'Thou in thy bower, And I in my cell, Though forms are apart, 'Proud sons of Fashion Now murmur to thee All treason to me; On that glance divine; Are their words like mine? 'Heed not the wooer With soft vows exprest; Thou knowst in whose breast. New-York, January, 1836. "To him thou hast spoken "The stars faintly glimmer 'Hush my wild numbers! B. D. W. A PHILOSOPHER. BY J. G. PERCIVAL. In I HAD travelled several hours in a stage, on a cold winter's day, with an individual who had observed an entire silence. Wrapped in his cloak, nothing was visible but a large eye, and a high forehead. the evening, as we stopped for the night, I had an opportunity of observing him more definitely. With a person rather tall and slender, were combined thin and attenuated features, and an expression at once sensitive, thoughtful, and benevolent. The whole, however, seemed to be shrouded by an abiding feeling of melancholy and regret; not that which arises from mere personal disappointment or unhappiness, but rather the sadness of a philosopher, who has formed an ideal scheme of general well-being, and has at last found, by too convincing experience, that, in this bad world, it is utterly impracticable. During the evening, he observed the same silence, and seemed carefully to avoid engaging in the different subjects of conversation, that were just started and then abandoned. If his tongue was silent, his eye was not inactive. With deep and rapid glances, he ran over the individuals before him, and seemed instantly to read their characters. All the other members of the party had retired, and left us alone at a very comfortable fire-side. Still he did not address me. Unwilling to part with one who seemed so peculiar, I ventured to remark, that 'the weather was unusually severe for the season.' Yes, but it will be succeeded by weather as unusually mild. The principle of compensation is at work with our climate. Å turn of very cold weather is quite sure to be followed by the reverse. The long steady winters of old times are at an end.' And what cause would you assign for the change?' Our business, as men of science, is not first with causes. We must observe and collect facts, compare and arrange them, and then perhaps we may discover causes. If we do not, a body of facts, methodically arranged, is a science, and as such, capable of the most useful application. But our philosophers and men of science, so called, are continually hastening back to first causes. They mistake hypotheses for conclusions, and so involve themselves, and all who follow their dicta, in a false light, which is but darkness.' 'But these remarks rather apply to physical investigations than to moral.' Equally to all. Impatience of prolonged research, incapacity for far extended views, and an eagerness to arrive at some final conclusion, however hasty or insufficient, are the prevailing characteristics of minds that pretend to investigate. Men will act, and act according to their immediate views; and hence the true philosopher, who extends his plans through all space and time, is met at every turn by obstacles, small indeed in themselves, but all combined, like the cords of the Lilliputians, completely fettering his purposes. It is in vain to do more than palliate, and that slightly, the evils of society.' But would you, therefore, because you cannot eradicate the disease, refuse all assistance?': Certainly not. The great principle of existence is action; and this action, in sentient creatures, will always be directed to the attainment of well-being-with the unreflecting or the unprincipled, to the momentary and the selfish — with more enlarged, more considerate, and better balanced natures, to the common and the enduring. But act we must, or we shall be annihilated among the forces that act around and against us. And here is one great source of the accumulation of evil. Wrong action has brought evil to a head, and induced an overwhelming calamity. A pause, reflection, combination, and then renewed action, in a truer and better direction, would not only prevent the recurrence of calamity, but tend to a positive accumulation of good; yet the necessity of immediate action urges on to commence at once the old career in the old way, and we arrive at the point before gained, or far transcend it, and so prepare for a more fatal catastrophe.' 'But does not all this tend to increased activity? Is not the very necessity of remedying evil in itself a good?' If we were made only to overcome difficulties and obstacles by exertion, then a life of storms and disasters, might be the most desirable, as most conducive to activity. But we are formed with natures, at least some of us are so formed, which can use and enjoy positive goodintellectual and moral good; and how painful, to one imbued with the feeling of such good, to see human effort all wasted in a region below it.' But are all capable of realizing or enjoying such good?' 'Perhaps not, certainly not all equally; but the attachment of the great body to other good, and their perverted activity in pursuit of it, thwart and render almost inefficient the efforts of higher natures to secure the good they desire. Still the mind is a kingdom to itself, and it is better to stand aloof on the cold and bare rocks, in the sunshine, than to descend to the plain, and mingle in the smoke and dust of the rushing conflict, though the prize may be an empire.' Is it not better to follow in the train, and extend relief to the sufferers left behind in the strife?' - Here we come again to the hopeless task of palliating evil - blowing with a fan against the blast of a whirlwind. We may so procure to ourselves the highest moral good, in the consciousness of having done our best to relieve the sufferings of others; but when we think how little good we have imparted how easily and instantaneously the immense flood of evil may annihilate it the light that dawned in our hearts is darkened, and we sink beneath the feeling of our inefficiency. Not in the train, should be the place of him who aims at the accomplishment of great and real good, but in the van, as a herald of peace between the contending forces. Evil must be prevented in its causes, not palliated in its effects.' Here he raised himself up, with the air of an inspired prophet, and while his eye glowed, and his features were as if radiant with inward brightness, he gave utterance, in a voice of fittest intonation, to his pure and high emotions. True, we were born to act, but still more were we born to think and feel. Only from the bright and holy fountain of certain thought and elevated feeling, flows the stream of just and beneficent action. Flowing ever the same, from a perennial spring, it diffuses life and beauty along its borders. But action, proceeding from other source, is like the wasting flood that bursts in the midnight darkness, and blindly sweeps away the wrecks of the valley, to accumulate them in the unwholesome marsh. We have a higher nature within us, governed by its own peculiar laws, fixed and immutable as the laws that