SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF TRUTH. 61 bow was set in the clouds to inspire confidence and hope in the breasts of those who had witnessed the terrors of the Deluge, and as a perpetual emblem of divine mercy and protection. Knowing by what hand it was placed there, and for what purpose, it is no great stretch of faith to believe that there is in it-we know not how-an intrinsic power to stir in the breast of each descendant of Noah somewhat of the same emotion as it awakened when first resting on the heights of Ararat. With all this, science does not purport to have any thing to do; and, accordingly, all that it teaches respecting that phenomenon cannot touch the feeblest sympathy. But there are probably few minds so dull as not to recognise an expression of a feeling of their own in the simple exclamation bursting from a poet's lips : "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky! So was when my life began; So is it now I am a man; The inquiry may naturally suggest itself whether the imaginative truth which poetry aspires to is not above the reach of humanity and unavailing therefore to its necessities. Unquestionably, if any one goes forth into active life with an undisciplined imagination, expecting from the world what the world cannot give, the result is as disastrous as the aim is irrational. But if the heart take counsel of imagination for the guidance of its passions, the chastening and elevating of its affections, there is no danger in the height of the imaginative standard. In proof of this position there has been conclusively quoted that precept of the Saviour's which bids men, with all the accumulation of their faculties, "Be perfect," and, more than that, sets before them for imitation the model inimitable of God's own perfection. The precept may with difficulty be reconciled with the rules of our calculating faculties, but it is addressed to the imagination and comprehended by it. It stands the most sublime of all the divine sentences in the Sermon on the Mount,-the most ennobling and elevating words ever spoken to poor humanity. It may also be noticed, in vindication of the calumniated power under discussion, that the Christian rule for the guidance of our conduct to others is addressed to the imagination; and thus you may see that one evil of a sluggish imagination will be a sluggish sympathy with our fellow-beings. But the energies of poetry are employed not only in invention, but in the discovery of truth:-not only, in Lord Bacon's words, "for the invention of a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety," but to revive the neglected glories of the world as it is, to gather the fragments of splendour from amid the ruins of our fallen nature, to lift from the soul the weight of custom and materialism, to awaken a consciousness to the neglected emotions of daily life, and to trace the associations between the universe of sense and the spiritual life within us. These are the aims of true poetry; and to grasp the thoughts and feelings which are perpetually flitting across the mind, eluding the touch of a gross philosophy, there are a thousand influences at work, which in the pride of our calculating faculties are despised, because they are not susceptible of measurement by the under HUMAN SYMPATHY DEEPENED BY POETRY. 63 standing. Will any one who has reflected on the constitution of man, both spiritual and material, and the world in which he is placed, venture to say, for instance, that the sun travels his glorious course only to light men to their work and give them warmth? Why then does he rise in such magnificence and why set with such ever-varying splendour? Why is it that every unclouded night ten thousand stars are looking down upon us from the heavens? Why is it that even the storm comes arrayed with a sublimity of its own? Why does the earth break forth from its winter's torpor in all the luxuriance of spring? And why is there beauty in the human countenance? Men and women would no doubt accomplish their work as well and be as useful if every face we looked on was the face of ugliness. Influences that cannot be expounded are active on every side and during every period of life; and, though unimportant when mentioned separately, no one can divine how great is their sway in the formation of human character. Who can explain how music falling on the ear moves the spirit within us? and yet we know that it can give courage in the hour of battle and fervour to acts of devotion. I cannot tell how the soft blue of an unclouded sky so impresses the feelings with a sense of its placid beauty that the heart of him who looks up to it from amidst the turmoil of life is touched as with a blessing; but this I know:-that, when God foretold the curses with which he would visit his rebellious people, among the penalties announced by the inspired lawgiver there was a threat that the sky should be to them like brass. It is the poet's duty to deepen human sympathies and to enlarge their sphere; to cast a light upon the com mon heart of the whole race; to calm the anxieties and to sustain the highest and farthest purposes of our being. Imagination, the prime nourisher of hope, is the characteristic of man as a progressive creature; and its most strenuous efforts are given to dignify, to elevate, to purify, and to spiritualize. In the history of the literature of all nations the herald of its day is the morningstar of poetry; and, when it passes away, the last light that lingers after it is the ever-aspiring ray from its seting orb. In all ages and conditions of society it is present; for it is supplied from "the inexhaustible springs of truth and feeling which are ever gurgling and boiling up in the caverns of the human heart." Such being the purpose of poetry, it may be safely said that it is moral wisdom. Its closest affinity is with religion; for it ministers to faith and hope and love. A meek and dutiful attendant in the temple of faith, it is in humble alliance for the defence and rescue of exposed humanity. It has been sagely remarked by a philosophic writer that the belief is erroneous that the hearts of the many are constitutionally weak, languishing, and slow to answer the requisitions of things; and that rather the true sorrow of humanity consists in this :-not that the mind fails, but that the course and demands of action and life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desires, and hence that which is slow to languish is too easily turned aside and abused. To this are all the great productions of the Muse directed, controlling the discord between the course of life and the dignity of human desires, chastening the passions and guiding them in safe channels and to worthy objects. In Shakspeare's wonderful delineation of the melancholy of Ham SPIRITUAL ASPIRATIONS. 65 let, it is the representation of a noble heart aching with a sense of the hollowness, the insufficiency of the stale and unprofitable uses of the world to answer its aspirations. There is the wretchedness and the desolation of a spirit feeling itself at variance with life; and this morbid mood of mind speaks in words expressive of a gloomy absence of delight in all he looks upon, and yet at the same time the loftiest consciousness of the endowments of the human soul:-" "It goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestic roof, fretted with golden fire,-why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" This is the language of disease,—of disease to which all are exposed, because, amid the frailty and corruption of our natural desires, the heart will sink down to low objects and be perverted to unholy ones. When the supplies of the heart fail and its cravings cannot find their proper nourishment, the world and all that is upon it become unsubstantial and unreal. The life, in which is staked eternal happiness, becomes worthless and barren, as it seemed to the guilty fancy of Macbeth,—"this bank and shoal of time." It is poetry that is charged with the duty of ministering its help to this peril of humanity. Imagination, chastened and cherished, will discover dignity and happiness in life's lowliest duties, |