Spring.-MILTON. Now gentle gales, Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole Of Araby the blest; with such delay Well-pleas'd they slack their course, and many a league Cheer'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles. Mercy.-SHAKSPEARE. The quality of mercy is not strain'd; The deserted mansion. Forsaken stood the hall, The man of a cultivated imagination.-CAMPBELL. His path shall be where streamy mountains swell Their shadowy grandeur o'er the narrow dell, * Pronounced et. Where mouldering piles and forests intervene, To watch the dying notes !—and start, and smile! Evening sounds.-GOLDSMITH. Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close, There as I pass'd with careless steps and slow, Moonlight.-POPE. When the fair moon, refulgent lamp of night, Morning sounds.-BEATTIE. But who the melodies of morn can tell? The wild brook babbling down the mountain's side; The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell; The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark; Crown'd with her pail the tripping milk-maid sings; The beauties of Nature.—BEATTIE. O how canst thou renounce the boundless store O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven? LESSON VIII. The advantages of a taste for natural history.—WOOD. WHEN a young person who has enjoyed the benefit of a liberal education, instead of leading a life of indolence, dissipation, or vice, employs himself in studying the marks of infinite wisdom and goodness which are manifested in every part of the visible creation, we know not which we ought most to congratulate, the publick, or the individual. Selftaught naturalists are often found to make no little progress in knowledge, and to strike out many new lights, by the mere aid of original genius and patient application. But the well educated youth engages in these pursuits with peculiar advantage. He takes more comprehensive views, is able to consult a greater variety of authors, and, from the early habits of his mind, is more accurate and more methodical in all his investigations. The world at large, therefore, cannot fail to be benefited by his labours; and the value of the enjoyments, which at the same time he secures to himself, is beyond all calculation. No tedious, vacant hour ever makes him wish for he knows not what-complain, he knows not why. Never does a restless impatience at having nothing to do, compel him to seek a momentary stimulus to his dormant powers in the tumultuous pleasures of the intoxicating cup, or the agitating suspense of the game of chance. Whether he be at home or abroad, in every different clime, and in every season of the year, universal nature is before him, and invites him to a banquet richly replenished with whatever can invigorate his understanding, or gratify his 'mental taste. The earth on which he treads, the air in which he moves, the sea along the margin of which he walks, all teem with objects that keep his attention perpetually awake, excite him to healthful activity, and charm him with an ever varying succession of the beautiful, the wonderful, the useful, and the new. And if, in conformity with the direct tendency of such occupations, he rises from the creature to the Creator, and considers the duties which naturally result from his own situation and rank in this vast system of being, he will derive as much satisfaction from the anticipation of the future, as from the experience of the present, and the recollection of the past. The mind of the pious naturalist is always cheerful, always animated with the noblest and most benign feelings. Every repeated observation, every unexpected discovery, directs his thoughts to the great Source of all order, and all good; and harmonizes all his faculties with the general voice of nature. -The men Whom nature's works can charm, with God himself With his conceptions; act upon his plan, LESSON IX. The pleasures of a cultivated Imagination.—DUGALD as THE attention of young persons may be seduced, by wellselected works of fiction, from the present objects of the senses, and the thoughts accustomed to dwell on the past, the distant or the future; and in the same proportion in which this effect is, in any instance, accomplished, "the man," Dr. Johnson has justly remarked," is exalted in the scale of intellectual being." The tale of fiction will probably be soon laid aside with the toys and rattles of infancy; but the habits which it has contributed to fix, and the powers which it has brought into a state of activity, will remain with the possessor, permanent and inestimable treasures, to his latest hour. Nor is it to the young alone that these observations are to be exclusively applied. Instances have frequently occur red of individuals, in whom the power of imagination has, at a more advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an ac cession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What en chantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind awakening, as if from a trance, to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye "is purged of its film ;" and things the most familiar and unnoticed, disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events which were lately beheld with indifference, occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul: the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of the pleasures of vicissitude, conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man, who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements, his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth: "The meanest floweret of the vale, |