8. There have been holy men, who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

9.

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them; and there have been holy men,
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and, in thy presence, reassure
My feeble virtue. Here, its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps, shrink,
And tremble, and are still.

O God! when thou
Dost scare the world with tempèsts, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbōlts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift, dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods,
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities;-who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by!
Oh! from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine; nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad, unchained elements, to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

IV.

147. LANDSCAPE BEAUTY.

BRYANT.

T is easy enough to understand how the sight of a picture or

I statue should affect us nearly in the same way as the sight of

the original nor is it much more difficult to conceive, how the sight of a cottage should give us something of the same feeling as the sight of a peasant's family; and the aspect of a tow raise many of the same ideas as the appearance of a multitude

of persons. We may begin, therefore, with an example a little more complicated. Take, for instance, the case of a common English landscape-green meadows with grazing and ruminating cattle-canals or navigable rivers-well-fenced, well cultivated fields-neat, clean, scattered cottages-humble antique churches, with church-yard elms, and crossing hedgerows,-all seen under bright skies, and in good weather.

2. There is much beauty, as every one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in what does the beauty consist? Not certainly in the mere mixture of colors and forms; for colors mōre pleasing, and lines more graceful (according to any theory of grace that may be preferred), might be spread upon a board, or a painter's pallet, without engaging the eye to a second glance, or raising the least emotion in the mind: but in the picture of human happiness that is presented to our imaginations and affections; in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheerful and peaceful enjoyment-and of that secure and successful in'dustry that insures its continuance-and of the piety by which it is exalted-and of the simplicity by which it is contrasted with the guilt and the fever of a city life; in the images of health, and temperance, and plenty which it exhibits to every eye; and in the glimpses which it affords to warmer imaginations, of those primitive or fabulous times, when man was uncorrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those humble retreats in which we still delight to imagine that love and philosophy may find an unpolluted asÿ'lum.

3. At all events, however, it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, and forms the true object of our emotions. It is man, and man ălōne, that we see in the beauties of the earth which he inhabits; or, if a more sensitive and extended sympathy connect us with the lower families of animated nature, and make us rejoice with the lambs that bleat on the uplands, or the cattle that repose in the valley, or even with the living plants that drink the bright sun and the balmy air beside them, it is still the idea of enjoyment-of feelings that animate the existence of sentient beings-that calls forth all our emotions, and is the parent of all the beauty with which we proceed to invest the inanimate creation around us.

4. Instead of this quiet and tame English landscape, let us now take a Welsh or a Highland scene, and see whether its

beauties will admit of being explained on the same principle. Here, we shall have lofty mountains, and rocky and lonely recesses-tufted woods hung over precipices-lakes intersected with castled promontories-ample solitudes of unplowed and untrodden valleys-namelèss and gigantic ruins-and mountain echoes repeating the scream of the eagle and the roar of the cataract.

5. This, too, is beautiful, and to those who can interpret the language it speaks, far more beautiful than the prosperous scene with which we have contrasted it. Yet, lonely as it is, it is to the recollection of man and the suggestion of human feelings that its beauty also is owing. The mere forms and colors that compose its visible appearance are no more capable of exciting any emotion in the mind than the forms and colors of a Turkey carpet. It is sympathy with the present or the past, or the imaginary inhabitants of such a region, that ălōne gives it either interest or beauty; and the delight of those who behold it will always be found to be in exact proportion to the force of their imaginations and the warmth of their social affections.

6. The leading impressions here are those of romantic seclusion and prīmē'val simplicity; lovers sequestered in these blissful solitudes, "from towns and toils remote," and rustic poëts and philosophers communing with nature, and at a distance from the low pursuits and selfish malignity of ordinary mortals: then there is the sublime impression of the Mighty Powers which piled the mighty cliffs upon each other, and rent the mountains asunder, and scattered their giant fragments at their base, and all the images connected with the monuments of ancient magnificence and extinguished hostility-the feuds, and the combats, and the triumphs of its wild and primitive inhabitants, contrasted with the stillness and desolation of the scenes where they lie interred; and the romantic ideas attached to their ancient traditions, and the peculiarities of the actual life of their descendants -their wild and enthusiastic poëtry-their gloomy superstitions -their attachment to their chiefs-the dangers, and the hardships, and enjoyments of their lonely huntings and fishings— their pastoral shielings on the mountains in summer-and the tales and the sports that amuse the little groups that are frozen into their vast and trackless valleys in the winter.

7. Add to all this the traces of vast and obscure antiquity

that are impressed on the language and the habits of the people, and on the cliffs, and caves, the gulfy torrents of the land; and the solemn and touching reflection, perpetually recurring, of the weakness and insignificance of perishable man, whose generations thus pass away into oblivion, with all their toils and ambition; while nature holds on her unvarying course, and pours out her streams, and renews her forests, with undecaying activity, regardless of the fate of her proud and perishable sovereign.

V.

JEFFREY.

148. MORNING HYMN TO MOUNT BLANC.

H

AST thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?—so long he seems to
On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc!
The Arve and Aveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above.
Deep is the air and dark,-substantial black,—
An ĕbon mass; methinks thou piercèst it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

2. O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

pause

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshiped the Invisible ălōne.

Yet like some sweet, beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thoughts
Yea, with my life, and life's own secret joy,-
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing—there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven.
3. Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest-not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy. Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, ǎwake!

Groen vales and icy cliffs all join my hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale!
Oh! struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink :
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself, earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, oh wake! and utter praise.
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
4. And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggèd rocks,
Forever shattered and the same forever?

Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded,—and the silence came,
"Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?"

5. Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain,—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!-

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who băde the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—
"GOD!" let the torents, like a shout of nations,
Answer; and let the ice-plains echo, "GOD!"

6. "GOD!" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice,
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, "GOD!"
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!