nity, and finally bring the heart itself under subjection to a corrupted understanding. I am anxious to describe to you what I have experienced or seen of the dispositions and feelings that will aid every other Cause of danger, and tend to lay the Mind open to the infection of all those falsehoods in opinion and sentiment, which constitute the degeneracy of the age.

Though it would not be difficult to prove, that the mind of the Country is much enervated since the days of her strength, and brought down from its moral dignity, it is not yet so forlorn of all good, there is nothing in the face of the times so dark and saddening, and repulsiveas to shock the first feelings of a generous Spirit, and drive it at once to seek refuge in the elder ages of our greatness. There yet survives so much of the character bred up through long years of liberty, danger, and glory, that even what this age produces bears traces of those that are past, and it still yields enough of beautiful, and splendid, and bold, to captivate an ardent but untutored imagination. And in this real excellence is the beginning of danger for it is the first spring of that excessive admiration of the age which at last brings down to its own level a mind born above it. If there existed only the general disposition of all who are formed with a high capacity for good, to be rather credulous of excellence than suspiciously and severely just, the error would not be carried far:-but there are, to a young Mind, in this Country and at this time, numerous powerful causes concurring to inflame this disposition, till the excess of the affection above the worth of its object, is beyond all computation. To trace these causes it will be necessary to follow the history of a pure and noble mind from the first moment of that critical passage from seclusion to the world, which changes all the circumstances of its intellectual existence, shews it for the first time the real scene of living men, and calls up the new feeling of numerous relations by which it is to be connected with them.

To the young adventurer in life, who enters upon his course with such a mind, every thing seems made for delusion. He comes with a spirit whose dearest feelings and highest thoughts have sprung up under the influences of Nature. He transfers to the realities of life the high wild fancies of visionary boyhood: he brings with him into the world the passions of solitary and untamed

imagination, and hopes which he has learned from dreams. Those dreams have been of the great and wonderful, and lovely, of all which in these has yet been disclosed to him his thoughts have dwelt among the wonders of Nature, and among the loftiest spirits of Men-Heroes, and Sages, and Saints;-those whose deeds, and thoughts, and hopes, were high above ordinary Mortality, have been the familiar Companions of his soul. To love and to admire has been the joy of his existence. Love and admiration are the pleasures he will demand of the world. For these he has searched eagerly into the ages that are gone but with more ardent and peremptory expectation he requires them of that in which his own lot is cast :-for to look on life with hopes of happiness is a necessity of his nature, and to him there is no happiness but such as is surrounded with excellence.

See first how this spirit will affect his judgment of moral character, in those with whom chance may connect him in the common relations of life. It is of those with whom he is to live, that his Soul first demands this food of her desires. From their conversation, their looks, their actions, their lives, she asks for excellence. To ask from all and too ask in vain, would be too dismal to hear: it would disturb him too deeply with doubt and perplexity, and fear. In this hope, and in the revolting of his thoughts from the possibility of disappointment, there is a preparation for self-delusion: there is an unconscious determination that his soul shall be satisfied; an obstinate will to find good everywhere. And thus his first study of mankind is a continued effort to read in them the expression of his own feelings. He catches at every uncertain shew and shadowy resemblance of what he seeks; and unsuspicious in innocence, he is first won with those appearances of good which are in fact only false pretensions. But this error is not carried far: for there is a sort of instinct of rectitude, which like the pressure of a talisman given to baffle the illusions of enchantment, warns a pure mind against hypocrisy.-There is another delusion more difficult to resist and more slowly dissipated. It is when he finds, as he often will, some of the real features of excellence in the purity of their native form. For then his rapid imagination will gather round them all the kindred features that are wanting to perfect beauty; and make for him, where he could not find, the moral creature of his

expectation-peopling, even from this human world, his little circle of affection, with forms as fair as his heart desired for its love.

But when, from the eminence of life which he has reached, he lifts up his eyes, and sends out his spirit to range over the great scene that is opening before him and around him, the whole prospect of civilized life—so wide and so magnificent :~when he begins to contemplate, in their various stations of power or splendour, the leaders of mankind-those men on whose wisdom are hung the fortunes of nations-those whose genius and valour wield the heroism of a people ;-or those, in no inferior "pride of place," whose sway is over the Mind of Society,Chiefs in the realm of Imagination.-Interpreters of the Secrets of Nature,-Rulers of Human Opinion-what wonder, when he looks on all this living scene, that his heart should burn with strong affection, that he should feel that his own happiness will be for ever interwoven with the interests of mankind?-Here then the sanguine hope with which he looks on life, will again be blended with his passionate desire of excellence; and he will still be impelled to single out some, on whom his imagination and his hopes may repose. To whatever department of human thought or action his mind is turned with interest, either by the sway of public passion or by its own impulse -among Statesmen, and Warriors, and Philosophers, and Poets, he will distinguish some favoured names on which he may satisfy his admiration. And there, just as in the little circle of his own acquaintance, seizing eagerly on every merit they possess, he will supply more from his own credulous hope, completing real with imagined excellence, till living men, with all their imperfections, become to him the representatives of his perfect ideal creation-Till, multiplying his objects of reverence, as he enlarges his prospect of life, he will have surrounded himself with idols of his own hands, and his imagination will seem to discern a glory in the Countenance of the Age, which is but the reflection of its own effulgence.

