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portion to the liveliness of the sensibility, and strong as the strength of the imagination. Every Age hath abounded in instances of Parents, Kindred, and Friends, who, by indirect influence of example, or by positive injunction and exhortation have diverted or discouraged the Youth, who, in the simplicity and purity of Nature, had determined to follow his intellectual genius through good and through evil, and had devoted himself to knowledge, to the practice of Virtue and the preservation of integrity, in slight of temporal rewards. Above all, have not the common duties and cares of common life, at all times exposed Men to injury, from causes whose action is the more fatal from being silent and unremitting, and which, wherever it was not jealously watched and steadily opposed, must have pressed upon and consumed the diviner spirit.

There are two errors, into which we easily slip when thinking of past times. One lies in forgetting, in the excellence of what remains, the large overbalance of worthlessness that has been swept away. Ranging over the wide tracts of Antiquity, the situation of the Mind may be likened to that of a Traveller in some unpeopled part of America, who is attracted to the burial place of one of the primitive Inhabitants. It is conspicuous upon an eminence, "a mount upon a mount!" He digs into it, and finds that it contains the bones of a Man of mighty stature: and he is tempted to give way to a belief, that as there were Giants in those days, so that all Men were Giants. But a second and wiser thought may suggest to him, that this Tomb would never have forced itself upon his notice, if it had not contained a Body that was distinguished from others, that of a Man who had been selected as a Chieftain or Ruler for the very reason that he surpassed the rest of his Tribe in stature, and who now lies thus conspicuously inhumed upon the mountain-top, while the bones of his Followers are laid unobstrusively together in their burrows upon the Plain below. The second habitual error is, that in this comparison of Ages we divide time merely into past and present, and place these in the balance to be weighed against each other, not considering that the present is in our estimation not more than a period of thirty years, or half a century at

Vide Ashe's Travels in America.

most, and that the past is a mighty accumulation of many such periods, perhaps the whole of recorded time, or at least the whole of that portion of it in which our own Country has been distinguished. We may illustrate this by the familiar use of the words Ancient and Modern, when applied to Poetry-what can be more inconsiderate or unjust than to compare a few existing Writers with the whole succession of their Progenitors? The delusion, from the moment that our thoughts are directed to it, seems too gross to deserve mention; yet Men will talk for hours upon Poetry, balancing against each other the words Ancient and Modern, and be unconscious that they have fallen into it.

These observations are not made as implying a dissent from the belief of my Correspondent, that the moral spirit and intellectual powers of this Country are declining; but to guard against unqualified admiration, even in cases where admiration has been rightly fixed, and to prevent that depression, which must necessarily follow, where the notion of the peculiar unfavourableness of the present times to dignity of mind, has been carried too far. For in proportion as we imagine obstacles to exist out of ourselves to retard our progress, will, in fact, our progress be retarded.

-Deeming then, that in all ages an ardent mind will be baffled and led astray in the manner under contemplation, though in various degrees, I shall at present content myself with a few practical and desultory comments upon some of those general causes, to which my Correspondent justly attributes the errors in opinion, and the lowering or deadening of sentiment, to which ingenuous and aspiring Youth is exposed. And first, for the heart-cheering belief in the perpetual progress of the Species towards a point of unattainable perfection. If the present Age do indeed transcend the past in what is most beneficial and honorable, he that perceives this, being in no error, has no cause for complaint; but if it be not so, a Youth of genius might, it should seem, be preserved from any wrong influence of this faith, by an insight into a simple truth, namely, that it is not necessary, in order to satisfy the desires of our Nature, or to reconcile us to the economy of Providence, that there should be at all times a continuous advance in what is of highest worth. In fact it is not, as a Writer of the present day has admirably observed, in the power of fiction, to pourtray in words, or of the imagina

