per. The belief of overruling wisdom and goodness communicates the most heartfelt of all satisfactions; and the idea of prevailing order and happiness has an habitual effect in composing the discordant affections, similar to what we experience when, in some retired and tranquil scene, we enjoy the sweet serenity of a summer evening.

This tendency of the mind, on the one hand, to harmonize its affections, and, on the other, to suffer the passions to run into anarchy, according as it thinks well or ill of the order of the universe; or (which comes to the same thing) this influence of an enlightened religion on the temper, is alluded to more than once in that beautiful poem the Pleasures of Imagination. In the following passage of one of his odes, Akenside has employed, in confirmation of this doctrine, the same illustration to which I have just alluded; I mean the effect which particular aspects of the material universe have on the moral and social feelings.

"Thron'd in the sun's descending car,
What power unseen diffuseth far
This tenderness of mind!

What Genius smiles on yonder flood;
What God, in whispers from the wood,
Bids every thought be kind!

"O Thou, whate'er thine awful name,
Whose goodness our untoward frame
With social love constrains;
Thou, who by fair affection's ties
Giv'st us to double all our joys

And half disarm our pains;

"Let universal candor still,
Clear as yon heaven-reflecting rill,
Preserve my open mind;

Nor this, nor that man's crooked ways
One sordid doubt within me raise

To injure human kind.”

II.

Influence of the Imagination on Happiness.

One of the principal effects of a liberal education is to accustom us to withdraw our attention from the ob jects of our present perceptions, and to dwell at pleasure on the past, the absent, and the future. How much it must enlarge in this way the sphere of our enjoyment or suffering is obvious; for (not to mention the recollection of the past) all that part, of our happiness or misery, which arises from our hopes or our fears, derives its existence entirely from the power of Imagination.

It is not, however, from education alone that the differences among individuals in respect of this faculty seem to arise. Even among those who have enjoyed the same advantages of mental culture, we find some men in whom it never makes any considerable appearance,-men whose thoughts seem to be completely engrossed with the objects and events with which their senses are conversant, and on whose minds the impres-, sions produced by what is absent and future are so comparatively languid, that they seldom or never excite their passions or arrest their attention. In others, again, the coloring which imagination throws on the objects they conceive is so brilliant, that even the present impressions of sense are unable to stand the comparison; and the thoughts are perpetually wandering from this world of realities to fairy scenes of their own creation. In such men, the imagination is the principal source of their pleasurable or painful sensations, and their happiness or misery is in a great measure determined by the gay or melancholy cast, which this faculty has derived from original constitution or from acquired habits.

When the hopes or the fears which imagination inspires prevail over the present importunity of our sensual appetites, it is a proof of the superiority which the intellectual part of our character has acquired over the animal; and as the course of life which wisdom and virtue prescribe requires frequently a sacrifice of the

present to the future, a warm and vigorous imagination is sometimes of essential use, by exhibiting those lively prospects of solid and permanent happiness which may counteract the allurements of present pleasure. In those who are enslaved completely by their sensual appetites, imagination may indeed operate in anticipating future gratification, or it may blend itself with memory in the recollection of past enjoyment; but where this is the case, imagination is so far from answering its intended purpose, that it establishes an unnatural alliance between our intellectual powers and our animal desires; and extends the empire of the latter, by filling up the intervals of actual indulgence with habits of thought, more degrading and ruinous, if possible, to the rational part of our being, than the time which is employed in criminal gratification.

In such individuals, imagination is but a prolongation of sensual indulgences, and scarcely merits the appellation of an intellectual power. It brutifies the man, indeed, still more than he could possibly become, if it did not form a part of his constitution, and if he were merely a compound of reason and passion. To such men, it surely cannot be considered as a constituent of what deserves the name of happiness. On the contrary, by increasing the importunate cravings of desire beyond those limits which nature prescribes, it abridges that sphere of innocent gratification which the Beneficent Author of our Being intends us to enjoy.

In mentioning, however, the influence of imagination on happiness, what I had chiefly in view was the addition which is made to our enjoyments or sufferings, on the whole, by the predominance of hope or of fear in the habitual state of our minds. One man is continually led, by the complexion of his temper, to forebode evil to himself and to the world; while another, after a thousand disappointments, looks forward to the future with exultation, and feels his confidence in Providence unshaken. One principal cause of such differences is undoubtedly the natural constitution of the mind in point of fortitude. The weak and the timid are under continual alarm from the apprehension of evils which are barely possible, and

fancy "there is a lion in the way," when they are called on to discharge the common duties of life; although, in truth, (as one of our poets has remarked) the evils they apprehend, supposing them actually to happen, cannot exceed those they habitually suffer.

"Is there an evil worse than fear itself?
And what avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor with heedless cares

Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows:

Serene, and master of yourself, prepare

For what may come, and leave the rest to Heaven."*

It may be worth while here to remark, that what we properly call cowardice is entirely a disease of the imagination. It does not always imply an impatience under present suffering. On the contrary, it is frequently observed in men who submit quietly to the evils which they have actually experienced, and of which they have thus learned to measure the extent with accuracy. Nay, there are cases in which patience is the offspring of cowardice, the imagination magnifying future dangers to such a degree as to render present suffering comparatively insignificant.* Men of this description always judge it safer to "bear the ills they know, than fly to others that they know not of;" and of consequence, when under the pressure of pain and disease, scruple to employ those vigorous remedies, which, while they give them a chance for recovery, threaten them with a possibility of a more imminent danger. The brave, on the contrary, are not always patient under distress; and they sometimes perhaps, owe their bravery in part to this impatience. We may remark an apt illustration of this observation in the two sexes. The male is more courageous, but more impatient of suffering; the female more timid, but more resigned and serene under severe pain and affliction.

Abstracting from constitutional biasses, the two great

*Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health, Book iv. "Dolendi modus, timendi non item."

sources of a desponding imagination are superstition ana scepticism. Of the former, the unhappy victims are many and have been so in all ages of the world, although their number may be expected gradually to diminish in proportion to the progress and the diffusion of knowledge. All of us, however, have had an opportunity of witnessing enough of its effects in those remains which are still to be found in many parts of this country, of the old prejudices with respect to apparitions and spectres, to be able to form an idea of what mankind must have suffered in the ages of Gothic ignorance, when these weaknesses of the uninformed mind were skilfully made use of by an ambitious priesthood as an engine of ecclesiastical policy. Scepticism, too, when carried to an extreme, can scarcely fail to produce similar effects. As it encourages the notion, that all events are regulated by chance, if it does not alarm the mind with terror, it extinguishes at least every ray of hope; and such is the restless activity of the mind, that it may be questioned whether the agitation of fear be a source of more complete wretchedness than that listlessness which deprives us of all interest about futurity, and represents to us the present moment alone as ours. Nor is this all. A complete scepticism is so unnatural a state to the human understanding, that it was probably never realized in any one instance. Nay, I believe it will generally be found, that, in proportion to the violence of a man's disbelief on those important subjects which are essential to human happiness, the more extravagant is his credulity on other articles where the fashion of the times does not brand credulity as a weakness; for the mind must have something distinct from the objects of sense on which to repose itself; and those principles of our nature, on which religion is founded, if they are prevented from developing themselves under the direction of an enlightened reason, will infallibly disclose themselves in one way or another, in the character and the conduct.

Of this no stronger proof can be produced, than that the same period of the eighteenth century, and the same part of Europe, which was most distinguished by the