low wants and wishes, and that which is high, and pure, and holy. Happiness therefore→→→→ happiness without alloy, can never be a suitable theme for the muse, until we enter upon a state of existence where it shall more frequently be our experience. But melancholy, towards which all our feelings have some tendency, either immediate or remote, will add a charm to the language of poetry, so long as it is understood and felt by all. Descriptions of life, without its cares and sorrows, would appear to us little less wearisome and unnatural than landscapes without shadow; but those which are varied by the sombre colouring borrowed by experience from the hand of grief, exhibit the principles of harmony, and the essential characteristics of truth.

It has been wisely ordered by the Author of our being, that we should be stimulated to action by certain wishes and wants arising within ourselves. Had man, constituted as he now is, been placed in a situation of perfect enjoyment, it must necessarily have been one of supineness and sloth, in which his mental powers would have experienced no exercise, and consequently no improvement. Thus when we look with regret upon the daily wants of

mankind, and feel disposed to regard them as a defect in his nature, or an error in his morals, we do not reflect that they are parts of a powerful machine, so constructed and designed as to awaken and stimulate man's highest capabilities, yet so liable to derangement, misapplication, and abuse, as to be frequently converted by his ignorance, or want of care, into the engine of his own destruction. It was the want of some medium of communication which first led to the use of certain sounds as signs of our ideas, and it was the same want which produced such an arrangement of these sounds as to constitute a copious language; it was the want of some sweet influence to sooth the asperities of pain, and labour, and fatigue, which prompted the cultivation of music; it was the want of some visible and substantial personification of their own ideas of beauty and grandeur, which operated upon the genius of the first artists, and produced those massive but sublime attempts at sculpture which arose among the Egyptians, and were afterwards improved upon by the more refined inhabitants of ancient Greece; and it was the want of a higher tone of language, suited to the most elevated conceptions of the human mind, which

first diffused the refreshing stream of poetry over the world, gave the charm of melody to the hymns of Israel's minstrel king, inspired the father of ancient verse with those heroic strains which still delight the world, found a language and a voice for the impassioned soul of Sappho, fired the genius of Euripides, and which still continues, though often unknown and unacknowledged, to tune to harmony the poet's secret thoughts, operating upon the springs of sympathy and love, like the airs that touch unseen the chords of the Æolian harp.

But above all, it is under the influence of sorrow that this want is felt. Joy is sufficient of itself; the soul receives it, and is satisfied. But sorrow is burdensome, and the soul would gladly throw it off; and because it cannot give what no one is willing to receive, would cast it upon the winds, or diffuse it through creation's space. The mind that is under the influence of melancholy, knows no rest. It is wearied with an incessant craving for something beyond itself. It seeks for sympathy, but never finds enough. It is dissatisfied with present things, and because the beings around it are too gross or too familiar to offer that refined communion for which it ever pines,

it

pours forth in poetic strains the transcript of its own sorrows, trusting that the world contains other sufferers at least half as wretched as itself, who will read, with a pity too distant to offend, descriptions of a fate more lamentable than their own.

There needs no greater proof that melancholy is poetical, than the effect it produces upon imagination, converting everything into its own bitter food. Under the influence of melancholy, the voice of friendship often sounds reproachful, and always unfeeling when it speaks the truth; the looks of gladness worn by others, are proofs of their want of consideration for ourselves; acts of kindness are instances of pity, and pity, under such circumstances, always appears accompanied with contempt. Love is apt to attack those who are the victims of melancholy, but it is always in some forbidden shape; and religion, which is, or ought to be, the sovereign balm for all mental maladies, appears to them like a sacred enclosure drawn around a chosen few, from which they are eternally shut out. If they read the Bible, they turn to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, or the Book of Job; and seated on a cushion of ease, in the

full enjoyment of health, and wealth, and luxury of every kind, they believe themselves to be as severely tried, as miserable, and perhaps as patient, as the heroic sufferer. If they go forth into the fields, the flowers either look wan and sickly, or mock them with their gorgeous hues; the trees spread around a gloomy shade; the streams murmur, as every thing on earth has a right to do; the birds and the insects that flutter in the sunshine, are poor deluded victims of mortality, sporting away their short-lived joy; the clouds which vary the aspect of the landscape, and the calm blue heavens, are emblematical of the "palpable obscure" in which their own fate is involved; and if the sun shines forth in his glory, it is to remind them that no sun will ever more rise to disperse the darkness of their souls. Instead of indulging in those wide and liberal views which embrace the perfection and beauty of the universe, they fix their attention upon objects single and minute, choosing out such as may most easily be connected with gloomy associations. In the gorgeous hues of the autumnal foliage, the eye of melancholy can distinguish nothing but the faded leaves just separated from the bough, and flickering down