LESSON CXLVI.

Dignity and Excellence of the Poetical Art.-CHANNING.

POETRY seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prisonhouse, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being.

This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes farther towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret, by his own consciousness, what we now have said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those sacred recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigor, and wings herself for her heaven-ward flight. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, powers of original and ever-growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested.

It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it "makes all things new" for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms, and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and

bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendors of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colors which the passions throw over it, and depicts the soul in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendor, beauty and happiness, for which it was created.

We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness or misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with suffering virtue, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good.

Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of the outward creation and of the soul. It indeed portrays, with terrible energy, the excesses of the passions; but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep, though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element; and to breathe into it more

profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature; brings back the freshness of early feeling; revives the relish of simple pleasures; keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being; refines youthful love; strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings; spreads our sympathies over all classes of society; knits us by new ties with universal being; and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life.

We are aware, that it is objected to poetry, that it gives wrong views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom against which poetry wars,—the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life,-we do not deny ; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders to mankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earthborn prudence.

But, passing over this topic, we would observe, that the complaint against poetry, as abounding in illusion and deception, is, in the main, groundless. In many poems there is more of truth, than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities; and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. In poetry, when the letter is falsehood, the spirit is often profoundest wisdom. And if truth thus dwells in the boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be expected in his delineations of life; for the present life, which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry; and it is the high office of the bard, to detect this divine element among the grosser labors and pleasures of our earthly being.

The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame and finite. To the gifted eye, it abounds in the poetic. The affections which spread beyond ourselves, and stretch far into futurity; the workings of mighty passions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy; the innocent and irrepressible joy of infancy; the bloom, and buoy

ancy, and dazzling hopes of youth, the throbbings of the heart, when it first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and depth of affection, and blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire ;-these are all poetical. It is not true, that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal es sence; arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance; brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys. And in this he does well; for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence, and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being.

This power of poetry to refine our views of life and hap piness, is more and more needed as society advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless and artificial manners, which make civilization so tame and uninteresting. It is needed to counteract the tendency of physical science, which being now sought, not, as formerly, for intellectual gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts, requires a new development of imagination, taste and poetry, to preserve men from sinking into an earthly, material, Epicuréan life.

LESSON CXLVII.

Popular Institutions favorable to intellectual Improvement.E. EVERETT.

MENTAL energy has been equally diffused by sterner levelers than ever marched in the van of a revolution-the nature of man and the providence of God. Native character, strength, and quickness of mind, are not of the number of distinctions and accomplishments, that human institutions can monopolize within a city's walls. In quiet times, they remain and perish in the obscurity, to which a false organization of society consigns them. In dangerous, convulsed, and

trying times, they spring up in the fields, in the village hamlets, and on the mountain tops, and teach the surprised favorites of human law, that bright eyes, skilful hands, quick perceptions, firm purpose, and brave hearts, are not the exclusive appanage of courts.

Our popular institutions are favorable to intellectual improvement, because their foundation is in dear nature. They do not consign the greater part of the social frame to torpidity and mortification. They send out a vital nerve to every member of the community, by which its talent and power, great or small, are brought into living conjunction and strong sympathy with the kindred intellect of the nation; and every impression on every part vibrates, with electric rapidity, through the whole. They encourage nature to perfect her work; they make education, the soul's nutriment, cheap; they bring up remote and shrinking talent into the cheerful field of competition; in a thousand ways, they provide an audience for lips, which nature has touched with persuasion; they put a lyre into the hands of genius; they bestow on all who deserve it, or seek it, the only patronage worth having, the only patronage that ever struck out a spark of "celestial fire," the patronage of fair opportunity.

This is a day of improved education; new systems of teaching are devised; modes of instruction, choice of studies, adaptation of text-books, the whole machinery of means, have been brought in our day under severe revision. But were I to attempt to point out the most efficacious and comprehensive improvement in education, the engine, by which the greatest portion of mind could be brought and kept under cultivation, the discipline which would reach farthest, sink deepest, and cause the word of instruction not to spread over the surface, like an artificial hue, carefully laid on, but to penetrate to the heart and soul of its objects,—it would be popular institutions, Give the people an object in promoting education, and the best methods will infallibly be suggested by that instinctive ingenuity of our nature, which provides means for great and precious ends. Give the people an object in promoting education, and the worn hand of labor will be opened to the last farthing, that its children may enjoy means denied to itself.