tints accompany her ending-the year sinks through glowing autumn into winter-life itself into the grave. Then "hail, divinest Melancholy," thou wert given to form us for eternity, to fill our souls with lofty joys, to preserve our moral identity. Passions-all, even the basest, of passions-are eloquent, and it needs thy deep and soft persuasion to teach us to resist. We suffer disappointment, and our tempers change; apathy thrusts its icy fingers into our breast-the warm and generous pulses of virtuous youth are contaminated by intercourse with the world-their own heat leads astray-and it is by divine melancholy, which revives our souls to their first thoughts, which gives back youthful feelings to the heart chilled with social indulgence, that we are enabled to deem "goodness is no name, happiness no dream."

To cultivate the pleasures which belong to the mind is the wisest course; for if the philosophy of the present day attempt to prove that our mind is as little in our power as the other elements of nature, it only teaches us to forego all cultivation, to let our lives be a common of existence; and that nature is too powerful ever to permit to be the case. I believe we have little power over any thing in the world, but what little we have I think lies within ourselves; and to exert it there is the part of wisdom, as there alone may its exertions prove successful. The Fate or Destiny of the Ancients, the Predestination of the Calvinist moderns, were high and poetic systems; they might, as the case stood, exalt to the greatest possible pitch of virtue and happiness, or sink to abandoned misery; but even in the utmost degradation, they carried a greatness along with them; they did not meanly debase man, like our present system of Necessity, which teaches man that he is like the wood which the turner forms into bowls and platters. The philoso

phers of the present day, allow the difference of timber; a man may be hard-grained or soft, of a white or dusky colour; but circumstances, like the lathe, equally mould the beech into the bowl, and the ash into the broomstick. Reason, they tell us, should not be offended at facts; reason should not presume to know any thing but what facts and experience teach, and this they pronounce the only reasonable and demonstrable system. Alas! and can this be so? They have philanthropy in the person of Mr. Owen on their side, and poetry in the works of Mr. Shelley; they may quote the fine lines of his Prometheus:

Hark! the rushing snow!

The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds,

As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,

Shakened to their roots, as do the mountains now."

And they may reason till they bewilder the weak, but they may not convince even where they are not successfully answered.-It is a moral truth" que le battement du cœur nous apprend mieux que toutes les discussions théoriques," and our boasted reason frequently is a most arrant deceiver. There is no absurdity that she will reject as extravagant. She has persuaded some there can be neither God or future state; she has taught some that virtue and vice are the same; she has convinced many that there can be no such thing as free will, in opposition to their own experience-some that there can not be such things as soul or spirit, contrary to their natural perceptions and others that there does not exist either matter or body, in defiance to their senses. By analyzing all things she can prove to the satisfaction of her follow

ers that there is nothing in any thing; and by shifting about, she can reduce all existence to the invisible dust of scepticism. Are we not content with misusing our passions,-must even reason be made, although" a light from heaven," a light to lead astray? Melancholy would never give this "heart dry as summer dust;"-she would preserve and shield us from these fatal mistakes ;-she teaches the insufficiency of our faculties to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, while she fills us with admiration for all we can behold and comprehend, and with reverence for the "great First Cause" which remains "least understood.",

The known power which we possess of singling out any one of our thoughts, of detaining it, and making it the particular object of attention, is sufficient to prove that we may nurse the faculty of contemplative musing, bring the less obvious relations of things into notice, create new pleasures of reflection, and give our minds the habit of any train and disposition of thought we may desire. A particular associating principle may be so much strengthened as to give us a command of all the different ideas of our mind which have a certain relation to each other, and thus we may despotically rule our most constant thoughts-for, of course, I am not wild enough to contend that there exists the

Shall I be accused of wishing to introduce gloom? Am I to be told

The lark shall mount the sapphire skies
And wake the grateful song of gladness
One general peal from earth shall rise-
Is man alone to droop in sadness ?

I would not change the sweet rebukes of melancholy for all the boisterous joys which ever shook the air with clamour-besides she brings encouragements still more numerous and sweet

When to myself I sit and smile,

With pleasing thoughts the time beguile,
By a brook-side or wood so green,
Unheard, unsought for, or unseen,
A thousand pleasures do me bless
And crown my soul with happiness.
All my joys besides are folly,
None so sweet as melancholy—
Methinks I hear, methinks I see,
Sweet music, wondrous melodie,
Towns, palaces, and cities fine,

Now here, now there; the world is mine.
Rare beauties, gallant ladies, shine,

What e'er is lovely or divine.

All my joys to this is folly,

None so sweet as melancholy.—*

These are her least sweets ;—but she has also deep and holy thoughts which may not be profaned by public expression. The kingdom of melancholy is within us. Its altar is our heart, and the fires lose their pure lustre when taken from the shrine of our breasts to be held up even to enlighten a perverse world. Mackenzie is her worthy priest-and I cannot conclude with a finer sentiment than the latter part of the quotation I began with

"The most melancholy reflection which an old man can make, when he looks around him, and misses the companions of his youth, the associates of his active days, and exclaims in the natural language of Petrarch, Ed io pur vivo!-even in this to one of a good and pious mind, there is a certain elevation above the world, that sheds (so to speak) a beam of heavenly light upon the darkness around him."

* Burton-Lines prefixed to the Anatomy of Melancholy.

ON THE CHARACTER OF THE DARK AGES.

CICERO has observed that history amuses in whatever manner it be written. Historians, improving on the idea, seem to have considered amusement as its only purpose. Hence the annals of all nations are filled with the strangest and most improbable events; the gravest writers have not disdained to load their pages with narratives which belong more properly to the department of fiction. The legends of the saints which the patient and praiseworthy credulity of the Benedictines have brought together in so many volumes, hardly deviate more from the ordinary course of nature, than the more secular compositions which have been dignified with the name of history. These holy narratives less challenge our scepticism, as they are less tied down by the common rules of probability; they always treat of matters miraculous in their nature, which, as they profess to be at variance with all experience, are not fit subjects for the exercise of our reason. If we can once persuade ourselves of the special interference of Providence, a great miracle taxes our faith not more than a small one. He who can believe that St. Denys after his martyrdom picked up his head and put it under his arm, will not be startled by the distance he carried it. In these cases it has been wittily remarked, all the difficulty is in the first steps: a mile is as easily done as a yard.

This reasoning may satisfy us when we have to do with the adventures of holy men, but it is not equally convincing when we are engaged in the investigation of mere worldly passages. In the history of nations we do We are accustomed to see their

not look for miracles.