6

NIGHTINGALES AND OWLS.

appear to be ae common langage-I sometimes understaun' you no that verra indistinctly-and when we tackle in our talk to the great interests o' humanity, we're philosophers o' the same school, sir, and see the inner warld by the self-same central licht. We're incomprehensible creturs, are we menthat's beyond a dout;-and let us be born and bred as we may-black, white, red, or a deep bricht, burnished copperin spite o' the division o' tongues, there's nae division o' hearts, for it's the same bluid that gangs circulatin through our mortal tenements, carrying alang on its tide the same freightage o' feelins and thochts, emotions, affections, and passions-though, like the ships o' different nations, they a' hoist their ain colours, and prood prood are they o' their leopards, or their crescent-moons, or their stars, or their stripes o' buntin;-but see! when it blaws great guns, hoo they a' fling owerboard their storm-anchors, and when their cables pairt, hoo they a' seek the shelterin lee o' the same michty breakwater, a belief in the being and attributes of the One Living God.-But was ye never out in the daytime, sir?

English Opium-Eater. Frequently.

Shepherd. But then it's sae lang sin' syne, that in memory the sunlicht maun seem amaist like the moonlicht,-sic, indeed, even wi' us that rise with the laverock, and lie doun wi' the lintie, is the saftenin-the shadin—the darkenin power o' the Past, o' Time the Prime Minister o' Life, wha, in spite o' a' Opposition, carries a' his measures by a silent vote, and aften, wi' a weary wecht o' taxes, bows a' the wide warld doun to the verra dust.

English Opium-Eater. In the South my familiars have been the nightingales, in the North the owls. Both are merry birds the one singing, and the other shouting, in moods of midnight mirth.-Nor in my deepest, darkest fits of meditation or of melancholy, did the one or the other ever want my sympathies,—whether piping at the root of the hedgerow, or hooting from the trunk of the sycamore-else all still both on earth and in heaven.

Shepherd. Ye maun hae seen mony a beautifu' and mony a sublime sicht, sir, in the Region, lost to folk like us, wha try to keep oursels awauk a' day, and asleep a' nicht—and your sowl, sir, maun hae acquired something o' the serene and solemn character o' the sunleft skies. And true it is, Mr De

SHAKESPEARE'S

SEVEN AGES."

7

Quinshy, that ye hae the voice o' a nicht-wanderin man-laigh and lown-pitched on the key o' a wimplin burn speakin to itsel in the silence, aneath the moon and stars.

Tickler. 'Tis pleasant, James, to hear all us four talking at one time your bass, my counter, Mr De Quincey's tenor,

and North's treble

North. Treble, indeed!

Tickler. Ay, childish treble

Shepherd. Come, nae quarrellin yet. That's a quotation frae Shakespeare, and there's nae insult in a mere quotation. I never could admire Wullie's Seven Ages. They're puir, and professional.

English Opium-Eater. Professional, but not poor, Mr Hogg. Shakespeare intended not in those pictures to show the most secret spirit of the Seasons of Life. In one sense they are superficial, but the sympathies touched thereby may be most profound-for the familiar, when given by a master's hand, awakens the unfamiliar-yea, the grotesque gives birth to the grand-the simple to the sublime and plain and easy as are the steps of that stair, made of earth's common stone, and without balustrades of cunning or gorgeous carving-yet do they finally conduct us, as we ascend, to the portico, and then into the penetralia, of a solemn temple-even the temple of life. For is not that an oracular line,

"Sans eyes, sans nose, sans teeth, sans everything."

Shepherd. Faith, I believe it is. I was gaun to gie ye prose picturs o' the Seven Ages o' my ain pentin'-but I'll keep them for anither Noctes. And noo, sir, wull ye be sae gude as help yoursel to a glass o' calcavalla-or is't caracalla ?—and then launch awa, as Allan Cunningham says, wi' " a wet sheet and

This,

a flowing sail," into the sea of metapheesics. English Opium-Eater. It is incumbent on every human soul, Mr Hogg, to bear within itself a Fountain of Will. Fichte called its I-the Ego of each individual. This should be active and full of all power, endless in the production of desires-only coerced and ruled by knowledge and apprehensions of right and wrong, and sundry tendernesses.

Shepherd. I hear a response to that, sir, in my ain sowlbut no that very distinck.

1 Pentin-painting.

8

SYMPATHY.-INDIVIDUALITY.

English Opium-Eater. To the forming mind, which is yet uninstructed and blind, the discovery by sympathy of their judgments over it, is useful to instruct, to give it knowledge of itself, of them, and of the constitution of things.

Shepherd. Didna Adam Smith say something like that, sir?1 North. Yes, James, but not precisely so.

