that if I had been to confine myself to these exclusively, I should not have wished for any other word to convey my meaning at present. As, in other parts of my writings, however, Imagination is commonly to be understood in the most enlarged sense, as possessing a sway over the Intellectual and Moral Worlds, as well as over the Material, an expression of more comprehensive import than Conception may be sometimes convenient; and I shall, therefore, for want of a better phrase, avail myself of the epithet apprehensive, to distinguish that modification of imagination which is subservient to Taste, from that inventive or creative imagination, which forms the chief element in poetical genius.

Notwithstanding, however, the justness of this theoretical distinction, I shall seldom, if ever, have occasion, in the sequel of this volume, to employ the epithets which I have now proposed to introduce. The transition from the apprehensive to the inventive operations of imagination, appears to me to be, in reality, much simpler and easier than is commonly suspected: In other words, I conceive, that where the mind has been early and familiarly conversant with the fictions of poetry, the acquisition of that inventive or creative faculty which characterizes the poet, depends, in a great measure, on the individual himself; supposing that there exists no extraordinary deficiency in his other intellectual capacities.In what remains, therefore, of this Essay, I shall make use of the word Imagination, without any epithet whatever; premising only in general, that it is the apprehensive power of imagi

nation, and not its inventive power, which I have solely in view, when I speak of its culture as an important object of Education.

In what manner Imagination may be encouraged and cherished in a mind where it had previously made little appearance, may be easily conceived from what was stated in a former Essay, with respect to the peculiar charm which sometimes accompanies the pleasures produced by its ideal combinations, when compared with the corresponding realities in nature and in human life. The eager curiosity of childhood, and the boundless gratification which it is so easy to afford it by well-selected works of fiction, give, in fact, to education, a stronger purchase, if I may use the expression, over this faculty, than what it possesses over any other. The attention may be thus insensibly seduced from the present objects of the senses, and the thoughts accustomed to dwell on the past, the distant, or the future; and, in the same proportion in which this effect is in any instance accomplished, “the man,” as Dr Johnson has justly remarked, " is exalted in "the scale of intellectual being.", The tale of fiction will probably be soon laid aside with the toys and rattles of infancy; but the habits which it has contributed to fix, and the powers which it has brought into a state of activity, will remain with the possessor, permanent and inestimable treasures, to his latest hour. To myself, this appears the most solid advantage to be gained from fictitious composition, considered as an engine of early instruction; I mean, the attractions which it holds out for en

couraging an intercourse with the authors best fitted to invigorate and enrich the imagination, and to quicken whatever is dormant in the sensibility to beauty: or, to express myself still more plainly, the value of the incidents seems to me to arise chiefly from their tendency to entice the young readers into that fairy-land of poetry, where the scenes of romance are laid.Nor is it to the Young alone that I would confine these observations exclusively. Instances have frequently occurred of individuals, in whom the Power of Imagination has, at a more advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance, to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is "purged of its film ;" and things the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul; the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of the pleasures of vicissitude, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man, who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements, his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth:

"The meanest flowret of the vale,

"The simplest note that swells the gale,
"The common sun, the air, the skies,
"To him are op'ning Paradise."

The effects of foreign travel have been often remarked, not only in rousing the curiosity of the traveller while abroad, but in correcting, after his return, whatever habits of inattention he had contracted to the institutions and manners among which he was bred. It is in a way somewhat analogous, that our occasional excursions into the regions of imagination increase our interest in those familiar realities from which the stores of imagination are borrowed. We learn insensibly to view nature with the eye of the painter and of the poet, and to seize those "hap

py attitudes of things" which their taste at first selected; while, enriched with the accumulations of ages, and with "the spoils of time," we unconsciously combine with what we see, all that we know, and all that we feel; and sublime the organical beauties of the material world, by blending with them the inexhaustible delights of the heart and of the fancy.

And, here, may I be allowed to recommend, in a more particular manner, the Pleasures of Imagination to such of my readers as have hitherto been immersed in the study of the severer sciences, or who have been hurried, at too early a period, into active and busy life? Abstracting from the tendency which a relish for these pleasures obviously has to adorn the more solid acquisitions of the one class, and to ennoble, with liberality and light, the habits

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of the other, they may both be assured, that it will open to them sources of enjoyment hitherto inexperienced, and communicate the exercise of powers of which they are yet unconscious. It was said, with truth, by Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, that he who was ignorant of the arithmetical art was but half a man ;—un homme à demi. With how much greater force may a similar expression be applied to him, who carries to his grave the neglected and unprofitable seeds of faculties, which it depended on himself to have reared to maturity, and of which the fruits bring accessions to human happiness, more precious than all the gratifications which power or wealth can command! I speak not of the laborious orders of society, to whom this class of pleasures must, from their condition, be, in a great measure, necessarily denied; but of men destined for the higher and more independent walks of life, who are too often led, by an ignorance of their own possible attainments, to exhaust all their toil on one little field of study, while they leave, in a state of nature, by far the most valuable portion of the intellectual inheritance to which they were born. If these speculations of mine, concerning the powers of the understanding, possess any peculiar or characteristical merit, it arises, in my own opinion, chiefly from their tendency (by affording the student a general knowledge of the treasures which lie within himself, and of the means by which he may convert them to his use and pleasure) to develope, on a greater scale than has been commonly attempted, all the various capacities of the mind. It is by such a plan of study