kiss-which so far as one can see at present, appears to be a matter with which they could have but very little concernperhaps the alliance between morality and kissing might have come down to us unimpaired. In the straits, however, to which we are reduced by the policy of those "simpleton sages,' it should be by all means attempted to bring back the prodigal to those ways of virtue from which, by untoward circumstances, he has been too long estranged. Let the friends of morality collect wisdom from the past-let them pursue the kiss with promptitude and perseverance: it may be brought back to virtue, and its return may be quoted with triumph against the reproach of the poet.

"Virtue is nice to take what's not her own,

And while she long consults, the prize is gone."

DRYDEN.

W.

PRESENTIMENTS AND ASSOCIATIONS.

Or all the mysteries which hang around the mind of man, there are none more inexplicable, and yet none of more fre quent occurrence, than those dim conceptions which float like shadows over the imagination, and which, whilst they darkly warn us of the future, seem to refer us still more indistinctly to the past. There are moments when the intellect looks back through the ages which have gone by, and glances forward, with an unerring vision, to those which are to come, as if it were, as some philosophers* have taught, itself an eternal being, capable of stretching its comprehension beyond the boundaries of time and of material existence.

How often does it happen that we find ourselves in situations, with the circumstances of which we seem as familiar as if we had formed a previous acquaintance with them! We foresee how they will proceed, with what vicissitudes they will be attended, and what will be their final result. The impression, indeed, is not traced in bold or full characters on the mind; it resembles one of those half-effaced inscriptions which are discovered on the sacred monuments of antiquity. Something remains, but much is worn away; and whatever knowledge we obtain from it, is found, as it were, in mouldering and disjointed fragments. It seems to be a supernatural and momentary influence, as if the soul, weary of its confinement, had expanded

The Druids among the ancient Gauls.

itself beyond the limits of our frame, and outstripped the fleetness of years in its desire to resume a state of spiritual freedom. This strange kind of impression is all spontaneous. When it comes, we have no control over it; it vanishes as soon as we make an effort to retain or analyze it. In every respect it resembles a dream, or rather the revived recollection of a dream, in which the very scene before us, the groups, the looks of each person concerned, are seen shadowed out with wonderful fidelity.

In the course of my reading, I have not met with any writer who has observed this phenomenon of the mind, except the great philosophic novelist of Scotland. In the third volume of "Guy Mannering," he ascribes a train of ideas to Bertram, at which, I confess, I was much surprised when I first read the passage; not because it contained an observation new to me, but on account of its perfect coincidence with what I myself had often felt before. Why is it," says he, "that some scenes awaken thoughts, which belong, as it were, to dreams of early and shadowy recollection, such as my old Bramin Moonshie would have ascribed to a state of previous existence? Is it the visions of our sleep that float confusedly in our memory, and are recalled by the appearance of such real objects as in any respect correspond to the phantoms they presented to our imagination? How often do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-defined consciousness, that neither the scene, the speakers, nor the subject, are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation which has not yet taken place!"

A thousand instances might be adduced of presentiments of dangers and of death, which were entertained involuntarily by individuals, and were ultimately realized in the most literal manner. Every body has read, or heard, of the officer in the Duke of Marlborough's army, of the name, I think, of Prendergast, who assured his friends that he should die on a particular day. The day arrived, a battle was fought and won, the officer still was safe. His friends laughed at him for his presentiment, but still he would not concede that he was in error. "I shall die," said he, "notwithstanding what you see." All the French batteries had been silenced save one, and immediately after he uttered these words, a random shot from that solitary place reached him, and gave him "a soldier's sepulchre."

It will assuredly be allowed, that such presentiments as these are "passing strange ;" to me, however, they appear less marvellous than the effect which music sometimes produces on a sensitive mind. The exquisite sensations which sweet sounds excite, are generally said to be by reason of association. In

many instances, I agree, it may be so. A strain which delighted us in early life, whenever it again meets the ear, will in some measure restore to the heart the sunshine and the fresh breathing verdure of youth. A song which we first heard from lips that we loved, will for ever after thrill through the heart with joy or sadness, according as the passion has been fortunate or unsuccessful. The chain of association is struck, the electric touch is felt through the whole frame, and thoughts that had long slumbered in the breast, start at the magic sound into a sudden and vivid existence.

