nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government, (for she then had a government,) without inquiring what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract is to be classed among the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitatea madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, on the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and then heroically deliver the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance."* If we must bring down these general principles to bear on our agitated land, let us, at least, endeavor to be as calm as those philosophic minds from which they are supposed to have originated. * Reflections on French Revolution, THE PURITAN. No. 33. I love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm; I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm; And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose. Pierpont's Airs of Palestine. HEBREW POETRY. In the earliest ages of the world, poetry was a very serious employment. It was the first form in which the contemplative powers of man manifested themselves; and to it may be traced, as a germ, our history, our fiction, our philosophy, and our laws. Even the solemn attributes of the Deity, and the tremendous truths of religion, are supposed to have been first delivered to mankind, by the inspiration of the poet, through the melody of song. The reason for this peculiarity in the history of nations, must be sought for in the counsels by which God instructs his creatures. Men are slow in their movements; they are immersed in a material body, and distracted by its wants. In the earlier stages of society, life is but a struggle for subsistence; and it must be some glaring object, some powerful motive, which allures men over the bridge which separates "action from thought. Matter will attract any one's attention, even a child's, when it is first shown. But when we disrobe it of its form and color, and attempt, without its impressions, to lead the unpractised mind into the intellectual world, it must be done by new arts, to excite interest. The speaker must have deep feeling; and clothe that feeling in measured language. This is the universal history of the literary dawn; when the object ceases to arrest the eye, it must take a new embodiment, and charm the ear. The people, who can no longer look, must make a new use of their eyes-they must be forced to weep. But though mind is sluggish in its movements, and it takes all the art of the poet to rouse it to its first attention, it must not be supposed that, when the attention is once up, it acts with any feeble interest. It takes much, to make a savage pass the bounds from the world of matter to the world of intellectual forms; but when he is once there, the very indefiniteness of the objects, together with the newness of the scene, absorbs his whole soul; he feels an interest which he never felt before; he rises as to a new 3 VOL. II. creation, and surrenders himself to the guidance of the genius, under whose manuduction he was first led. It has often been inquired, why poetry and orations have lost so much of their interest; and why the best exertions of modern skill, never rise to that powerful despotism over the will, which, in ancient times, no man resisted or wished to resist. Surely the moderns have some advantages. Arts have been improved; knowledge has been increased; the passions have been analyzed; the fountains of the mind have been explored. Why should not equal genius with more materials, produce better success? The reason, however, is obvious. The power of a poet over his admirers, or of an orator over his audience, is to be estimated by a ratio between his genius and their sensibility. The percussion, and the object struck, must both be considered. In older times, the lack of knowledge, and the consequent want of refinement, was eminently favorable to increase the sensibility of the audience; every impression was fresh and new; every passion was incited by novelty, and prolonged, because the feelings of nature were unworn; every invention produced wonder; the rapture of the audience increased the inspiration of the speaker; there was a reciprocal influence; genius was warmed by its own effects; and the same powerful impulse which first forced the mind into the paradise which thought had made, gave sweetness to its flowers, and magnitude and beauty to its shades. Ingenuity, and invention, melody, and voice, and action, may still exist; but the sensibility which increased them is lost forever. our race. These remarks might be suggested by speculation, but they are abundantly supported by the history of Let us suppose the wandering story-teller and singer, whom, for the want of a more personal name, we call Homer, to be surrounded by a ring of barbarians, who, having no war on their hands, and their bellies full, require him to amuse them for an idle hour. He knows his audience; with all his superiority, he but just emerges above them; and indeed his very superiority consists in knowing how to act on such materials. He knows well that he must stir their passions, and draw their tears, or they will hear him with stupid indifference; indeed, the choice in such an audience, is between rapture and sleep. He begins with a prelude on the lyre ; Ητοι ὃ φορμίζων ἀνεβάλλετο καλὸν ἀέιδειν. . And thus fills their ears with unideal sounds. The wisdom of God seems to have made music as a kind of passage between sensuality and thinking. He then plunges into narrative; sings of wars; addresses the strongest propensities of the age; brings out (or rather, it breaks upon him) his moral instructions, as an accompaniment of the story; and thus forces his hearers to feel and think in the only way in which |