and the lacerating brutality of bull-baiting, and all such schools and scenes of cowardly and savage ferocity, must be truly worthy of support. And this wholesomely destructive power has long been ceded to the effects of a liberal education. Let me speak next of the pleasurable advantages of the understanding. In the savage state, the intellect of man is asleep. He enjoys a negative kind of happiness, that would bring desolation to the civilized heart. The savage is a morose and sullen being, sensitive of little pain, and less pleasure; and heavily his existence rolls on. But from the instant that a man feels a desire to cultivate his understanding, such new, and ardent, and honourable affections arise, as add wings to time. He lives in the society of all the great, and learned, and pious, of by-gone ages. He loiters in the countries that please him best. He is at the siege of Troy, or the destruction of Carthage. He marks the decline and fall of Rome, and the discovery of America. He accompanies the king in his triumph, or the all-conquering martyr at the stake. His researches in Palestine confirm the history and manners of the good and bad, recorded in his Bible. Sitting by his own fire-side, he may travel with Clarke and Humboldt, or stay at home with Scott and Wordsworth; so richly does the cultivation of the understanding furnish materials for the imagination. And a further and most important end of such cultivation is the attaining of truth. Is it not something for a man to feel that he is not wholly in the power of others, and that even when he feels a thing to be true he cannot intelligibly prove it so? And there are two things in which the cultivated exercise of the understanding is pre-eminently useful-politics and religion. A man is called on to vote at an election, and since the elected make the laws, it is a most important privilege; for he is voting for the government of himself. And as regards religion, the cultivation of the understanding is highly important. For every command of Scripture presupposes in the human mind a natural power of distinction and direction. If we are told to obey our parents or honour our king, it is not a blind obedience, or a servile honour that is required. Otherwise, if a parent or a king told us to go and hang or drown ourselves, we ought to do it. Our Saviour generally appealed to the reasoning faculties of his hearers. And St. Paul's chief devotion was subservient to the direction of the understanding; although such extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were granted to him, as no man seems ever to possess now. But the uneducated man is the prey of the lowest ranter of sacred truths; and often in the midst of sin, and with an unsettled heart, has the strongest assurance of salvation. Some have carried things so far as to assert their entire freedom from sin and its attacks; and God seems to have punished multitudes for their presumption, by allowing them to be so openly and grossly ensnared, as to render their assumed notions of established sanctity a proverb and a by-word among the people who witnessed it. Many again run wild, through the instrumentality of ignorant but plausible preachers, on the subject of the influence of the Holy Spirit, and when their puffed-up expectations fail, they become in a worse state than John's disciples, for they utterly disbelieve in the power of the Holy Ghost at all. The exercise of the understanding then is as important in regulating the effects of the reception of the Gospel, as in leading to its mere reception. And it further makes a man not dependent entirely on the doctrines delivered by the local preacher in church or chapel, but it leads him to converse in books with the noblest minds of piety and philosophy. Unfettered by the prejudices or attachments of the passing time, he sees the recorded opinions of the best of sages in all ages. Witchcraft he smiles at, but the influence of the Evil one on the heart he prepares to resist: and he does so under the most solid promises of triumph and comfort. He travels on his pilgrimage through this world, with a full confidence that he can never get beyond the benevolence and mercy of the infinite mind. His prayer out of a pure heart is addressed to the Almighty's attributes of power, justice, and clemency. A right understanding shows him his own weakness and God's power, his own rebellion and God's mercy, and he flies to the means of grace in becoming confidence of a victorious result. From the understanding we naturally proceed to treat of the imagination. It is a false and crabbed philosophy which says, that reason and imagination cannot exist together. In my humble opinion, imagination, well directed, is the brilliancy of mind. It certainly too is powerful in enlarging the horrors of the guilty conscience, or the distempered brain. And when not guided by reason it leads its victim fatally astray. Young Boyd, an enthusiastic Irishman, who was entrapped on the coast of Spain, by the murderer Moreno, is a recent and strong instance of its irrational agency. Sir Walter Scott must have been under false impressions when he wrote that line— "For love is heaven, and heaven is love," if we