tion to conceive in spirit, Actions or Characters of more exalted virtue, than those which thousands of years ago have existed upon earth, as we know from the records of authentic history. Such is the inherent dignity of human nature, that there belong to it sublimities of virtue which all men may attain, and which no man can transcend : And, though this be not true in an equal degree, of intellectual power, yet in the persons of Plato, Demosthenes, and Homer, and in those of Shakespeare Milton, and lord Bacon, were enshrined as much of the divinity of intellect as the inhabitants of this planet can hope will ever take up its abode among them. But the question is not of the power or worth of individual Minds, but of the general moral or intellectual merits of an Age-or a People, or of the human Race. Be it so-let us allow and believe that there is a progress in the Species towards unattainable perfection, or whether this be so or not, that it is a necessity of a good and greatly-gifted Nature to believe it-surely it does not follow, that this progress should be constant in those virtues, and intellectual qualities, and in those departments of knowledge, which in themselves absolutely considered are of most value-things independant and in their degree indispensible. The progress of the Species neither is nor can be like that of a Roman road in a right line. It may be more justly compared to that of a River, which both in its smaller reaches and larger turnings, is frequently forced back towards its fountains, by objects which cannot otherwise be eluded or overcome; yet with an accompanying impulse that will ensure its advancement hereafter, it is either gaining strength every hour, or conquering in secret some difficulty, by a labour that contributes as effectually to further it in its course, as when it moves forward uninterrupted in a line, direct as that of the Roman road with which we began the comparison.

(To be continued.)

PENRITH: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWN; AND SOLD BY
MESSRS. LONGMAN AND CO. PATERNOSTER ROW; AND
CLEMENT, 201, STRAND, LONDON.

No. 18. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1809.

I PRESENT my readers, in this Number, with four original Sonnets from Mr. Wordsworth, on the same subject as his three former, in Numbers 11 and 13; and as its' conclusion. To make the set com

plete (if I may use so trivial a phrase) I have prefixed his Sonnet on Switzerland from his "Poems," having always thought it one of the noblest Sonnets in our Language, and the happiest comment on the line of Milton-"The mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty," which would be no inapt motto for the whole collection.

SONNETS.

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of SWITZERLAND.

Two Voices are there; one is of the Sea,

One of the Mountains; each a mighty Voice:

In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen Music, Liberty!
There came a Tyrant, and with holy glee

Thou fought'st against Him; but hast vainly striven!
Thou from thine Alpine Holds at length art driven,
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee.
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft :
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left!
For, high-soul'd Maid! what sorrow would it be,
That mountain Floods should thunder as before,
And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore,
And neither awful Voice be heard by thee!

Feelings of the TYROLESE.

The Land we from our Fathers had in trust
And to our Children will transmit, or die:
This is our maxim, this our piety;

And God and Nature say, that it is just.

That which we would perform in arms—we must !
We read the dictate in the Infant's eye,

In the Wife's smile, and in the placid sky,

And at our feet, amid the silent dust

Of them that were before us.

Sing aloud

Old Songs, the precious music of the heart!

Give, Herds and Flocks! your voices to the wind!

While we go forth, a self-devoted crowd,

With weapons in the fearless hand, to assert

Our virtue, and to vindicate mankind!

And is it among rude untutor'd vales,
There, and there only, that the heart is true?
And rising to repel or to subdue,

Is it by rocks and woods that man prevails?
Ah no!-though Nature's dread protection fails,
There is a bulwark in the soul.-This knew
Iberian Burghers, when the sword they drew
In Zaragoza, naked to the gales

Of fiercely-breathing War. The truth was felt
By Palafox, and many a brave Compeer,
Like him, of noble birth and noble mind:
By Ladies, meek-eyed Women without fear,
And Wanderers of the Street, to whom is dealt
The bread which without industry they find.

O'er the wide earth, on mountain and on plain
Dwells in the affections and the soul of man
A Godhead, like the universal PAN *
But more exalted, with a brighter train.
And shall his bounty be dispensed in vain,
Shower'd equally on city and on Field,
And neither hope nor steadfast promise yield
In these usurping times of fear and pain?
Such doom awaits us !-Nay, forbid it Heaven!
We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws
To which the triumph of all good is given,
High sacrifice and labour without pause
Even to the death :-else wherefore should the
Of man converse with immortality?

eye

On the report of the submission of the TYROLESE
It was a moral end for which they fought;
Else how, when mighty Thrones were put to shame,
Could They, poor Shepherds, have preserv'd an aim,
A Resolution or enlivening thought?

Nor hath that moral good been vainly sought;
For in their magnanimity and fame

Powers have they left-an impulse and a claim
Which neither can be overturn'd nor bought.
Sleep, Warriors, sleep! among your hills repose!
We know that Ye beneath the stern controul
Of awful prudence keep the unvanquished soul.
And when impatient of her guilt and woes
Europe breaks forth, then Shepherds, shall ye risé
For perfect triumph o'er your enemies.

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W. W.

MILTON

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