written, or in tradition of discourse held by exalted and powerful minds of preceding time, was the durable foundation, or rather the strong and ever-living spirit of their high civilization. But such instruction, it will easily be understood, was not confined to such discourse, whether written, or orally transmitted, as treated express ly of philosophical and moral knowledge. But in whatever language, under whatever form, the conceptions of high, pure, and comprehensive minds were preserved, they were such instruction. They subsisted in the poetry of Homer, as much as in the doctrines of Zoroaster. They live in the writings of Shakspeare, as in those of Cicero. In all, the same purpose is effected. The conceptions of the highest mind in its highest state of power, are in some sort made to be the permanent conceptions of ordinary men. There is a power raised up in them, at war with their ordinary life. As in the midst of the darkened and disordered life of men conflicting in society, those single minds held themselves apart in their own calm power, so in every bosom in the midst of its own troubled and agitated life, the same power rises up in the same strength, like a sanctuary in the land of war, like a star rising upon a stormy sea. There is a durable strength, and acknowledged sovereignty given to the higher faculties of our nature, in the midst of a life, which often tends to confound the highest and the lowest. Such a power, as much as it can exist among men, is not to be conceived, it is evident, as limited to the very few minds of pre-eminent distinction among men, which never can be forgotten by their own people, or by mankind, although in these it is most conspicuous:-but it has its energy also in numberless minds, which, inasmuch as they share in the same spirit, are fountains of good to men; in all whose voices survive them, although they should cease at last in time. And especially if we would estimate in countries of high civilization, the force which is continually exerted by the written record of the minds of past time, we must be careful not to limit our ima gination to such influence as we can trace perhaps of the works of individual minds, but must endeavour rather to apprehend what may be the power, as we have witnessed and known it, of that great body of written discourse, in all the forms of language, which subsists, accumulating from age to age among a people, and is a permanent power among them controlling their minds, and having part in determining their character. And whatever we may see among ourselves, and in nations like ourselves, to subsist as a power by the written record of speech, we must understand to have subsisted in nations of less art, in more or less degree, in the primitive form of faithful and powerful tradition. I have thus endeavoured briefly to point out some of the principles of reasoning, by which we must guide inquiry into the real power which it is possible for speech, as it is left consigned to faithful records, to hold among men. If it have such magnitude of importance, as I conceive, then it will follow as a simple necessary consequence, that those who feel in themselves the talent of eloquence, and are cultivating it, are preparing themselves to exercise, not an idle art, but one which, by its greatness, lays them under obligation to look anxiously upon the mind that is to speak by that voice. The seductive reputation of skill, of mastery in a splendid art, may be obtained, without any care of the dignity of that power which is exerted in its practice. But if, to the mind that loves reputation, there is a fame dearer than present applause, if it grows precious as it spreads and lasts, then is there, even for the sake of the fame of eloquence, a motive to cherish the inward honour of the mind, that is to speak in eloquence: that when it gives forth its voice, while the ear listens with pleasure, the heart may approve its own delight:-that the charm which is felt may not pass away with the breath, but be received by the heart into its life, and yet steal from one heart to another, gliding down the stream of time, like a sweet sound on the bosom of a mighty river. RUINS. THE memory of the past ages of a people hangs over the present life of each generation with a brooding power; like love fostering its offspring by its overshadowing presence. Our life draws strength from the obscurity that gathers on its cradle. If we could look back to its origin, our powers and hopes would suffer by the limitation of the past. We have a part in the ages that have rolled away, for the spirit of their might descends upon us our blood is from old heroes. Life indeed is shrunk; it has waxed feeble in the wane of time. But what we feel and behold is not ALL our power; there is something that slumbers within us-of the waters that flowed in pomp, there are streams that yet wind in their buried channels; though the flame has fallen, there is yet, beneath the ashes, smouldering of the unextinguished fires. If there be indeed a power in the past, if its spirit has a sway in our life, not merely by the thousand-fold unconscious derivation from age to age, but by conscious recollection, not as we are united to it by life as its offspring, but as we stand apart from it contemplating;-then the memorials of the past are important to our life, for in them its shadowy presence ho vers over us. sent while it is vouched by sense, and the substance of reality fades as it grows distant to our eye. The records of men tell us what they have been; these testify and explain how variously the spirit of hu manity has dwelt in its changing body. In these our intelligence of the past lies; and by these we draw down upon ourselves influence from the life of generations that are gone. But the knowledge which reasoning thought is able to build up for itself out of these memorials is yet insufficient; it wants a living presence to our breathing life. We cannot feed on the airy forms which memory yields to imagination. How powerful is the dominion of one age over another, while all the forms with which its life was filled survive in unimpaired, unblemished beauty; while its temples and statues, its groves