memory of sweet music heard in childhood -never shall the beaming eye, whose language was better understood than words, light up the secrets of our souls againnever shall the parental hand be laid upon our own with the earnestness of experience, and the warmth of love-never shall the innocent prattle of those cherub lips now sealed in death awaken us from our morning slumbers-never shall the counsel of that long tried friend guide us again through the mazy paths of life. We might have lived and perhaps we have, without their actual presence; seas might have rolled between us; and wide countries separated their home and ours: but to believe in their existence was enough-to think that they looked upon the same world with ourselves -that the same sun rose to them and to us -that we gazed upon the same moon--and that the same wind which breathed its spiritual intelligence into our ears, might in its wild and lawless wanderings, have sighed around their distant dwelling. But above all, that the time might come when we should yet meet to recognize the same features, though changed by time-the same voice though altered in its language-and the same love, though long estranged, yet never totally extinguished. We must now satisfy ourselves that this can never be; and why? not from any cause which the power and ingenuity of man can remedy, or the casuality of after events avert; but simply because the vital principle which never can be revived, is extinct, the functions of humanity are destroyed, and the friend of our bosom is no more. It is true that religion points to the ethereal essence existing in a happier sphere, directs the attention of the mourner to the undying soul, and urges on his hope to an eternal union; but we have earthly feelings too frequently usurping the place where religion ought to reign; and love that is "strong as death," turns away from the Heavenly Comforter, and will not be consoled. Love holds a faithful record of the past, from which half the interest, and half the endearment must now be struck out, rendering the future barren, waste, and void. Love keeps an inventory of its secret treasures, where it notes down things of which the higher faculties of the soul take no cognizance-the smiles-the tones of mutual happiness-the glowing cheek-the sunny hair-the gentle hand-the well known step-and all that fills up and makes perfect the evidence of long cherished affection; exchanged for what? For the motionless and marble stillness of death, and the cold, unnatural gloom of that deep sepulchre which conceals what even love itself has become willing to resign-for the sad return to the desolate home-the silent chamber-the absent voice-the window without its light-the familiar name unspoken-the relics unclaimed-the harp untouched-the task unfinished-the blank at the table unfilled up-the garden walks untrodden-the flowers untended-the favourite books closed up as with a seal-in short, the total rending away of that sweet chord, without which, the once harmonious strains of social intercourse are musical no more. The effect produced upon the mind by the contemplation of death, is of a character peculiarly refined and gentle. We necessarily forgive the dead, even though they may have been our enemies: and if our friends we remember their virtues alone., They have lost the power to offend again, and therefore their faults are forgotten. It is true, there are associations with the bodily part of death which scarcely come under the denomination of refined, but from these our nature shrinks; even the common Lurse performs her last sad office in silence, and delicacy shrouds in everlasting oblivion the mortal remains of the deceased. It is the task of the poet to record their noble actions -their benevolence-their patient suffering their magnanimity-their self-denial; and while he performs this sacred duty, his bosom burns with enthusiasm to imitate the virtues he extols. The loss of fortune is another cause of grief, not less severely felt for being of common occurrence. Those who have never tasted the real bitterness of poverty, tell us in the language of philosophy, that the loss of fortune is a very insufficient cause for the grief of a wise man; that our nature is not degraded when our bodies are clad in homely garments; and that the friends the persons rule of Scripture, by showing respect unto of men-the reproaches, covert and open, which always fall upon those whose success has not been equal to their endeavours; as if the affairs of this life were so regulated, that to succeed in obtaining money were the highest proof of merit-the gradual declension (owing to the taking away of props on every side when most needed) into a lower grade of society, where intellectual refinement is little valued, and difficult to be maintained-the signs of envious triumph exhibited by those who in our better days would have been our enemies if they had dared. Who can endure all these, and an endless variety of other causes of suffering incident to fallen fortune, and yet so fortify his soul by sage reasoning that it shall feel no anguish? No; the poet knows what is in nature and in man; and therefore he finds a fruitful theme of neverfailing interest in the fountain of his own feelings, which, through the medium of poetic language, is so conducted, as to mix, and blend, and harmonize with those of others. whose esteem is worthy of our regard, will follow us as willingly to the clay cottage, as to the "courts of