pectin the door to open, and seems stane-deaf, at least on ae side o' the head, only she's no sulky, and about her mouth ye see a sort o' a struggle to haud in a smile, that makes her look, though somewhat prim, certainly-rather bonny; on the third meetin, at a freen's house, you sit aside her at denner, and try to fin' out the things she likes best, nor mind a rebuff or twa, till ye get first a sole on her plate, and syne a veal cutlet, and after that the breist o' a chicken, and feenally, an apple-tart wi' custard; and sae muckle the better, if afore that a jeely and a bit blamange, takin tent to ask her to drink wine wi' you, and even facetiously pretendin to gie her a caulker, wi' an expression that shows you're thinking o' far ither dew atween the openin o' her lips, that noo, for the first time can be fairly said to lauch alang wi' the licht that seems safter and safter in her heaven-blue een; the morning after of coorse you gie her a ca', and you fin' her at the work-table, in a gauze goun and braided hair, wi' her wee fit on a stool, peepin out like a moose-tak her on the whole, as she sits, as lovely-lookin a lassie as a Shepherd may see on a simmer's day-and what's your delicht, when layin aside her work, a purple silk-purse interwoven wi' gold, she rises a' at ance like some bricht bird frae the grund, and comes floating towards ye wi' an outstretched arm, terminating in a haun o' which the back and the fingers are white as the driven snaw! And as for the pawm-if a sweet shock o' electricity gangs na to your heart as you touch it, then either are your nerves non-conductors, or you're a chiel chiseled out o' the whinstane rock. Your fifth meetin, we shall say, is a' by chance, though in a lane a mile ayont the sooburbs, that was ance the avenue to a ha' noo dilapidated, and that is shaded in its solitariness wi' a hummin arch o' umbrawgeous auld lime-trees. Hoo sweet the unexpected recognition! For there was nae tryst-for, believe me, there was nae tryst—I was takin a poetical dauner awa frae the smoky city's stir, and she, like an angel o' charity, was returnin frae a puir widow's hovel, where she had been drappin, as if frae heaven, her weekly alms. The sixth time you see her -for you hae keepit count o' every ane, and they're a' written on your heart-is on the Saturday nicht in the house o' her ain parents, nane at hame but themsels-a family party—and the front-door locked again' a' intruders, that may ring the bell as they like; for entrance is there nane, except through What'n a wife, thinks the keyhole to the domestic fairies. your heart, would be sic a dochter! the weans! The sweet thocht, but half-suppressed, accompanies her, as she moves about through the room, in footsteps Fine-ear himsel could hardly hear; and showerin aroun' her the cheerfu' beauty o' her innocence, "Sic as virtue ever wears When gay good-nature dresses her in smiles!" Hark! at a look frae her father the virgin sings! An auld Scottish sang-and then a hymn-but whilk is the maist haly it would be hard to tell, for if the hymn be fu' o' a humble and a contrite heart, sae is the sang o' a heart overflowing wi' ruth and pity, and in its ain happiness tenderly alive to a' human grief! The seventh meetin's at the kirk on the Sabbath-and we sit thegither in the same pew, havin walked a' by our lanes across the silent braes; and never never in this warld can love be love, until the twa mortal creatures, wha may hae pledged their troth in voiceless promises, hae assurance gien them, as they join in prayer within the House o' God, that it is hallowed by Religion. North. My dear James! happy for ever be your hearth. Shepherd. Bless you, sir. But let's be crouse as weel's canty. That's rich chocklat. North. “And thus I won my Genevieve, Tickler. And call you that, James, literary conversation! Shepherd. Hoots-I'm no sure, gentlemen, if an age is the better o' bein' especially charactereesed by an inclination for literatur. North. Nor am I. Among the pleasures and pursuits of our ordinary life, there are none which take stronger hold on minds of intelligence and sensibility than those of literature; nor is it possible to look without pleasure and approbation upon the application of a young ingenuous mind to such avocations. Yet a suspicion will often steal in among such reflections, that there is some secret peril lurking in this path 1 Canty-bold, as well as cheerful. 310 THE DANGERS OF LITERATURE. of flowers, which may make it necessary for the mind in the midst of its delights to be jealous of its safety. Shepherd. You're no gaun to thraw cauld water, sir, on Poetry? North. Hear me out, my dear James. Literature brings back to the mind, in a kind of softened reflection, those emotions which belong in nature to the agitating scenes of reality. From the storms of society-from the agony of forlorn hope-from the might of heroism-from the transport of all passions—there is brought to us in our own still seclusion the image of life; our intelligence and sensibility are awakened, and with delight and admiration, with a shadowy representation to ourselves of that which has been absolutely acted, we consider the imaginary world. Shepherd. Nae harm sure in that, sir. North. Love, and hope, and fear, and sorrow, shadowy resemblances of great passions, pass through our hearts; and in the secret haunts of imagination we indulge in contemplating for our mere pleasure that which has consumed the strength and the whole being of our kind. We sever ourselves for a moment from the world to become sympathising and applauding spectators of that very drama in which our own part awaits