Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/104

Rh When the character of an individual is deeply imbued with poetic feeling, there is a corresponding disposition to look beyond the dull realities of common life, to the ideal relation of things, as they connect themselves with our passions and feelings, or with the previous impressions we have received of loveliness or grandeur, repose or excitement, harmony or beauty, in the universe around us. This disposition, it must be granted, has been, in some instances, a formidable obstacle to the even tenor of the wise man's walk on earth; but let us not, while solicitous to avoid the abuse of poetic feeling, rush into the opposite excess of neglecting this high and heaven-born principle altogether.

It is the taste of the present times to invest the material with an immeasurable extent of importance beyond the ideal. It is the tendency of modern education to instil into the youthful mind the necessity of knowing, rather than the advantage of feeling. And, to a certain extent, "knowledge is power;" but neither is knowledge all that we live for, nor power all that we enjoy. There are deep mysteries in the book of nature which all can feel, but none will ever understand, until the veil of mortality shall be withdrawn. There are stirrings in the heart of man which constitute the very essence of his being, and which power can neither satisfy nor subdue. Yet this mystery reveals more truly than the clearest proofs, or mightiest deductions of science, that a master-hand has been for ages, and is still at work, above, beneath, and around us; and this moving principle is for ever reminding us, that, in our nature, we inherit the germs of a future existence, over which time has no influence, and the grave no victory.

If, then, for man it be absolutely necessary that he should sacrifice the poetry of his nature for the realities of material