when its gratification should be presented by conscience, which kept a scrupulous charge of all his time, as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic consciousness of duty as to refuse himself time for surveying the magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred everything he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent: and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence. Unless the eternal happiness of mankind be an insignificant concern, and the passion to promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite George Whitefield, as a noble instance of this attribute of the decisive character, this intense necessity of action. The great cause which was so languid a thing in the hands of many of its advocates, assumed in his administrations an unmitigable urgency. Many of the Christian missionaries among the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and Schwartz, have displayed memorable examples of this dedication of their whole being to their office, this eternal abjuration of all the quiescent feelings. This would be the proper place for introducing (if I did not hesitate to introduce in any connection with merely human instances) the example of him who said, “I must be about my Father's business. My meat and drink is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” 321.-RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE. WORDSWORTH. THERE was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; All things that love the sun are out of doors: The sky rejoices in the morning's birth; —on the moors The hare is running races in her mirth; I was a traveller then upon the moor; The pleasant season did my heart employ : But, as it sometimes chanceth, from the might Of joy in minds that can no farther go, And fears, and fancies, thick upon me came; Dim sadness-and blind thought, I knew not, nor could name. I heard the skylark warbling in the sky; My whole life I have lived in pleasant thought, Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all? I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, We poets in our youth begin in gladness: But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness. Now, whether it were by peculiar grace, A leading from above, a something given, When I with these untoward thoughts had striven, I saw a man before me unawares : The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs. As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie, By what means it could thither come, and whence; Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf As if some dire constraint of pain, or rage A more than human weight upon his frame had cast. At length, himself unsettling, he the pond "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day." A gentle answer did the old man make, In courteous speech which forth he slowly drew: His words came feebly, from a feeble chest, But each in solemn order followed each, Choice word, and measured phrase; above the reach Such as grave livers do in Scotland use, Religious men, who give to God and man their dues. He told, that to these waters he had come From pond to pond he roamed, from moor to moor; The old man still stood talking by my side; My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills; Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills: And mighty poets in their misery dead. 66 How is it that you live, and what is it you do?" He with a smile did then his words repeat; And said, that, gathering leeches, far and wide The waters of the pool where they abide. 66 Once I could meet with them on every side; But they have dwindled long by slow decay; While he was talking thus, the lonely place, Wandering about alone and silently. |