us. We turn the dread reality of existence into a show for indolent delight. Shepherd. That's beautifu' langage, sir. North. Indeed we can scarcely describe, James, the pleasures which our imagination seeks in works of literature, without indicating the twofold and various tendency of its pleasures. As the image of our condition warms our heart towards our kind, as it enlarges our conception of our own or their nature, it tends, by raising our minds, to fit us more nobly for the discharge of its duties. But as it gives us without reality the emotions we need, as it indulges the sensibility which it is flattering to ourselves to feel,—as it separates for our gratification the grandeur of heroic strength from its endurance, and gives us the consciousness of all that is good in our own nature, without the pain or peril which puts its strength to the proof,-it tends to soothe and beguile us with illusory complacency in our own virtue,-to sever our spirits from that hard and fearful strife, in which alone we ought to think that we can rightly know ourselves— THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE. 311 and therewithal it tends in the effect to sever us from our kind, to whom it seems, nevertheless, to unite us in our dreams and visions. Shepherd. Listenin to you, sir, is like lookin into a well: at first ye think it clear, but no verra deep; but ye let drap in a peeble, and what a length of time ere the air-bells come up to the surface frae the profoond! North. To the young mind, therefore, James, the indulgence in the pleasures which imagination finds in the silent companionship of books, may be regarded as often very dangerous. It is unconsciously training itself to a separation from men during the very years which should train it to the performance of the work in which it must mingle with them. It is learning to withdraw itself from men, to retire into itself, to love and prefer itself, to be its own delight and its own world. And yet a course meanwhile awaits it, in which the greater part of time, strength, thought, desire, must be given up to avocations which demand it from itself to others; in which it must forego its own delight, or rather must find its delight in service which abstracts it from itself wholly, and chains it to this weary world. Shepherd. True as holy writ. North. Life allows only lowly virtue. Its discipline requires of us the humblest pleasures and the humblest service; and only from these by degrees does it permit us to ascend to great emotions and high duties. It is a perpetual denial to ambition and requital of humility. Shepherd. For mony a lang year did I feel that, sir. An' I'll continue to feel't to the hour I close my een on sun, moon, and stars. North. But imagination is ambitious, and not humble. It leaps at once to the highest, and forms us to overlook the humble possibilities, and to scorn the lowly service of earth. Not measuring ourselves with reality, we grow giants in imagination; but the dreamed giant has vanished with the first sun-ray that strikes on our eyes and awakes us. Shepherd. Yet wha will say that the pleasures o' imagination are to be withheld frae youth? North. They cannot be withheld, James, for the spirit is full of imagination, and has power within itself for its own delusion. But bad education may withhold from imagination 312 IMAGINATION OUGHT NOT TO UNNERVE FOR ACTION. the nobler objects of its delight, and leave it fettered to life, a spirit of power, struggling and consuming itself in vain efforts. Shepherd. What, then, in plain words, is the bona-feedy truth o' the subjeck? North. I conceive that it is the habitual indulgence that is injurious, and not the knowledge by imagination of its greatest objects; and I should conceive that if we are to do anything with reference to imagination, it should be, as the years of youth rise upon the mind, to connect its pleasure with the severest action of intellect, by never offering to the mind in books the unrestrained wild delight of imagination; but indulging to it the consciousness of that faculty only in the midst of true and philosophical knowledge. Shepherd. In science, art, history, men, and nature. Eh? North. The pleasures of literature are thought to make the mind effeminate, which they do, inasmuch as the cultivation of letters is at variance with the service of life. The service of life strengthens the mind, by calling upon it always to labour for a present or definite purpose,—to submit its desires, its pleasures, rigidly to an object. It does not deny pleasure-it yields it; but only in subordination or subservience to a purpose. It requires and teaches it to frame its whole action by its will, and to become master of itself. And whether the purposes of life are good and honourable, or debasing, it has this effect of strengthening the mind for action. It is the part of imagination to raise the mind, and to nourish its sensibility; but it must not be allowed to unnerve and disorder its force of action. Shepherd. You're beginning to talk like the Pedlar in The Excursion. North. I do not know that you could pay me a higher compliment, James. Shepherd. Darkenin counsel wi' the multiplication o' vain words. A' the great moral philosophical writers that I hae read, baith in prose and in verse, are in expression simple, and say, in fact, far mair than they seem to do; whereas Wordsworth amaist aye, and no unfrequently yoursel, are ower gorgeous in your apparel, and say, in fact, less than you seem to do, though it's but seldom you dinna baith utter, even amang your vapidest verbosity, a gey hantle o' invaluable truth. |