But what becomes of this reason of association in cases where the strain which melts the bosom is entirely new, and never was heard before? It may be said, indeed, that every fresh composition is but a varied combination of tones which are all familiar to a moderately practised ear. But can this circumstance affect an ear not practised at all? or can it really remove that proud impress of originality which genius leaves upon every thing it touches? Such an argument would go to destroy all original excellence in poetry and other inventive writings, because they are embodied in words which we have seen and used ourselves over and over again. What foreigner shall say that those airs of the North, which Burns has married to his immortal verse, are known, to his memory, when he first hears their inspiring sounds? Of the melodies of the sister isle, indeed, it may be said, that they harmonize occasionally with the deep murmur of the ocean, the plaintive sigh of the night breeze, and those ceaseless echoes that issue from falling wa ters-sounds common to all nature, and whose kindred modulations, therefore, find a response in every heart. But independently of national peculiarities, who shall say that Handel and Mozart have not diffused characters of sublimity and beauty through their works, which distinguish no other compositions? And yet when a person of susceptible mind hears for the first time the "Hymn of Luther," or that beautiful duet in Figaro "Sul' aria," he feels quite familiar with them. The majestic swell of the one lifts his soul to the very throne of the Deity, and makes him almost hear the wings of the seraphs rustling around him, reviving impressions which no other excitement could awaken, and filling his ear with voices which he almost believes he heard before. The cadence of the other, which

comes o'er the ear like the sweet South, That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour”—

or, perhaps, is more like that magic breath of aërial music which pocts hear, or dream they hear, of a summer's eve in

Piedmont or Languedoc,-seems not to create new ideas so much as to unlock the stores of memory. It leads the soul through scenes which it seems to have visited before, but all shadowy though unearthly, and the abode rather of delightful melancholy than of Elysian happiness. Can these things come over us "like a summer cloud," and not be referable to any

universal cause?

Again-fancy, inspiration, sublime conception, ideal beauty, what are they but the elevation of the pure intellect from the prison which surrounds it? What are they but the rapturous aspiration of the mind after a more spiritual condition, to which for a moment it almost attains, and where it finds not only a brighter, but a more familiar and congenial habitation. Ásk the poet, if he has ever, even in his happiest hour, succeeded in giving expression to the glorious bursts of thought which sometimes imparadise his imagination? No; he touches the line again and again; he over-informs his language; he gives some faint resemblance of the bright idea; but in vain he tries to present to another the full, luminous, and heavenly picture which glows before him, crowned with its halo of inimitable splendour. And yet there is nothing in this which to the poet is absolutely new: he revels in its light, as a child hangs on the well-known smile of its parent.

When autumn strews the valleys with the honours of the woods, we mourn over the decay of nature, and are solemnly instructed in the tenor of our frail existence, which is, to grow up and bloom for a while, and then to blossom for the grave. Why is it, that in this very picture of desolation, which indicates our separation from home, love, friendship, every tie which is most sacred to the heart, there is still something to console us? Why is it that the spirit springs up from this gloomy but certain fate, and reposes with melancholy rapture upon the brown leaf, the darkening forest, the fading green of the fields, and listens with a captivated ear to the hoarser murmur of the mountain stream? Is not the mind, by these proofs of the accomplishment of nature's beneficent purposes for the season, impressed with a conviction of the end which awaits man himself, and yet is not that conviction accompanied with a sensation of melancholy delight? Nor is it a delight less allied with the future than with the past-the past, not of this world, but of some other.

Plato held, that what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before. This doctrine, I fear, cannot stand as to the sciences; but, applied to the occurrences of life, it would seem not to be totally without foundation. How often, in the common intercourse of society, do we meet with whose

persons

tastes, opinions, manners, habits, antipathies, and passions, so fully agree with our own, that we feel drawn towards them by a species of kindred relation! What! kindred relation between two persons who never met before? whose families, perhaps, had come from opposite points of the compass? How can such a supposition be maintained for a moment? How can it be said, that one spiritual immaterial essence is a-kin to another? Material bodies are related when they draw the stream of life from the same fountain: moulded in the same original frame, they may resemble each other in feature and form, may be ruled by the same appetites, and inoculated with the same humours. But what impress can one immaterial soul receive, which shall make it resemble another so exactly in its dispositions, that they shall seem to have one and the same presiding mind between them; that when they meet, they shall seem rather to recognise each other, than to become newly ac quainted; that such a reciprocal congeniality shall be instantly discovered between them, as exists between light and the eye of the infant the moment he opens it?

I do not hope to be able to explain these things. The mind, with its various faculties and operations, is, and ever must remain, the greatest of all mysteries to man. Those beings who, in the great chain of creation, are above him, may haply perceive and develop the sources from which his impulses emanate. But, the more intensely man turns his mental eye upon his own mind, the more dazzled and confounded it beSuch examinations have led the German metaphysi cians into the wildest absurdities. Nor have they been unproductive of extravagance in a certain distinguished land, which I could mention, where they have given rise to a sect of poets and philo-critics, whose imaginative faculties have absolutely emancipated themselves from all the restrictions of common sense.

I may, however, be permitted to observe, that some writers pretend to account for presentiments and extraordinary apparent associations, by reducing them to the same cause, viz. the previous existence of the soul. Presentiments, they say, are no other than the exertion of that natural sagacity which the mind has acquired, by having been placed before in circumstances resembling, in some degree, those in which it stands when those presentiments are conceived. In the same way, extraor dinary associations are no other than faint recollections of feelings which the soul had experienced in a previous life, and which are excited by some agent, similar to one that had impressed the memory in that prior state of existence.

This doctrine must not be confounded with that of Pythagoras; who, as every one knows, held that the soul migrated from