"Charm'd with the rude and awful character "Of these wild rocks aud mountains,-look around; "Let not a spot be lost ;-since SOLITUDE "Has built her temple here. These towering rocks, "Tells thee, that here, from passing year to year, "O'er all the prospect rude, a gentle MAID "(Form'd in kind Nature's best and happiest mood), "In all the sweet simplicity of heart, "Call'd this the sweetest spot that she had ever seen.” VII. When we have been annoyed by the defects of imbecility, the conceit of ignorance, the dulness of pedantry, the arrogance of unlettered pride, the offensive impertinence of a fool :-When we observe men, gifted with fine talents, more solicitous to gain a wide, than an honourable reputation; and eager to prostitute their integrity, by becoming panders to all the base passions of the rich:-When we are disgusted with the malice of man to man, and irritated, in beholding the baseness of woman to woman:-When, in our intercourse with the world, VOL. IV. L we perceive societies, whose folly is their pride, and whose ignorance is their satisfaction, forming conspiracies against taste, learning, and genius, and becoming, as it were, scavengers to the lowest dependants of malignity :-When among the high, the intermediate, or the abject orders of vulgarity, we observe men (whose information extends no farther, than to the refuted follies of their associates, and whose industry is exerted only in the propagation of their errors), when we observe men of this contemptible proportion actively employed, in a vain endeavour to reduce the consequence of others to the disgraceful standard of their own littleness,-let us turn to the vale, the valley, or the glen, and listen to their echoes! VIII. When you behold genius and virtue destitute of bread, and ignorance and vice, rolling in chariots, and honoured by the world :-When you see men, sliding into indecent age, without having derived one practical maxim from experience, and without enjoying one solid comfort from a retrospect of the past:-When you observe characters, to whom the world has long looked up for consistency of conduct, bartering an honest independence, for the meretricious splendour of a title :-When men, the greatest libels on whose lives and characters are the ironical mottoes on their escutcheons, catch a fugitive importance from a dignified employment:-When the rector, filling an honourable and a sacred station, and belonging to that highly respectable order, who are the ministers of that admirable master who said, "take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart;"-When the rector, offensively inflated with imaginary consequence, "plays such pranks before high heaven, that e'en the angels weep:"-When you see envy, inverting the order of nature, by weeping when others rejoice, and rejoicing, when others weep:-When you see folly smiling with rapture at the occasional weaknessess of genius, and the unconscious misconceptions of excellence:-When men, whose only qualifications arise from wealth, from influence, or from rank, usurp the chair of magistracy, and stretching or relaxing the laws, as best accords with passion or convenience, induce you to regret there is no college for magistrates:-In those moments of pity, disgust and mortification, my Lelius, descend to the margin of the river, which washes your domain; and, catching impressions from the emblem of eternity before you, resign your thoughts to meditation; and in the day-dreams of your fancy anticipate exemption from all recollection of the past, and increased enjoyment from a contemplation of the future! ODE. Written at a Fountain, near Cader-Idris, Merionethshire. I. THE winds are hush'd ;-the woods are still; And clouds around yon towering hill, In silent volumes roll : While o'er the vale, the moon serene Throws yellow on the living green ; The body and the soul. II. Deceitful calm!-Yon volumes soon, Will send the thunder's roar Gloom will succeed the glowing ray; The storm will range with giant sway; And lightnings will illume its way Along the billowy shore. III. "Tis thus in life from youth to age, Through manhood's weary pilgrimage, What flattering charms infest! We little think beneath a smile, How many a war, how many a wile, The rich, confiding, heart beguile, And rob it of its rest. IV. Then let me near this fountain lie; And let old time in silence fly, Stealing my youth away! Far from the riot of the mean, Oh! let me o'er this fountain lean; Till death has drawn the darksome screen, That hides eternal day. CHAPTER III. As conscience sooner or later, revenges herself upon those, who have had the folly to wound her; so does happiness revenge herself upon all those, who have presumed to confound her name and her qualities, with the name and the qualities of pleasure.-Pleasure and happiness, my Lelius, are as distinct from each other, as pedantry is from learning, and oratory from logic :-between all of which, though by the vulgar they are so often confounded, C there is as wide a difference as between earths and plants, insects and animals, Pleasure consists in the indulgence of the senses; happiness in the cultivation of the mind, and in the right direction of our passions. While the one soothes us into content, the other intoxicates, as the bird of paradise becomes intoxicated with the strong sent of the nutmeg; and, as was finely observed by Tertullian, stings us to death. Philosophy, teaching the knowledge of things, as language teaches the knowledge of words, like an argument ending in a just corollary, never fails to reward her followers with a commensurate measure of happiness. For as the Saracenic architects multiply and combine arches in every possible direction, so virtue and philosophy open a thousand inlets to happiness, multiply our capabilities, and teach us that useful and acknowledged truth, that as one philosopher is worth a thousand sophists, so one moment of real happiness is to be preferred to a thousand of illegitimate pleasure. He can never be esteemed an honest well-wisher of society, who would teach us to indulge in pleasure; who would take fear from the eyes of the base; or who would rob unmerited misfortune of its best and cheapest consolation. Who robs us of our purse, steals that, which is of little value;-who robs us of our reputation steals that, which may be again recovered; but he who weakens and undermines our faith in the justice and the love of heaven, takes from us all consolation for the past, all happiness for the present, and all hope for the future. Were |