and gardens, towers, palaces, and habitations of men remain; and those that are born seem to walk only upon the grounds of their ancestors. How is that dominion changed when the face of the land changes, when the old habitation of the people is erased from its surface, and the generation that rises sees only around it what it has built and planted for itself on the changing earth. The might of the Druid fell with his oaks. the mound over a dead warrior could eternize his glorious fame, how a stone set up, or a rock marked only on the tongues of the people with a name, were able to bow their spirit in awe to the might of the departed, and to hold fast to the earth recollections that were else winged for their shadowy flight to the realms of forgetfulness. The towers and mouldering fanes, If we could be transported into disthe reft dwelling places of state, and tant ages, and could understand the war, and sanctity, now naked to the secret laws of their life, we should clouds, or mantled with the unbidden know in what power the memory of luxuriance of overgrowing nature the past remains in its immutable moWhat are these to our present life?numents. We should discern how Are they more than the vestiges of a dream, to which other dreams may cling? Are they more than decaying magnificence and vanishing beauty?— And the gleam of recollection that lingers upon them, is it other than the glory on the mountain's head, when the sun has sunk from the sky? They are indeed more than these. They bind the present to the past by links of strong realities. Weak as our imaginations are, and easily loosing all things from their unsubstantial grasp, it is not enough for us to know that things have been or are. We know, and yet they disappear from our belief. Our mind, blended with sense, lives more in sense than thought. Our knowledge is only strongly pre Even to us, to whom so little remains of the awful might of the past, to us its monuments have their power, and we may trace it in our own bosoms. Even to us, changed on our changed earth, the few and decaying memorials of older time still speak with a living voice. We know, as we stand on the piled stones of the feudal tower, that a race, warlike and mighty dwelt in the land; that the sun which rolls above us shone on their glorious arms. We know what vigour was in human breasts when danger and death might ride abroad; and yet the pride of life was undimmed-its joy untamed. Here was the hall of their feast, and there the forest of their chace. Here knights justed, here minstrels sung. The strain of the harp is silent, and the dust of the hoofs is laid. But we feel how that strain once thrilled through eager hearts, whether the song of battle rang in the warrior's ear, like the note of the trumpet, or a softer lay, stealing round the silent board, drew hearts to hearts, blending under the sway of its controlling unison. Here love, and courtesy, and loyal faith, and lofty valour met. Here the young boy bounded in the strength that reared him to future fight. Here the hoary sire taught his son the scorn of death, the dread of shame, and poured down to the future descendants of his loins, the unvanquished spirit of the race. Surely, it is not idle imagination alone, that thus gathers fantastic illusion on our thoughts, when we seem to bring back the past to the spot where it once was acted. It is our knowledge kindling into reality, by the yet surviving realities of this longdeparted time. Let him speak, and tell us, who has recalled to our own age the visions of those that are gone, whether these scenes and their im press are in vain for our belief of the past; or what we owe of the splendid dramas of vanished existence that have passed before our eyes, to its yet extant memorials on the hills and vales of his native land, how much of his song is but sounds caught from the echo that still lingers round their mouldering stones. ODE, Composed while the Sun was under Eclipse, 7th September, 1820. LIGHT wanes; dark clouds come hovering o'er The bosom of the silent sky; And harvest fields, a yellow pride that wore, A gloom o'erspreads the forests green; The sullen river, with a roll, Rushes to the sea, its goal; And the far distant hills are seen, As if the fleecy robes of Eve were strewed between! The breezes are asleep; the world at rest; And silence to the east and west Gazes, but in vain, to see One leaflet moving on one single tree! The birds forsake their singing, and around, Withdrawn from human eye--- The sun hath quench'd his radiant orb of gold. Succeeds, as if the day of doom Were come, and earth should quake around, At the angel's trumpet sound! As if at once, like molten glass, Earth and Heaven away should pass ; And to darkling chaos roll, Crackling like a folding scroll! 650 Oh! Thou, that far beyond the starry sky,— Hearken to us, frail mortals, when we cry! Hearken to us-although we have preferred And in our pride of heart forgotten thee! A deeper gloom, a darker dye, Sailing o'er its breast, like phantom ships, And a ghastly splendour streaming In awful wildness rolled ! Hearken again, oh! Thou whose boundless power Thou that hast made, and can command; Thou that the depths of chaos broke That touchest mountains, and they smoke; And takest, in the hollow of thy hand, With unaverted ear, Our supplications, as with faces prone, Because, with quenchless light, and daily force, Ode. As thus in dust and ashes we repent! Not in the hour of pleasure are we borne When sea, and earth, and sky shall pass away, Shall swear by heaven that "time shall be no more!" Foreboding gloom, and doubtful fear, O'er the throbbing bosom lower, And tell how weak we are, how mighty is Thy power! This hour of warning fleet away, And like the clouds that paint an April day, But, graven on the mind, oh, may it bring Where, veiling, with their wings, their faces bright, The seraphim and cherubim adore 651 RECOLLECTIONS. No VIII. MARK MACRABIN, the Cameronian. JANET MORISON'S LYKE-WAKE. (Continued from Last Number.) "THOU shalt live with me, "WHILE Madge Mackittrick, with a voice rivalling in melody that of the night-raven, chaunted over the fragVOL. VII. ments of the ballad of the ancient |