control the spheres. If these laws are not counteracted by the lower principles of our being, if in harmonious accordance all our better powers move on in their proper orbit, then there results inward calm and strength, outward dignity and power. The ruling principles here prevail Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. And although these have each its peculiar character, and are directed to peculiar corresponding points in our own being, yet they proceed from one common source - emphatically the One. Hence they are throughout harmonious, and no mind is brought to a due celestial temper, in which they are not equally combined and active. As well might wings rise without dome, or dome without wings, to form a complete edifice, as a mind exist in perfect panoply, without the sense of good, or the feeling of beauty; and however intense either might be, without that full perception of the true, that embraces and thus forms a whole, action would only deviate into error. But I speak according to the manner of men, for the three are in fact immutable and inseparable. If not equally combined into a symmetric whole, then a counterfeit has assumed their sacred names, and under the garb of sanctity, an impostor walks forth. Are these merely abstract words, or living, applicable realities? Has not the world been long deceived by these counterfeits, which, under the sacred names of Philosophy, Religion, and Poetry, have claimed the admiration, or controlled the conduct, of society, and that to extremest evil, rejecting each the other, as false or inane? But the Philosophy that scouts the good, or despises the fair, is not the herald of the true: it is but a charlatan, that retails the poor dogmas of a temporary expediency, not the sage that propounds laws of eternal duration. Nor is the religion that discards the light of Reason, the holy light that irradiates the divine temple, as goodness is the altar-fire that warms it, and beauty the incense clouds that embellish it, or that rejects the gentle and lovely, as too soft for its sternness is such Religion other than a hypocrite that under a solemn mask conceals darkness and deformity. Poetry, in which beauty is not wedded to the good and the true, is but a dangerous and deceitful syren. In the stillness of the night, listen not to its enticing but effeminate strains, as they float over smooth, silvery waters, or through flowery thickets, or groves of gloom! Look up to the open sky, and the unchanging stars, and through them to the one great light that shines in the zenith of all, and you will hear a music, sweeter even than that of the spheres, as evolving from the Power that rules the spheres, proclaiming in tones of fullest and completest harmony, the one great principle of our intellectual and moral existence: Philosophy, Religion and Poetry sit enthroned, as a Spiritual Trinity, in the shrine of man's highest nature. The perfect vision of all-embracing Truth, the vital feeling of all-blessing Good, and the living sense of all-gracing Beauty, they form, united, the Divinity of Pure Reason.' Suddenly he retired, and left me uncertain whether he had read Richter, or been struck by lunar influence. 'MY GOD DIRECTS THE STORM' THE Spirit of the Tempest shook Above the sea, and hollow winds Uprose the mountain billows high, A lonely bark, by bounding seas Crash echoed crash!- the quivering spars And left the bark a shattered wreck, The sturdy seamen struggled hard And keep the ship's prow to the surge, And when the plunging ruin spurned They flew to drown their gloomy fears Upon the raging ocean then, Helpless was left the bark Upon the deck, alone, there stood, No word the warrior spake, but he A poniard bright, and placed its point She started not, nor shrieked in dread, But stood astonished, and surveyed 'Now why,' he asked, 'dost thou not start? With sweet composure she replied, Dost wonder, then, that I am calm, J. N. M. ASTROLOGY. THERE exists in every bosom a natural thirst for a knowledge of the future. We appear to be placed just in that grade of creation, where, though excluded from the attribute of prescience, we still burn with its desire. The Fortune-teller, the Gipsy, the Priest, and the Oracle, are all instances of the strength of this feeling a strength so predominant, that the mind has too often delighted in giving credence to that which sprung only from the aspirations of the heart. Man has sought every where for the sybil leaves of the future - in the dark recesses of the cave-the whispering of the wind, through the foliage of the oakthe frantic words of an excited woman - the still quivering heart of the animal, and in the portentous phenomena of the skies. Of all the systems of Vaticination, Judicial Astrology was the most flattering to vanity, most fascinating to intelligence, and most beautiful in its origin. It possessed but few attractions for the vulgar. A shrivelled, superannuated old woman peering into a crystal-the augur, watching omens and prodigies with solemn gravity-the Haruspex consulting the entrails of the victim were oracles sufficient for their taste and credulity. But the stars became the arbiters of fate to those with souls which rose above the ordinary associations of life. which loved to turn to thepoetry of heaven,' and 'claim kindred with it' - which felt that 'Os homini sublime dedit, cœlum que tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.' To such, the hope that those distant orbs presided over their destiny, became a strong and confirmed reality, flattered by an apparent sisterhood with science, and strengthened by the spirit of enthusiasm. But the astrologer, beside these qualities of feeling and intelligence, must also have possessed both the will and the power of devoting himself to deep seclusion, and severe application. A course of long, assiduous, and untiring study, was the only method of acquiring a knowledge of the history of the earth and the heavens. Days spent in retirement, and nights in sleepless vigils, afforded even too brief a period for gathering the lore of centuries, which he must master before his eye could clearly discern the future. He must frown upon the allurements of the world, surrender its social pleasures, and hie away to his lone tower, and there commune with the sages of past ages, and the celestial bodies whose motions and influences they recorded. In time, the face of man became strange. Solitude grew sweet, for there he was in companionship with the patriarchs of his science, or with the sublimest works of God. When fatigued, the music of the spheres solaced him; when desponding, Hope pointed to the splendid prize accessible only to unwearied industry; and when successful, he had the proud consciousness of possessing the key of fate. To him, the heavens assumed a new appearance, and were arrayed in more lovely apparel: the firmament became an arch, gemmed with the prophets of the world, and each star was a 'Pharos hung in air' - a beacon light of the future. Such were the life and character of the Astrologer. When we |