While Sons and Fathers join in sweet accordant praise.
This last translation has at least the merit of getting over the difficulty in the translation of the first and second verses. Reader, we have done. We have finished our chime. We have rung all the changes we could at present upon our little bell. We throw down the rope. Draw from it if you choose still sweeter music, and so brighten the love you bear to her who will hereafter be your Alma Mater.
For “praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.”
G. H.
THE INFLUENCE OF MORAL FEELING ON THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.
No. III.
The influence of moral feeling tends to heighten the pleasure which we derive from beholding the works of nature.
“Our sight,” says Addison, “is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with its object at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.” Hence those pleasures of the imagination which are perceived through the medium of this sense, must necessarily be of a high order. Besides, they have this advantage above their fellows, that they are more obvious, and more easy to be acquired. We have but to open our eyes, and the scene in all its beauty and power enters. The colors paint themselves on the fancy, with scarcely a single effort of thought, and each object in the view, as it catches our glance, sends its appropriate impression to the mind, with an approach as gentle, and almost as imperceptible as the dawn of the morning.
This exhibition of nature is free to all. It is unfolded with equal beauty and variety to the humble peasant, as he treads homeward his weary way from the labors of the field, and the man of science and taste who can enjoy it at his leisure. For each the same glorious sun rises and sets, the same landscape of hill and valley and river is spread out, the same rich colors glow, the same fragrance perfumes the air.—In its full and ever changing variety, there is something to suit the disposition and character of every one. The sons of sorrow, whose only inheritance is melancholy and gloom, and in whose minds the bright things of earth meet no response, may find in the still sadness of the lonely vale, or in the steeps of the giant hill, a spirit in unison with their own. And they, over whose fair visions the cloud of disappointment has never flung its shade, whose souls are radiant with the hope and gladness of life’s young morn, may find their companions too in the joyous revels of nature. The gentle whisperings of the summer breeze, the gay sparkle and the rushing fall of the cascade, the mellow richness of the grove, the gorgeous drapery of sunset, with these, with every thing that breathes the spirit of joy, they can claim a kindred feeling.
The scene is ever before us in its unchanging beauty. It is not like the bright shadows that charm us on in boyhood and youth, only to vanish for ever from the sober realities of manhood. The breeze, that cooled the brow of the child in his early sports, plays with the same freshness around the wrinkles of age—the meadows wear as rich a green—the flowers bloom with equal loveliness—and nature, still fair and attractive, as when the morning stars first sang together, feels no decay from the lapse of years. What a barren and cheerless waste would be presented to the eye of man, were all this world of coloring to disappear with its ever varying distinctions of light and shade—what a rich source of innocent gratification had been wanting, if these had never been created. But