compare the word "love" with its meaning in the context. Moore and Byron have written ardently and beautifully for the Evil one, but their works will stand no chance with posterity, when compared with Wordsworth and Crabbe. And, oh! how ably have the novelists aided the cause of the seducer of innocence. I believe that the hearts betrayed into crime and misery, through the enchantment of novel reading, no man can number. And twenty years ago they were doing more mischief than they are now: for where works of decided utility and mental improvement have not taken their place, such novels as Tremaine, Blue Stocking Hall, Private Life, &c. have. There is an old one too called "The Fool of Quality," edited by John Wesley, which is of a superior kind. In what false colours does a faulty imagination paint the glories of war. It treats it not as a matter of dire necessity, but longs for it through choice. It forgets the fatherless and the widow, and with its heroic song, its uniform of lace, and pride connected with bearing arms, breathes only of savage distincttion. "From whence come wars and fightings among you"? asks the apostle: "Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members"? The lust of the flesh, the lust of money, the lust VOL. I-June, 1835. CCC 1 of rank, all these serve us not only in the paths of glory that lead to the grave, but adown the broad road that leadeth to destruction. And the hero imagines that he, like the follower of Mahomet, will be rewarded for his military courage, as though he had been foremost in the ranks of mercy, peace, meekness, poorness of spirit, and pureness of heart. So difficult is it to persuade the sanguine and vivid imagination, when wrongly directed, that its hope will ever be cut off, or that the necessity of the sternest order of self-denial can exist, consistently with the seemingly inseparable emotions planted by nature in our breasts: though St. Paul in the 8th chap. of Romans, gives us very strong assurances on this subject. Persons who are thus led astray are those who have never studied, for the formation of character, works of a moral or humane tendency, much less the doctrines that are characteristic of the peculiar ethics of Christianity. But imagination, under due cultivation, is a noble gift to man. It irradiates the future, and charms the present time. I see our Saviour, through its aid, elevating the hopes and prospects of his disciples: "In my father's house are many mansions," and "I go to prepare a place for you," must have filled them with transports, and bade them think lightly of earthly anxieties and toils. Imagination often clothes barrenness itself with enjoyment. The prisoner in his cell, the seaboy on the mast, the soldier on the march, all are beguiled by its efforts or delusions; all picture to themselves their homes, their parents, or their children. The remembrance of our native land, or "That dear schoolboy spot We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot"— fills the imagination with images, that awfully, yet tenderly arouse our best affections. If a man did not love some places, some things, and some persons more than others, he would have little pain, and little enjoyment. Our pleasures are heightened by interruptions of their course. I remember reading of an officer in India,* who was struck by the excessive attachment of the men of his regiment to their native home. That home was Lochabar. So great was the effect produced in them, that he was compelled to order the pipers of the regiment not to play a certain mournful tune, which was a great favourite, the burden of the words being that they would never again see Lochabar. He ordered that the bag-pipes should strike up merrily. In course of time his order had its expected effect; and the men regained their usual spirits. But, said the officer, if ever I live to return to Great Britain, I will most assuredly go and see this Lochabar, for a really captivating place it must be. The officer in course of years returned; he went to Scotland; he was given minute directions, almost on the spot, as to the situation of Lochabar. He sallied forth, searched diligently, but could not find it. He returned to his inn, and obtained a guide. The guide conducted him a short way, and said suddenly, "here, Sir, is Lochabar." "Where?" he cried, and the guide pointed to several mud cabins on a bleak moor surrounded by mountains. The officer had passed these very cabins repeatedly, * I think the anecdote is mentioned in "Stewart's Highlanders." and not until fully convinced by a friend, could he believe that it was these very cabins, and not a handsome town, that had so deeply affected the memories of his soldiers. Some would tell this anecdote as illustrative of the power of music, but it is music not creating, but exciting the pre-occupied imagination. The Scotch are an educated and a moral people, and here was association, however humble, of a highly moral and educated kind. They preferred the scene of their innocent and earlier recollections, connected with the foggy atmosphere and poverty of their native country, to all the sensual delights, and more gorgeous sights of the shining east. Perhaps too, they could