father's arms - 



She marks th' erecicd ear, the bloodless clieek, 



The rigid eye that never more shall weep : 

 She hears the horrors of the last Inud shriek, 



And vsees the vessel plunge beneath the deei». 



Such are the painful pictures on Vv Jiich the keen soul of sensibility -teedf 

 too frequently in imagination, when the sigh of real misery is hushed, and 

 its generous hand is not needed. But is there nothing to counterbalance 

 the distress ? To call forth the tear of joy, as well as of sorrow ? And to 

 reward the nice sympathy with which the mind labours? I pursued thi? 

 ])leasing train of contemplation, many years ago, in an elegy expressly di- 

 rected to the present subject, from which, indeed, I have taken the lines 

 just quoted ; and as I do not know that I can answer this important ques- 

 tion in prose better than in verse, I will beg leave. to close the lecture, and 

 with it the t^eneral task I have undertaken, witii an additional extract. 

 Having pointed out to those whd are highly gifted with taste, genius, ima- 

 gination, and fine feeling, the pains and anxieties which such a constitution 

 of mind must necessarily give rise to, the poem proceeds as follows 



Yet murmur not, nor deem the fates reserve 



No drop of solace mid the bitter stream ; 

 Virtue is yours, — and still each trembling nerve 



Oft proves an avenue to bliss supreme. 



Ye cannot wade through filth that duiness dares 



Your nobler spirits soar above the clod ; 

 Ye must be pure while 3'et your bosom bears 



The clear unsullied impress of your God. 



Nor does the world, in every scene that springs. 



Nor Fancy's self, portray perpetual gloom." 

 Feel ye no joy when sickness smiles and sin3;s? 



When worth succeeds ? or culprits meet their doom ! 



Lo! where yon vale unfolds its pictur'd site, 



And meads and corn-fields mix their gay attire ; 

 Sheep-cots and herds, and sprinkled cottage white. 



Stream, busy mill, deep wood, and tufted spir^ 



