Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 386, December, 1847 - Various

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needs a planet to shape his course upon. Newton and Laplace need myriads of ages and thick-strewn celestial areas. One may say, a gravitating solar system is already prophesied in the nature of Newton's mind. Not less does the brain of Davy and Gay-Lussac, from childhood exploring always the affinities and repulsions of particles, anticipate the laws of organisation. Does not the eye of the human embryo predict the light? the ear of Handel predict the witchcraft of harmonic sound? Do not the constructive fingers of Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, and Arkwright, predict the fusible, hard, and temperable texture of metals, the properties of stone, water, and wood? the lovely attributes of the maiden child predict the refinements and decorations of civil society? Here, also, we are reminded of the action of man on man. A mind might ponder its thoughts for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day. Who knows himself before he has been thrilled with indignation at an outrage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or has shared the throb of thousands in a national exultation and alarm? No man can antedate his experience, or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw to-day the face of a person whom he shall see to-morrow for the first time."

      And the essay concludes by presenting its leading idea in this distorted and exaggerated shape: —

      "Thus, in all ways does the soul concentrate and reproduce its treasures for each pupil, each new-born man. He, too, shall pass through the whole cycle of experience. He shall collect into a focus the rays of nature. History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived. A man shall be the Temple of Fame. He shall walk as the poets have described that goddess, in a robe painted all over with wonderful events and experiences; – his own form and features by that exalted intelligence shall be that variegated vest. I shall find in him the Foreworld; in his childhood the age of gold; the apples of knowledge; the Argonautic expedition; the calling of Abraham; the building of the temple; the advent of Christ; dark ages; the revival of letters; the Reformation; the discovery of new lands, the opening of new sciences, and new regions in man. He shall be the priest of Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing of the morning stars, and all the recorded benefits of heaven and earth."

      We regret to say that instances of this painful obscurity, of this outrageous and fantastical style of writing, it would not be difficult to multiply, were it either necessary or desirable. We have quoted sufficient to justify even harsher terms of censure than we have chosen to deal in; sufficient to warn our readers who may be induced, from the favourable quotations we have made, and shall continue to make, to turn to the works of this author, that it is not all gold they will find there, that the sun does not always shine upon his page, that a great proportion of his writings may be little suited to their taste.

      That which forms the great and inextinguishable charm of those writings is the fine moral temper they display, the noble ardour, the high ethical tone they every where manifest and sustain, and especially that lofty independence of his intellect, that freedom of his reason which the man who aspires after true cultivation should watch over and preserve with the utmost jealousy. Addressing the Divinity students of Cambridge, U. S., he says, —

      "Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you will find, who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, saints and prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, 'I also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him; and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's…

      "Let us not aim at common degrees of merit. Can we not leave to such as love it the virtue that glitters for the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce the deep solitudes of absolute ability and worth? We easily come up to the standard of goodness in society. Society's praise can be cheaply secured, and almost all men are content with those easy merits; but the instant effect of conversing with God, will be to put them away. There are sublime merits; persons who are not actors, not, speakers, but influences; persons too great for fame, for display; who disdain eloquence; to whom all we call art and artist seems too nearly allied to show and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the universal. The orators, the poets, the commanders, encroach on us only, as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. Slight them by preoccupation of mind, – slight them, as you can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you have right, and that it is in lower places that they must shine. They also feel your right; for they, with you, are open to the influx of the all-knowing spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest.

      "In such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of rectitude: a bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes of those who love us shall impair our freedom; but we shall resist, for truth's sake, the freest flow of kindness, and appeal to sympathies far in advance. And, what is the highest form in which we know this beautiful element? – a certain solidity of merit that has nothing to do with opinion, and which is so essentially and manifestly virtue, that it is taken for granted that the right, the brave, the generous step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending it. You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause."

      Nothing but the necessity to husband our space prevents us from quoting other passages of the same noble strain.

      There is an Essay on Love which has highly pleased us, and from which we wish to make some extracts. To a man of genius the old subjects are always new. The romance and enthusiasm of the passion is here quite freshly and vividly portrayed, while the great moral end of that charming exaggeration which every lover makes of the beauty and excellence of his mistress, is finely pointed out. There is both poetry and philosophy in the essay – as our readers shall judge for themselves from the following extracts. We do not always mark the omissions we make for the sake of economy of space, nor always cite the passages in the order they appear in the essay.

      "What fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. The earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are nature's most winning pictures. It is the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls about the school-house door; – but to-day he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child arranging her satchel: he holds her books to help her, and instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him; and these two little neighbours that were so close just now, have learned to respect each other's personality."

      As is ever the case when men describe what is, or might be an exquisite happiness, there steals a melancholy over the description; and our author makes it a primary condition,

      "That we must leave a too close and lingering adherence to the actual, to facts, and study the sentiment as it appeared in hope, and not in history. Let any man go back to those delicious relations which make the beauty of his life, which have given him sincerest instruction and nourishment, he will shrink, and shrink. Alas! I know not why, but infinite compunctions imbitter in mature life all the remembrances of budding sentiment, and cover every beloved name. Every thing is beautiful seen from the point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, as seen from experience. It is strange how painful is the actual world, – the painful kingdom of time and space. There dwell care, canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing. But with names and persons and the partial interests of to-day and yesterday, is grief.

      "But be our experience

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