Hadrian, Severus, and the elder Gordian; the Theseus, the colossal head of Marcus Aurelius; and trophies, found upon the plains of Marathon; to behold the tenants of deserts and forests, quitting their recesses to dwell with man; to partake of his virtues; to feel the benefit of his guardianship; and to be the objects of his admiration, care, and endearment. Here the lion plays with the spaniel, and the tiger sports, as it were, with the kid. To this spot every country seems to have sent a representative. Panthers from Buenos Ayres; tigers from Algiers, Ceylon, and Seringapatam; hyænas from Abyssinia; elephants and zebras from Africa; and lions and lionesses from the jungles of Hindostan. All sleeping, while man is active; and roving the slender circuits of their cells, when the whole of civilised life are buried in profound repose:-Presenting, in the heart and environs of the greatest of cities, the sublimest spectacle of savage nature, that the world exhibits ". a The Zoological and Surrey Gardens. b England is as classic ground to an American, as Italy is to an Englishman; and old London teems with as much historical association as mighty Rome. But what more especially attracts his notice, are those peculiarities which distinguish an old country, and an old state of society, from a new one. I have never yet grown familiar enough with the crumbling monuments of past ages, to blunt the intense interest with which I at first beheld them. Accustomed always to scenes where history was, in a manner, in anticipation; where every thing in art was new and progressive, and pointed to the future rather than to the past; where, in short, the works of man gave no ideas but those of young existence, and prospective improvement; there was something inexpressibly touching in the sight of enormous piles of architecture, gray with antiquity, and sinking to decay. I cannot describe the mute but deep-felt enthusiasm with which I have contemplated a vast monastic ruin, like Tintern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, and shut up from the world, as though it had existed merely for itself; or a warrior pile, like Conway Castle, standing in stern loneliness, on its rocky height, a mere hollow, yet threatening phantom of departed power. They spread a grand and melancholy, and, to me, an unusual charm over the landscape. I for the first time beheld signs of national old age, and empire's decay, and proofs of the transient and perishing glories of art, amidst the ever-springing and reviving fertility of nature.-Anon. POWER OF ASSOCIATION. THESE reflections are produced by that power of association, which alone produces all our ideas of beauty and sublimity. The secluded Vaucluse, rich in a grand assemblage of sublime objects, becomes more endeared to the eye of taste, when we reflect, that among those woods, those rocks, upon the banks of those torrents, the elegant and accomplished Petrarch composed his celebrated Sonnets. For, enamoured of the muses, as Professor Richardson remarks, in his Observations on Shakspeare's Dramatic Characters, "we traverse the regions they frequented, explore every hill, and seek their footsteps in every valley. The groves of Mantua, the cascades of Anio, are not lovelier than other groves and cascades; yet we view them with peculiar rapture; we tread as on consecrated ground; we regard those objects with veneration, which yielded ideas to the minds of Virgil and Horace; and we seem to enjoy a sort of ineffable intercourse with those elegant and enlightened spirits." From the same source springs the satisfaction, we derive, in reading many of the ancient ballads and legends of the Scottish, Spanish, and Provençal poets. We assimilate our age with theirs; and by comparing their language and customs, their sentiments and misfortunes, with our own, we draw resemblances at our discretion; collateral emotions of pleasure are elicited from the simplicity of their manners and sentiments; and our misfortunes are tempered by the artificial magnitude of theirs. It is this divine faculty of association, that enables those, whose natural perception of beauty has been improved by a cultivation of the imagination, to derive so much more pleasure from scenes of Nature, than the ignorant or unfeeling; the man of the world or the pedant; the soldier or the statesman. Walking in his garden, the man of taste almost fancies, he sees Vertumnus and Pomona, hiding themselves among the fruit trees. The vale he peoples with flocks and shepherds, resembling those, which have often delighted him in the Bucolics of Virgil, the Idyllia of Theocritus, the pastorals of Drayton, or the Idylls of Gessner. If he rise to the moun tain, he compares its towering summit to that of Pelion, Hymettus, or Citharon; and if he wander among rough and misshapen rocks, his imagination renders them more wild and savage, by groups of Salvatorial images. When he descends to the glen, the dingle, or the forest, fawns, dryadsa, and hamadryads, peeping from their green vistas, appear to attend him at every step. If he rove on the banks of a river, near a fountain, or on the shores of a lake, he hears the language of the Naiads in the murmuring of waters :-if he repose on the edge of a fantastic