He will possess, therefore, in the creative power of generous hope, a preparation for illusory and exaggerated admiration of the age in which he lives and this predisposition will meet with many favouring circumstances, when he has grown up under a System of Education like ours, which (as perhaps all Education must that is placed

in the hands of a distinct and embodied Class, who therefore bring to it the peculiar and hereditary prejudices of their Order) has controuled his imagination to a reverence of former times, with an unjust contempt of his own.For no sooner does he break loose from this Controul, and. begin to feel, as he contemplates the world for himself, how much there is surrounding him on all sides, that gratifies his noblest desires, than there springs up in him an indignant sense of injustice, both to the age and to his. own mind: and he is impelled warmly and eagerly to give loose to the feelings that have been held in bondage, to seek out and to delight in finding excellence that will vindicate the insulted world, while it justifies too, his resentment of his own undue subjection, and exalts the value of his new-found liberty.

Add to this, that secluded as he has been from knowledge, and, in the imprisoning circle of one System of ideas, cut off from his share in the thoughts and feelings that are stirring among men, he finds himself, at the first steps of his liberty, in a new intellectual world. Passions and powers which he knew not of, start up in his Soul. The human Mind, which he had seen but under one aspect, now presents to him a thousand unknown and beautiful forms. He sees it, in its varying powers, glancing over Nature with restless curiosity, and with impetuous energy striving for ever against the barriers which she has placed around it; sees it with divine power creating from dark materials living beauty, and fixing all its high and transported fancies in imperishable forms In the world of Knowledge, and Science, and Art, and Genius, he treads as a stranger:-in the confusion of new sensations, bewildered in delights, all seems beautiful; all seems admirable. And therefore he engages eagerly in the pursuit of false or insufficient Philosophy; he is won by the allurements of licentious Art; he follows with wonder the irregular transports of undisciplined Imagination.-Nor, where the objects of his admiration are worthy, is he yet skilful to distinguish between the acquisitions which the age has made for itself, and that large proportion of its wealth which it has only inherited but in his delight of discovery and growing knowledge, all that is new to his own mind seems to himi new-born to the world.-To himself every fresh idea appears instruction; every new exertion, acquisition of

power: he seems just called to the consciousness of himself, and to his true place in the intellectual world; and gratitude and reverence towards those to whom he owes this recovery of his dignity, tends much to subject him to the dominion of minds that were not formed by Nature to be the leaders of opinion.

All the tumult and glow of thought and imagination, which seizes on a mind of power in such a scene, tends irresistibly to bind it by stronger attachment of love and admiration to its own age. And there is one among the new emotions which belong to its entrance on the world -one-almost the noblest of all-in which this exaltation of the Age is essentially mingled. The faith in the perpetual progression of human nature towards perfection, gives birth to such lofty dreams, as secure to it the devout assent of Imagination; and it will be yet more grateful to a heart just opening to hope, flushed with the consciousness of new strength, and exulting in the prospect of destined achievements. There is, therefore, almost a Compulsion on generous and enthusiastic Spirits, as they trust that the future shall transcend the present, to believe that the present transcends the past. It is only on an undue love and admiration of their own Age, that they can build their confidence in the amelioration of the human race. Nor is this faith,-which, in some shape, will always be the creed of virtue,-without apparent reason, even in the erroneous form in which the young adopt it. For there is a perpetual acquisition of knowledge and art, -an unceasing progress in many of the modes of exertion of the human mind, a perpetual unfolding of virtues with the changing manners of society and it is not for a young mind to compare what is gained with what has passed away; to discern, that amidst the incessant intellectual activity of the race, the intellectual power of individual minds may be falling off;-and that amidst accumulating knowledge lofty Science may disappear :and still less, to judge, in the more complicated moral character of a people, what is progression, and what is decline.

Into a mind possessed with this persuasion of the perpetual progress of man, there may even imperceptibly steal both from the belief itself, and from many of the views on which it rests-something like a distrust of the wisdom of great men of former ages, and with the reverence—which