should you gain more friends, your affection for them may be less entire, less ardent, and less confiding. "There is a limit to all our enjoyments, and every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants; novelties cease to excite surprise. He who has sallied into the world, full of sunny anticipations, finds too soon how different the distant scene becomes when visited. The smooth place roughens as he approaches; the wild place becomes tame and barren; the fairy tints that beguiled him on, still fly to the distant hill, or gather upon the land he has left behind, and every part of the landscape appears greener than the spot he stands on."*

I

Sooner or later you will be obliged to take refuge in content; and, lightly as you may now esteem it, to be thankful for content. willingly admit, that I think a good deal of what you now experience, is occasioned by a somewhat sudden expansion of mind; by thoughts which lack expression; fancies, which as yet can find no occupation; feel* Washington Irving.

ings, which you do not yourself understand, and which you fear to have misunderstood by others. You cannot at present come in contact with intellect or sensibility, whether in books or persons, without feverish excitement poetry, fiction, narrative, tragedy, whatsoever you read, has a more than written existence; it has an influence, and a presence, tangible and abiding. Imaginary characters do not come like shadows, so depart;" you live with, and love them, far more than real ones; and the secret sigh of your heart is, "O for a world of such beings, to admire, imitate, and discourse with!" Now it may startle you to be told, that this is a very inferior enjoyment of intellect; that a much higher delight will be yours, when you shall have learned to value books in precise proportion as they elucidate correctly the heart and mind of your species; in other words, when you shall read and think, less to escape from mankind, than to be brought into closer contact with them, into more enlarged and kindly communion. Very few of the great imaginative writers are morbidly

disposed; they may overtop their brethren, in mind, but in heart, they maintain a friendly fellowship.* It is no mark of superiority, to lack interest in our fellowcreatures; and the mind which cannot cheerfully, and with full purpose, go from the world of thought and fancy to that of life and action, has yet to learn its fitting use, its true distinction. At your age I did not credit the possibility of such transfer; but I have since seen too many illustrious instances, to doubt, that the utmost refinement of taste, and the most enthusiastic love of literature, may subsist with a graceful and good-humoured attention to inferior, homely duties, employments, and ordinary associations. The ardent love of literature, though a healthy taste in itself, is not healthily exercised when it does not

* "Homer and Shakspeare, and others with Homeric and Shakspearean souls, so far from being unfit for the gross atmosphere of human nature, breathed in it with lungs of easiest play :-soared in it like eagles, intersected it like swallows, serened it like a calm, purified it like a storm, glittered in it like stars, shone over it like a sun, illuminated it like the light of morning, and darkened it like the fall of midnight."-ANONYMOUS.

refresh our spirits, stimulate us to action, and, by invigorating our minds, reconcile us to whatsoever may be painful in our lot. A cultivated mind, accompanied by a healthy sensibility, conscious that it knows of a region wherein it can always breathe "an ampler ether and diviner air," will not, on that account, be impatient of the grosser elements by which it may habitually be surrounded. It can afford to suffer, to be annoyed, to be entrenched upon. It bears an analogy to a religious spirit; and "is a noble and imperial bird, that, sometimes driven down by the storm, yet keeps its plumes expanded and its eye on heaven, till, on the first gleam of sunshine, it shakes its wet and weary wing, and, eagle-like, towers again to the sun."

What I have said of literature, applies equally to the love of nature; and, begging you to apply the passage yet more emphatically to the tendency of true religion, I will quote some lines from a poem that has few fellows.*

* Tintern Abbey.

"She can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings."

With all that I have said, my dear, I have not yet touched the root of the malady, or proposed any adequate remedy. I am not anxious, then, for the removal of your depression, or desirous that you should be happy, merely on account of your personal enjoyment; I desire it, mainly, because you cannot otherwise be useful; and your Christian profession, like a sword exposed to moisture, if it do not lose its edge, will certainly lose its polish. My dear love, on this ground you must arouse from a lethargy not less destructive to the due performance of duty, than actual sin-nay, little short of actual sin itself. What! would you have “a world that lieth in wickedness" a world of unalloyed felicity? Would you be a Chris