each have told a tale of tender love, such love as the sensual British sailor knows no more of, than as connected with debasing remembrances of the Portsmouth prostitute. The imagination of man is so fruitful in its creation, so absorbing in its influence, is fed so mainly by the sense of sight, and ruminates so powerfully on objects removed from the sight, it has so extended a world of its own, besides what the wide circle of nature affords, that there is the greater cause for the cultivation of the understanding properly to direct and control it. Indeed, in order to taste the pleasures and not the horrors of imagination, it is absolutely necessary that reason should be much exercised. Shakspeare, we know, says through Hippolita, "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet And he himself certainly deals in personifications that only can exist in the realms of fancy, and in no one of his plays more than in this very Midsummer Night's Dream. I certainly prefer the imaginary beings, that represent our passions and appetites, of Spencer. This creative faculty, in its perversion, is as able to invent torments, as in its more beneficial excursions to produce delights: and poets perhaps too often seize on the weak and superstitious notions of the mind. But yet poetry without deriving very much vigour from imagination would be insipid indeed: nor can it be relished but by the aid of the imaginative faculty. If imagination makes a poet, it makes also the reader of the poet. Stories, Histories, and the Bible itself all lay the imagination under contribution. The sensibility of the heart awakened by the pathetic story of la Roche, must be mainly developed by the additional creations of imagination. Not only when looking on the broad panoramic view, but in the very nooks of the sequestered vale it is at full play. Its fertility is co-partner with the flight of the eagle, or the haunt of the wren. Every visible object, and many invisible things, are its subject matter. Surely so active a property of the human mind, must have its due effect on the health and happiness of man. A writer in the Spectator, tells us, that Sir Francis Bacon in his Essay on Health, has not thought it improper to prescribe to his reader a poem, or a prospect, that may fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects. Physicians generally, I believe, seek to amuse the mind, and thus draw a man away from himself. The constant working of the imagination too, cannot fail to heighten or diminish the charms of the countenances. Every man knows how the countenance that shows emotions of interesting thought, though plain, is superior to the dead calm of insensibility that may slumber on the foolish face of the beauty : and thus Dr. Johnson has said, "beauty depends principally upon the mind, and consequently may be influenced by education." It is not my intention to enter into a metaphysical disquisition on the effects of imagination, and those who would wish to do so, with least trouble, I would refer to the Spectator, Nos. 411 to 421; and to a light paper in the Adventurer, No. 96. All that I wish to show to my fellow-men, is, that the rightful exercise of the imagination is a source of much positive delight, delight that is not beholden to the possession of riches, but that will survive even the loss of them-delight that may exist as long as the mind exists; which raises immeasurably the standard of happiness and employment during idle hours, which too many devote to vice and sensual gratification; and which raises before us a mount Sion on earth, in proportion as it is elevated by the contemplation of the pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore. And imagination to be freed from superstition, and under the influence of religion, must be guided and administered to through the means of education. Acknowledging this, may we be enabled to seek the improvement of our minds for the sake of the gratification which accompanies it; for moral knowledge is pleasing to the mind, as surely as spiritual wisdom is pleasant unto the soul. Most often worldly emolument will crown the labours of the educated man, and as I have said before, very many situations can only be held by the man of education. But this is not an invariable rule, any more than with religion. The Almighty has often caused the deeply-religious heart to beat in poverty and pain: and it is wisely ordered; for if temporal favour was shown invariably to the religious character, we should see all men endeavouring to become converted Christians for the sake of the worldly advancement held out. And so if we were to say all educated men must necessarily be prosperous, where would a voluntary ignoramus be found? But the joy and peace of heart derived from religion, is sufficient to make all seek for that promise of the life which now is, as they would seek for hid treasure: and is it otherwise with education, the handmaid of religion? "No! 'tis not worldly gain, although by chance Yet can dilate and raise them when they flow.”* Education therefore ought to be addressed to the senses, the heart, the understanding, and the imagination; it ought not to consist only * Crabbe, vol. iv. p. 94. |