Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption."
What a sublime truth! How beautifully and forcibly expressed! With what a mournful dignity it invests our fallen nature! Sin has marred the Divine image in which we were made, but the soul in its intense longing after God and good bears, in its sorrowful servitude to evil, the impress of the hand that formed it happy and free. Yes, even in the most abject and fallen, some slight trace of good remains--some spark of the Divine essence that still lingers amid the darkness and corruption of guilt, to rekindle the dying embers, and restore them once more to life and liberty. The madman raving in his chains still remembers his God, to bless or blaspheme his name. We are astonished at his ecstatic dream of happiness, or shocked beyond measure at the blackness of his despair. His superhuman strength fills us with wonder; and, even in the extinction of reason, we acknowledge the eternal presence of God, and perceive flashes of his Spirit breaking through the dark material cloud that shades, but cannot wholly annihilate the light of the soul, the immortality within.
The poor, senseless idiot, who appears to moral eyes a mere living machine, a body without a soul, sitting among the grass, and playing with the flowers and pebbles in the vacancy of his mind, is still a wonderful illustration of the wisdom and power of God. We behold a human being inferior in instinct and intelligence of the meanest orders of animal life, dependent upon the common charities of his kind for subsistence, yet conscious of the friend who pities his helplessness, and of the hand that administers to his wants. The Spirit of his Maker shall yet breathe upon the dull chaos of his stagnant brain, and open the eyes of this blind of soul into the light of his own eternal day! What a lesson to the pride of man--to the vain dwellers in houses of clay!
Returning from the asylum, we stopped to examine Trinity College, which is on the opposite side of the road. The architect, K. Tully, Esq., has shown considerable taste and genius in the design of this edifice, which, like the asylum, is built of white brick, the corners, doors, and windows faced with cut stone. It stands back from the road in a fine park-like lawn, surrounded by stately trees of nature's own planting. When the college is completed, it will be one of the finest public buildings in the province, and form one of the noblest ornaments to this part of the city.
The Maniac.
"The wind at my casement scream'd shrilly and loud,
And the pale moon look'd in from her mantle of cloud;
Old ocean was tossing in terrible might,
And the black rolling billows were crested with light.
Like a shadowy dream on my senses that hour,