crag, jutting over the sea, he listens to the warbling of the winds, and almost fancies he hears the music of syrens, whose forms were made, not in the figures of women and fishes, as Boccace supposes, but in those of fishes and birds; decked with various colours :-Or his illusion pictures fine-formed Nereids, in their robes of green, floating on the billows, or reclining on the rocks. Cæruleos habet unda Deos; Tritona canorum, Doridaque, et natas; quarum pars nare videntur; Pisce vehi quædam. Thus the imagination gives to Nature and to life a charm, which converts every thing, it touches, into vegetable gold. Nature draws the outline, and arranges the groups; but it is the imagination, which gives a richness of polish to their surfaces, and tints them with those colours, which administer, in so delightful a manner, to our perception. Nature,—always producing,-furnishes the instruments; but it is the imagination, that touches the chords, and produces the melody. Nature showers down objects for our selection, and reason a Dryades formosissimas, aut nativas fontium nymphas, de quibus fabulatur antiquitas, se vidisse arbitrati sunt.-P. Martyr. Dec. i., lib. 5. combines them; but it is the imagination, which we are justified in styling the synonym of inspiration. And what is imagination, but the result of a refined power of association? For no objects, as we have so often observed, are elegant, beautiful, or grand, (to our eyes), in themselves; and they partake of those qualities only in proportion, as they create in the mind references and allusions to animate and sentient beings. When, therefore, objects meet the eye, which do not refer to earthly associations, they point to heavenly ones. It is impossible for Colonna ever to forget those moments, in which, near a cottage, rising half way up one of the smaller mountains in the neighbourhood of Capel Cerig, he has, for a time, lost all traces of earthly resemblances. Days had been devoted to the investigation of the admirable specimens of mountain-scenery, which present themselves along the road, leading from the picturesque bridge at Rhydland-var to the ivied arches of Pont-y-pair: from the falls of the Conway, to the tremendous cataract of Rhaiadr-y-Wenol. The grand mountain of Moelshiabod, rearing its enormous head, frowned upon all below; while rocks of every size and shape, now jutting bleak and bare from the woods, and now decorated with shrubs, here triangular, there ragged and pointed, met him at every step:-till, passing the bridge, stretching over the Lugwy, Snowdon burst forth, in something of the majesty of a Peruvian mountain. Upon the point of a rock overlooking two lakes, Colonna had leisure to reflect on the various scenes, which had elevated his imagination in the earlier parts of the day; and to contemplate the magnificence of Nature, in one of the finest scenes in Britain. When he had reached the spot, on which he sate, the sun was shooting its last rays upon the peak of Snowdon; while, along its gigantic sides, dark grey clouds were rolling in various sombre columns. Scarcely had the sun ceased to illuminate the west, when the moon, rising from behind a long line of dark blue clouds, irradiated all the east. Unmindful of the past-every thought was given to the future; and Colonna wished for no other description of happiness, in a state of immortal existence, than that, arising from an enlarged faculty of receiving delight, from whatever may be still more magnificent, among the labours of the Eternal Architect, in other scenes, on other summits, and on other globes. Scenery not only inspires the poet, but his reader also; for when do we enjoy his pictures, and relish his sentiments, with such a charmed perception, as when seated beneath a bower, under a tree, or beside a rivulet? In such and in other scenes, even bad poetry and worse music are not unattended with a sensible delight." The flute of a shepherd," Dr. Beattie remarks, "heard at a distance in a fine summer's day, in a romantic scene, will give rapture to the ear of the wanderer, though the tune, the instrument, and the musician be such, as he could not endure in any other place." The same association governs, in regard to sculpture and painting; for we can pause before a picture in a cottage, or a statue in a wood, which, in a palace or saloon, would excite nothing but disgust. Often has Colonna experienced the truth of these observations; and he never reflects, but with pleasure, on the satisfaction, he enjoyed, in listening to a blind old man in the valley of Rhymney, about two miles frem the grand towers of Caerphilly Castle. This valley is a narrow defile, winding at the feet of cultivated mountains, down which several streams occasionally murmur. It was one of the finest evenings in the month of August: every object was as tranquil, as if it had been midnight; the sun shooting along the valley, and tinting every object in the most agreeable manner. Charmed with the spot, Colonna stopped his horse, dismounted, and sate himself upon the side of a bank, to enjoy, more at his leisure, the beauties of the scene before him; heightened, as they were, by the sombre aspect of the distant ruins. As he was indulging in one of those delightful con |