Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/111

106 green. "Don't say so, my dear; it is not parsley;" said the father several times, in serious concern for his little boy's veracity. Alas! poor child! the only notion it had ever formed of anything fresh and green, was of the parsley it had seen garnishing a dish; and this idea, with which its imagination was so busy, was to be utterly extinguished, because it was only an idea, and not a reality. The child, if it wished to amuse itself, would have to begin again with another set of ideas, with the faded worsted, and the little old stool it had played with so often before. It is needless to say, that with the extinction of its notion about the green parsley, its pleasant allusion was gone. It might strike, and pull, and lift, or act the mere animal in any other way, for under such circumstances there was little else to be done; but it might not use again the remembrance of a sprig of green parsley, so as to beautify with this image the little world in which it was pent up.

The father of this child was a talented and excellent man, himself an enthusiastic admirer of poetry, but he had probably never reflected upon the important place which imagination occupies in the minds of those who enjoy the purest happiness, as well as those to which the greatest influence over others belongs. He was not one, however, who could have failed to observe that the language of the Holy Scriptures is pre-eminent in its display of the exercise of imagination. In all the most impressive sermons, too, and in all those appeals to the human heart which produce the strongest conviction, and the deepest effect, imagination is the instrument chiefly made use of, although often unconsciously, by the speaker.

Since then we can not, if we would, destroy this faculty, and since, moreover, it is capable of elevating, at the same time that it enlarges, the sphere of our enjoyments, we should seek for it an appropriate and healthy exercise, even in the season of early youth. And here it is especially to be observed, that it is to the uninformed, the indolent, and the low-minded, that imagination is the most dangerous in its exercise. When the mind is well stored, as well as well regulated, the habits active and industrious, and the taste truly elevated and refined, works of imagination, and specimens of art, as a means of gratification, may be