MELANCHOLY, and melancholy fancies, form, I grant, part and parcel of every reflective and poetical mind; and cheerfulness, I am further willing to grant, is at times the most difficult of duties ;-but I must also humbly submit, that a part ought not to be put for the whole, and that a difficult duty often yields the richest harvest of satisfaction. Life abounds, I will not say in happiness, so much as in materials for happiness; but then as these materials are at once common and common-place, a young, untamed, imaginative mind is prone to think melancholy a far finer thing. I would not ridicule such a mind's affecting sad fancies, because it is almost always done in the first instance with uncon

sciousness of the subtle and evil tendencies of the habit. I can hardly say the same of a mind brought to maturity, surrounded with opportunities of exertion, and aware of the stern and varied trials that press upon most of the human beings that surround us.

But to treat the subject in a literary sense, as you would prefer it treated; we must cast off the trammels of melancholy fancies : they spoil poetry-they do what is infinitely worse, they spoil the tone of character, and enervate the understanding. To connect, as necessarily inseparable, beauty and sorrow, love and death, mirth and melancholy, may give a momentary and superficial grace to our style of thought; but, independent of moral ill effects, it tends to prevent expansion of thought and vigor of imagination. Yes, the best poet will habitually sing "a holy and a cheerful note;" the highest philosopher will not limit himself to sarcastic portraitures of what we all see and suffer from-" man's disobedience and the fall;" he will dwell upon another fact that we are less willing to bear in mind-that if the ore of human nature requires to be cast from furnace to

furnace, a great Refiner is sitting by, intent to purify and prepare for glorious uses, the very treasure that we might often fancy destroyed. The highest philosopher will carefully enunciate, that discipline is not destruction ; that mournful facts and saddening truths are only part, and that an elementary part, of what we are called upon to believe and feel; that it is our wisdom to look through all these things, and cherish an unfaltering remembrance and undying trust, that God is every where and at all times occupied in educing good out of evil, the very evil we deplore. So let us journey on, "humbly yet undismayed;" and besides all richer benefits, our intellectual creations will become statelier, and stronger, and less unworthy of name and fame.

But to go a step further. Melancholy consists quite as much in pride as refinement; in the pride of despising trivial sources of enjoyment, as in the refinement which is keenly susceptible of trivial annoyances. A person striving to construct happiness out of daily life, strongly resembles one of the smaller tribe of birds constructing its nest.

The materials for this nest are in themselves mean and worthless-here a feather, there a straw yonder a spray of moss-and on that thorn a tuft of wool: we despise or overlook them, but the bird, wise and patient in the providential instinct of its nature, sees differently, and confounds by its actions both man and his reasoning. It collects the small, contemned materials, arranges them, and, when arranged, the feather, the straw, the moss, and the wool, having lost their separate insignificance, form part of a beautiful whole, of a tiny but perfect fabric. Just so let us not despise trifles—any trifle at least, by means of which an innocent gratification may either be imparted or received,—and we shall find an aggregate of pleasure. The kind look or word that occupies but a moment, may, by its influence on the spirits, gladden a whole day; five minutes' conversation with a stranger accidentally met, may embody some information that we were previously ignorant of, or suggest some valuable train of thought that might not otherwise have arisen.

A habit of rendering and of being pleased with the minor charities and courtesies of

life, which Milton calls "the thousand decencies" that flow from words and actions, has a vast influence upon happiness. Every graceful observance, or yet more graceful forbearance, may seem separately as unimportant as a grain of sand; but taken in the accumulation of a whole life, they resemble the body of "sand upon the sea-shore a barrier to the fury of an ocean. There is pride in despising to enjoy trifles when they lie in our path, and only ask us to pick them up :-there is folly too-for enrapturing pleasures come but seldom, and even then exhaust rather than strengthen the mind and there is even sin-for the little enjoyments despised are often especially prepared for us by God. There is pride-for man, regarded only in this world, is, with all his boasting, nothing better than a solemn trifle himself. There is folly-for he knows not how soon sickness or affliction may incapacitate him for taking pleasure in every thing, in what he terms great no less than in what he considers little. There is sin-for the things disregarded are often perfect, whilst those desired are more or less alloyed. A gratified ambition cannot