kings." This might be all very true, did reason alone govern the world; but we have another law-the law of feeling, more potent in its influence upon the affairs of mankind; and in this law the poet is often much better instructed than the philosopher. The poet knows that to attempt to remove the pressure of the calamities of life, by reasoning, however plausibly, upon their transient or trifling nature, is not, in effect, to speak the language of common sense; because it does not adapt itself to the feelings of those to whom it is addressed, so as to render it available or even intelligible. As well might we tell the victim of raging fever, that it is absurd to thirst again, because he has but lately moistened his lips, as endeavour to persuade him who suffers from the loss of worldly wealth, to be comforted, because it is vain to grieve. The poet's sphere being one of feeling, he has within himself so quick and clear an apprehension of all the sources of human pain or pleasure that he sees and understands at once why the change of fortune, the depri- A well known cause of grief, and one favation of accustomed privileges and enjoy-miliar to every poetic mind, is loneliness. ments, and the gradual sinking to a lower rank in social life, should occasion the deepest sorrow and regret. Were reason the sole regulator of our passions and propensities, we should never grieve; because we are taught by the experience of every day, that good may arise out of what we have blindly called evil; and because we are assured upon the highest evidence, that our worldly affairs even when darkest and most perplexed, are under the government of a gracious and unerring Providence: but the experience of every day teaches us also, that these important truths have not their proper weight in human calculations. Who, for instance, can meet with equanimity the clamorous attacks of suspicious creditors, whose claims he knows he is unable to supply? Who can bear the mute appeals of those who have been dependent upon his bounty and protection, when he has no longer the power to offer either-the looks estranged of former friends; for friendship in the world is not what it is fabled to be in books, but will sometimes deviate from the In one sense it may be said that the poet is never alone; but let us ask how it is that he learns to make -"him friends of mountains; with the stars, Perhaps there never was a poet who had not first sought to find in his own species that real sympathy, for which he becomes afterwards satisfied to substitute the ideal. It is impossible but that the elevated and finely constituted mind should often find itself alone, and if morbid and too sensitive, as such minds generally are, it must be always so in the common haunts of human kind. The poet who can be satisfied with nothing less than entire communion and sympathy of soul, is alone in the crowded city, where, amidst the rush of thousands of busy feet not one is found to pause because he is near-alone in the garden's flowery paths, where there is no eye to look for beauty and delight in the same objects with his-alone beneath the starry canopy of heaven, where none will join his midnight rambles---alone at the altar, where his peculiar faith is liable to be contemned---alone in the season of grief---alone in the hour of joy---alone in all those ecstatic emotions which give the power of life and action to the highest faculties of our nature, raising it above the common level of ordinary existence--alone in those moments of weakness and dependence, when the soul is hungering after that intellectual sustenance which never yet was found in the selfish or sordid avocations of life, pining for the consolations of a higher sympathy than the world affords, and ready to lean upon the veriest reed for its support. To feel all this without the power either of communicating or receiving what is most intimately connected with the soul, is true loneliness; and therefore the poet, escaping from the contact of uncongenial minds, flies to his own peculiar home in the bosom of nature, where, if the intercourse he meets with be ideal, it is sufficient to satisfy a mind etherealized like his; especially as it differs from that of the world, in being such as will neither mock nor mar the harmony of his own breast. But this intercourse is not in reality ideal. The Author of our being has so constructed the world, animate and inanimate, that there are laws of sympathy and association unmarked by the obtuse perceptions of sensual beings, which connect the different, and to us apparently incongruous parts of the universe, so as to form an entire and perfect whole. We read of a solitary prisoner immured within the bare walls of a dungeon, who tamed a spider, and even loved it; because the principle of love was strong within him, and he had no other object for his affections. Love is but one of the many stimulants that urge us on to seek through the world for objects on which these affections can be lavished, and situations in which they may be indulged; and if deprived of the power of gratifying our tastes and wishes by change of scene or circumstance, imagination will do her utmost to transform what is repulsive in itself, into an object of tenderness, interest or admiration: for such are the bounds which connect our intellectual nature with the material world, that the mind must lay hold of something to grapple with, appropri ate, or destroy. It cannot exist alone and separate from