MISCELLANEOUS. MY DEAD FRIENDS. Mr days among the dead are past : Where'er these casual eyes are cast, With them I take delight in weal, My cheeks have often been bedew'd My thoughts are with the dead; with them Their virtues love, their faults condemn, And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with a humble mind. My hopes are with the dead; anon Through all futurity. Yet leaving here a name, I trust, Southey. THE PLEASURES OF KNOWLEDGE. WELL and happily has that man conducted his understanding, who has learnt to derive from the exercise of it, regular occupation, and rational delight; who, after having overcome the first pain of application, and acquired a habit of looking inwardly upon his own mind, perceives that every day is multiplying the revelations, confirming the accuracy, and augmenting the number of his ideas; who feels that he is rising in the scale of intellectual beings, gathering new strength with every difficulty which he subdues, and enjoying to-day as his pleasure, that which yesterday he labored at as his toil. There are many consolations in the mind of such a man, which no common life can ever afford; and many enjoyments which it has not to give. It is not the mere cry of moralists, and the flourish of rhetoricians; but it is NOBLE to seek truth, and it is BEAUTIFUL to find it. It is the ancient feeling of the human heart— that knowledge is better than riches; and it is deeply and sacredly true. To mark the course of human passions as they have flowed on in the ages that are past; to see why nations have risen, and why they have fallen; to speak of heat, and light, and the winds; to know what man has discovered in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath; to hear the chemist unfold the marvellous properties that the Creator has locked up in a speck of earth; to be told that there are worlds so distant from our own, that the quickness of light, travelling from the world's creation, has never yet reached us; to wander in the creations of poetry and grow warm again, with that eloquence which swayed the democracies of the old world; to go up with great reasoners to the First Cause of all, and to perceive, in the midst of all this dissolution and decay, and cruel separation, that there is one thing unchangeable, indestructible, and everlasting; it is worth while in the days of our youth to strive hard for this great discipline; to pass sleepless nights for it, to give up to it laborious days; to spurn for it present pleasures; to endure for it afflicting poverty; to wade for it through darkness, and sorrow, and contempt, as the great spirits of the world have done in all ages and all times. I appeal to the experience of any man who is in the habit of exercising his mind vigorously and well, whether there is not a satisfaction in it, which tells him he has been acting up to one of the great objects of his existence? The end of nature has been answered: his faculties have done that which they were created to do, not languidly occupied upon trifles. not enervated by sensual gratification, but exercised in that toil which is so congenial to their nature, and so worthy of their strength. A life of knowledge is not often a life of injury and crime. Whom does such a man oppress? with whose happiness does he interfere? whom does his ambition destroy? and whom does his fraud deceive? In the pursuit of science he injures no man, and in the acquisition he does good to all. A man who dedicates his life to knowledge, becomes habituated to pleasure, which carries with it no reproach: and there is one security that he will never love that pleasure which is paid for by anguish of heart-his pleasures are all cheap, all dignified, and all innocent; and, as far as any human beings can expect permanence in this changing scene, he has secured a happiness which no malignity of fortune can ever take away, but which must cleave to him while he lives—ameliorating every good, and diminishing every evil of his existence. Sydney Smith. THE PROVINCE OF GENIUS. TASTE, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship*, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments, they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration. Is culture of this sort found exclusively among the higher ranks? We believe it proceeds less from without than within, in every rank. The charms of Nature, the majesty of Man, the infinite loveliness of Truth and Virtue, are not hidden from the eye of the poor; but from the eye of the vain, the corrupted, and self-seeking, be he poor or rich. In all ages, the humble minstrel, a mendicant, and lord of nothing but his harp and his own free soul, had intimations of those glories, while to the proud baron in his barbaric halls they were unknown. Such is our hypothesis † of the case. But how stands it with the facts? Are the fineness and truth of sense manifested by the artist found, in most instances, to be proportionate to his wealth and elevation of acquaintance? Are they found to have any perceptible relation either with the one or the other? We imagine not. Whose taste in painting, for instance, is truer or finer than Claude Lorraine's? And was not he a poor color-grinder; outwardly, the meanest of menials? *Connoisseurship, familiarity with works of art here, in a contemptuous sense. ment. often used, as Hypothesis, supposition, something assumed for the sake of argu Where, again, we might ask, lay Shakspeare's rent-roll; and what generous peer took him by the hand, and unfolded to him the "open secret" of the Universe; teaching him, that this was beautiful, and that not so? Was he not a peasant by birth, and by fortune little better; and was it not thought much, even in the height of his reputation, that Southampton* allowed him equal patronage with the zanies †, jugglers, and bearwards of the time? Yet compare his taste, even as it respects the negative side of things; for, in regard to the positive and far higher side, it admits no comparison with any other mortal's, - compare it, for instance, with the taste of Beaumont and Fletcher, his contemporaries, men of rank and education, and of fine genius like himself. Tried even by the nice, fastidious, and, in great part, false and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it with the two parties; with the gay, triumphant men of fashion, and the poor vagrant link-boy? Does the latter sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as the former do? For one line, for one word, which some Chesterfield § might wish blotted from the first, are there not, in the others, whole pages and scenes which, with palpitating heart, he would hurry into deepest night? This, too, observe, respects not their genius, but their culture; not their appropriation of beauties, but their rejection of deformities by supposition, the grand and peculiar result of high breeding! Surely, in such instances, even that humble supposition is ill borne out. - The truth of the matter seems to be, that, with the culture of a genuine poet, thinker, or other aspirant to fame, the influence of rank has no exclusive, or even special, concern. For men of action, for senators, public speakers, political writers, the case may be different; but * Southampton, i.e. the Earl. † Zanies, merry-andrews, buffoons. Bearwards, leaders of dancing-bears. § Chesterfield, who laid great stress on formal manners. |