English Opium Eater. But when the mind is formed, then it ought to use that sympathy only as a means of tenderness— I mean that sympathy which discovers to it the operation of other minds. That sympathy ought to be in subjection to its self-moving principles and powers. Yes, Mr Hogg, Adam Smith is right in thinking that a great part of actual morality is from this operation of sympathy. There are numbers of people to whom it is almost a recognised and stated law or truth, that the approbation and condemnation of society is the reason for doing and not doing. But hear me, sir. The tendency of the Christian Religion is to produce the I-the Ego-and draw out of itself—that is, the Individuality-all the rules of action. Therefore, it is the perfect Law of Liberty. In other words, at the same time that it is perfect liberty, it is perfect law. The Jewish law is wholly external—that is, not that it ends and is completed in things external, but its power is from without, and from without it binds. The other binds from within. Indeed, it does not so

much bind as reign.

Shepherd. A fine and good distinction.

English Opium-Eater. Now, all people who are bound from without, are Jews of this earth. They are held, regulated, constricted, and constructed,-edified, that is, built up, of a quantity of intercatenated ideas given to them, which they had no part in making, in and by which they desire and trust to live. But life is not there, except that life is everywhere. The number of them was great among old-fashioned people, who lived, moved, breathed, and had their being among a set of hereditary rules, many of them good, many indifferent, and many ridiculous-but, on the whole, destroying the Individuality, the I-and lying like a perpetual, although unfelt weight on the will.

Shepherd. Strickly speakin, no free augents.

1 In his admirable work entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith, born at Kirkcaldy in 1723, died in Edinburgh in 1790.

SELF-ANNIHILATION IS SELF-TRIUMPH.

English Opium-Eater. Now, my dear James, Poetry is of the earth, a spirit analogous to Christianity. It is free, yet under full law, producing out of itself both action and guidance, both "law and impulse." Poetry is in willing harmony with the world-a vast law voluntarily embraced, and always anew embraced, hence, evermore and to the last, spontaneous. The essence of Christianity, again, is, that the human being becomes without a will, and yet has the strongest will. It is self in the utmost degree triumphant, by means of the utter annihilation of self. For the Christian seeks absolute conformity of his will to the will of God, whatever that may be, and however promulgated. He desires, and is capable of, no other happiness. It would be misery to him to imagine himself divided from that will. The conforming to that will is, then, in the utmost degree, inmost utter spontaneity, perfect liberty, and yet absolute law. But in this state, his own will, which, towards God, is nothing but the resignation of all will, is towards all human beings utter and irresistible. He can speak and act; he can do whatever is to be done; he can rule the spirits of men; he can go conquering nations in the power of the Word, and the sword of the Spirit. Therefore, so he is at once self-triumphant and self-annihilated. He is selfannihilated, for he has given himself up; he feels himself not -is nothing-mere conformity-passiveness-manifestations of an agency. He feels only the presence, the spirit, the power in which he lives. He lives in God. At the same time he is self-triumphant. For what is self, but the innermost and very nature of the being, the "intima et ipsissima essentia?" All that is subsequent and accidental is not self; but this Christian Love, as it advances, throws off, expels more and more, everything that is subsequent and accidental, bringing out into activity, consciousness, and power, that nature which was given with being to the soul. Moreover, this state of surrendered, happy Love, searches that nature with pleasures nothing short of ecstasy. So that the ultimate extinction of self becomes its unspeakable happiness; and self, annihilated, exalted in glory, and bathed in bliss, is selftriumphant, and Death is Immortality.

Shepherd. O man! if them that's kickin up sic a row the noo about the doctrine o' the Christian religion, had looked intil the depths o' their ain natur wi' your een, they had a'

10

RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.-DUTY.

been as mum as mice keekin roun' the end o' a pew, in place o' scrauchin like pyats on the leads, or a hoodie wi' a sair throat.

English Opium-Eater. I know not to what you allude, Mr Hogg, for I live out of what is called the Religious World.

Shepherd. A loud, noisy, vulgar, bawlin, brawlin, wranglin, branglin, routin, and roarin warld-maist unfittin indeed for the likes o' you, sir, wha, under the shadows o' woods and mountains, at midnight, communes wi' your ain heart, and is still.

English Opium-Eater. No religious controversy in modern days, sir, ever seemed to me to reach back into those recesses in my spirit where the sources lie from which well out the bitter or the sweet waters-the sins and the miseries-the holinesses and the happinesses, of our incomprehensible being!

Shepherd. And if they ever do, hoo drumly the stream!

English Opium-Eater. Better even a mere sentimental religion, which, though shallow, is pure, than those audacious doctrines broached by Pride-in-Humility, who, blind as the bat, essays the flight of the eagle, and ignorant o' the lowest natures, yet claims acquaintance with the decrees of the Most High.

Shepherd. Ay-better far a sentimental-a poetical religion, as you say, sir-though that's far frae being the true thing either for o' a' the Three Blessings o' Man, the last is the best-Love, Poetry, and Religion. What'n a book micht be written, I've aften thocht-and aiblins may hae said—on thae three words!

English Opium-Eater. Yes, my dear James-Beauty, the soul of Poetry, is indeed divine-but there is that which is diviner still-and that is DUTY.

"Flowers laugh before her on their beds,
And fragrance in her footing treads;

She doth preserve the stars from wrong,

And the eternal heavens through her are fresh and strong."

Shepherd. Wha said that?

English Opium-Eater. Who?-Wordsworth. And the Edinburgh Review-laughed.