association. As it is the nature of all grievances to awaken suggestions of their own remedy, so the poet, after deeply experiencing the grief arising from loneliness, learns to satisfy his soul in its pining after a spiritual communion with all that is pure, and lovely, and sublime, by an ideal converse with nature. Having found the objects of his search but seldom, or where they existed, but faintly revealed amongst the children of men, he returns with fresh ardour, and renewed desire to the solitude of the sequestered valley, the heights of the trackless mountain, or the echoing shores of the ever restless sea; not because he actually believes, what his muse sometimes fantastically describes, that "myriads of happy spirits walk the air unseen," delivering their earthly errand to his privileged and attentive ear; but because there exists in his bosom an insatiable love of what is sweet,and calm, and soothing, which he finds in the freshness and repose of nature-an intense enjoyment of what is elevated, and majestic, which crowns his labour in climbing to the mountain's brow-a deep sense of power, and grandeur, and magnificence, which leads him to the ocean's brink, to pour his soul forth in its native element-the true sublime. The last character under which we shall attempt to describe the poetical nature of grief, is that of pity-a sentiment so admirably adapted to the relief of the wants and sufferings of humanity, that we regard it as one of our greatest blessings; because we owe to pity half the kind offices of life, never feeling the pain it awakens in ourselves, without feeling also some laudable impulse, and seldom witnessing the signs of it in others, without hailing them as omens of good. Indeed so powerful is the influence of pity, that it is the first refuge of innocence-the last of guilt; and when artifice would win from feeling what it wants merit to obtain from discretion, it never fails to appeal to pity with an exaggerated history of suffering and distress. But for the gentle visitations of pity, the couch of suffering would be desolate indeed. Pain, and want, and weakness would be left to water the earth with tears, and reap in solitude the harvest of despair. The prisoner in his silent cell, would listen in vain for the step of his last earthly friend; and the reprobate beneath the world's dread stigma, involving in wretchedness and ruin, would find no faithful hand to lift the pall of public disgrace, and reclaim the lost one from a living death. But more than all, without pity, we should want the bright opening in the heavens through which the radiance of returning peace shines forth upon the tears of penitence-we should want the ark of shelter when the waters of the deluge were gathering around us—we should want the cloud by day, and the pilliar of fire by night to guide our wanderings through the wilderness. The grief arising from pity is the only disinterested grief we are capable of; and therefore it carries a balm along with it, which imparts something of enjoyment to the excitement it creates; but for its acuteness of sensation, we have the warrant of the deep workings of more violent passions, which pity has not unfrequently the power to overcome. History affords no stronger proof of this, than when Coriolanus yielded to the tears of his mother, and the matrons of Rome, what he had refused to the entreaties of his friends, and the claims of his country. But if pity, connected with the power of alleviating misery, is mingled with enjoyment, pity without this power is one of the most agonizing of our griefs. To live amongst the oppressed without being able to break their bonds-amongst the poor without the means of giving-to walk by the side of the feeble without a hand to help-to hear the cries of the innocent without a voice to speak of peace, are trials to the heart, and to the will, unparalleled in the register of grief. And it is this acuteness of sensation, connected with the unbounded influence of pity, and the circumstance of its being woven in with the chain of kindness, and love, and charity, by which human suffering is connected with human virtue, that constitutes the poetry of grief in its character of pity —a character so sacred, that we trace it not only through the links of human fellowship, binding together the dependent children of earth; but also through God's government, up to the source of all our mercies, where, separate from its mortal mixture of pain, pity performs its holy offices of mercy and forgiveness. THE POETRY OF WOMAN. AFTER what has already been said of love and grief, we feel that to treat at large upon the poetry of woman, must be in some measure to recapitulate what forms the substance of the two preceding chapters; because, from the peculiar nature and tendency of woman's character, love and grief may be said to constitute the chief elements of her existence. That she is preserved from the overwhelming influence of grief, so frequently recurring, by the reaction of her own buoyant and vivacious spirit, by the fertility of her imagination in multiplying means of happiness, and by her facility in adapting herself to place and time, and laying hold of every support which surrounding circumstances afford, she has solely to thank the Author of her life, who has so regulated the balance of human joys and sorrows, that none are necessarily entirely and irremediably wretched. On glancing superficially at the general aspect of society, all women, and all