we are baffled in our attempts to explain the will of God. Indeed, so hopeless does the task appear, that we have invented a term to express the just distribution of good and evil, that carries with it an implication, that what it denotes does not exist in actual experience. The expression so often used, Poetical Justice, might suggest a long train of reflections to a thinking mind. Were the eyes of men open to the providence of God, we should see that, in the career of every individual, poetical justice is done. The time may come, when some mighty genius,' profoundly versed in history and in the Bible, shall effect, for the study of the Almighty's dealings with man, what Bacon did for science; shall point out the proper mode of contemplating them, of reasoning upon them, of drawing conclusions from them, and shall reveal to the astonished world a system of such wonderful beneficence, wisdom, harmony, and perfection, that the order of the created universe shall seem but a far inferior counterpart. To such a mind will the sublime prayer of Milton be answered · What in me is dark Illumine; what is low, raise and support : And justify the ways of God to man." POETRY IN THE PRESENT AGE. The imaginative powers also seem to me to be inexhaustible. I am aware that it is a favorite doctrine of the present day, that the sources of poetry are diminishing. We live, it is said, in an age of realities, of utility, of common sense but not of poetry; the time for poetry was in the heroic ages of Greece, in the unknown antiquity of Italy, in the glorious days of chivalry. This opinion is undoubtedly erroneous; it arises from the common mistake of fancying that certain periods were poetical, because we live at too remote an age from them to be aware of the common-place realities of existence, which did in fact encumber the people of those times as much as they trouble us at present. No age is poetical to itself. Those occupations, pursuits, manners, customs, habits of life, which any state of society induces, are the realities of life to those who practise them. To a later age they appear poetical, but certainly not at the time when they are common. In that fine old poem, the Odyssey, we have a very beautiful description of the Princess Nausicaa and her companions returning from washing clothes on the banks of the river. This seems highly poetical, as it comes from the hands of the ancient bard. But how did it appear to the real actors in the scene? Certainly anything but poetical. It was their business, their duty, and do it they must, probably as often as once a week, just as in the present time. Sometimes, undoubtedly, they were disturbed in the operation by a rainy day; this put them out of temper, perhaps, which was not poetical, or the river was cold, and the young ladies in the days of Ulysses not being web-footed, (and it would have been very unpoetical if they had been,) took bad colds in the head; and this decidedly was not poetical. Then came other disasters, among which might be reckoned the picked-up dinner which king Alcinous was undoubtedly obliged to put up with, on washing-days. This position might be illustrated by numerous examples, but the time would fail. The principle I would teach is, that distance in time, like distance in space, "lends enchantment to the view." It conceals the rugged features of life, and spreads over them a misty and beautiful hue, like the blue of our distant hills, and as the far-off mountains and the clouds that skirt the horizon, can scarcely be distinguished at times, so life, viewed in the horizon of antiquity, appears to blend with the unreal and imaginary, the cloud-piles that rear themselves in the heaven of invention. To a future race the present times may offer no fewer sources of poetry than the heroic or chivalric ages do to us. Did the Trojan war, or the wanderings of Æneas afford a higher subject to the epic muse, than the career of Napoleon will do? Even now, the shades of poetry are closing upon his history; and the future poet will find a subject worthy of the powers of a Milton, in that colossal enterprise of the Man of Destiny, the attempted conquest of Russia. I doubt whether the history of the world affords an exploit, which, considered with regard to its intrinsic greatness and the immense consequences to which it led, is more truly sublime and heroic than the burning of Moscow, the mightiest holocaust that was ever offered up on the altar of Patriotism. DON QUIXOTE. The ludicrous effect of Don Quixote is produced by the contrasts which appear not merely between the conceits, fancies, and the great ruling monomania of Don Quixote, and the realities of life, but also between the real, unassumed traits of his character, such as we have observed them, and the circumstances of his outward existence in all respects. And in so framing his work, Cervantes appears to me to have displayed the highest order of wit, and to have achieved his greatest triumph. The idea of a crazy man fancying himself a knight-errant in the midst of the days of chivalry, mistaking taverns for castles, ordinary peasant girls for peerless ladies, wind-mills for giants, and sheep for soldiers; constantly acting under this strange infatuation, constantly rebutting by stubborn realities, yet never for a moment convinced of, or even suspecting the fallacy of his conceptions, and plunging deeper and deeper into the sea of absurdities which his disordered brain has created, is indeed a source of endless amusement and an inexhaustible display of hu mor and wit. But the genius of Cervantes perceived that a deeper source of wit was opened in the contrast between the moral and intellectual qualities of the knight, between his whole spiritual existence and his physical being; his age, appearance, and strength, and the whole array of his worldly circumLet us illustrate this idea by examples. stances. In the examination of his character, we have seen that he is a truly chivalrous person; his soul is filled with the lofty sentiments of romance; in addition to this, he is completely familiar with all the customs, requisitions, and magnificence of ideal chivalry. The real circumstances of his life are, that he is advanced beyond the meridian of life, he is grim and lantern-jawed, with a physiognomy rather hideous; not very strong; miserably arrayed in the fragments: of an ancient panoply; poorly armed, and worse mounted on a steed, whose name of Rozinante will stand forever for the image of a starved, brokendown hack; of scanty income, and in every possible way deprived of all the paraphernalia which confer dignity or splendor upon chivalry. The chivalrous sentiments which inspire him, are becoming to a young man in the bloom of life; indeed, he must be but a poor character, who never, in his early days, experienced any such dreams and aspirations; but they are made ludicrous by their utter inaptness to the age and respectability of Don Quixote. The passion of love, too, which has taken such hold of him, has nothing in it of the ridiculous, when it appears in the young and romantic heroes of ideal |