men who see and speak impartially, would pronounce the weaker sex to be doomed to more than an equal share of suffering; but happily for woman, her internal resources are such as to raise her at least to a level with man in the scale of happiness. Bodily weakness and liability to illness is one of the most obvious reasons why woman is looked upon as an object of compassion. Scarcely a day passes in which she has not some ache or pain that would drive a man melancholy, and yet how quietly she rests her throbbing temples; how cheerfully she converses with every one around her, thus beguiling her thoughts from her own sufferings; how patiently she resigns herself to the old accustomed chair, as if chained to the very hearth-stone; while the birds are warbling forth their welcome to returning spring, and she knows that the opening flowers are scenting the fresh gales that play around the garden where she may not tread, and that the sunny skies are lighting up the landscape with a beauty which she may not look upon-it is possible, which she never may behold again. Yet what is all this to woman? Her happiness is not in physical enjoyment, but in love and faith. Give her but the voice of kindness-the pure sweet natural music of the feminine soul, to soothe her daily anguish-to cheer her nightly vigil, and she will ask no more: tell her of the green hills, the verdant woods, and the silver streams, of the songs of the birds, and the frolic of the lambs, of nature's radiant beauty glowing beneath a cloudless sky, and of the universal gladness diffused through the animal creation-tell her all this, in which she has, personally, no participation, and she will be satisfied, nay, blest. In the natural delicacy of woman's constitution, however, we see only one of the slightest of the causes of suffering peculiar to her character and station in society; because her feelings are so entirely relative and dependent, that they can never be wholly, or even half absorbed by that which is confined to her own experience, without reference to that of others. There are unquestionably many exceptions to this rule, but the rule is the same notwithstanding; and I desire to be understood to speak not of women individually, but of the essential characteristics of woman as a genius. Amongst these characteristics, I am almost proud to name her personal disinterestedness, shown by the unhesitating promptness with which she devotes herself to watchfulness, labour, and suffering of almost every kind, for, or in lieu of others. In seasons of helplessness, misery, or degradation, who but woman comes forward to support, to console, and to reclaim? From the wearisome disquietudes of puling infancy, to the impatience and decrepitude of old age, it is woman alone that bears with all the trials and vexations which the infirmities of our nature draw down upon those around us. Through the monotony of ceaseless misery, it is woman alone that will listen to the daily murmurings of fruitless anxiety, and offer again the cup of consolation after it has been petulantly dashed at her feet. It is woman who withdraws not her sweet companionship from that society whose intercourse is in sighs and tears. What is it to her that the brilliance of wit is now extinguished, the favourite anecdotes untold, and silent all the flattering enconiums that flow from love and gratitude. It is enough for her that the lips now sealed by grief, the eye now dim with tears, and the heart now tortured with agony, are dear-dearer in their unutterable wo, than the choicest pleasures of the world, did they centre in herself alone. No; woman will not leave the idol of her worship because the multitude have turned away to bow before another shrine, because the wreaths have faded away from the altar, or because the symbols of religion are no more. She hears the popular outcry that her vows are offered to a false deity, but she will not believe, because her faith makes it true. A higher object of devotion is pointed out to her, but she clings to that which her imagination has invested, and still invests, with all the attributes of a celestial being; until at last it falls before her, a hopeless and irrecoverable ruin, and then, after vainly struggling to hide its degradation, she goes forth into the wilderness alone. For the poetry of her character, woman is chiefly indebted to her capability of feeling, extended beyond the possibility of calculation, by her naturally vivid imagination; yet she unquestionably possesses other mental faculties, by no means inconsiderable in the scale of moral and intelligent beings. Those who, depriving woman of her rightful title to intellectual capacity, would consign her wholly to the sphere of passion and affection; and those who, on the opposite side, are perpetually raving about her equality with man, and lamenting over the inferior station in society which she is doomed to fill, are equally prejudiced in their view of the subject, superficial in their reasoning upon it, and absurd in their conclusions. In her intellectual capacity, I am inclined to believe that woman is equal to man, but in her intellectual power she is greatly his inferior; because, from the succession of unavoidable circumstances which occur to interrupt the train of her thoughts, it is seldom that she is able to concentrate the forces of her mind, and to continue their operations upon one given point, so as to work out any of those splendid results, which ensue from the more |