miserable, of pride and humility, in the various forms which these assume.

These, if not all, are at least the most important of our immediate emotions.

The first emotions, then, which we have to consider, of that order which has no reference to time, are Cheerfulness and Melancholy.

Cheerfulness, which, at every moment, may be considered only as a modification of joy, is a sort of perpetual gladness. It is that state which, in every one, even in those of the most gloomy disposition, remains for some time after any event of unexpected happiness, though the event itself may not be present to their conception at the time; and which, in many of gayer temperament, seems to be almost a constant frame of the mind. In the early period of life, this alacrity of spirit is like that bodily alacrity, with which every limb, as it bounds along, seems to have a delightful consciousness of its vigour. To suspend the mental cheerfulness, for any length of time, is then as difficult as to keep fixed, for any length of time, those muscles to which exercise is almost a species of repose, and repose itself fatigue. In more advanced life, this sort of animal gladness is rarer. We are not happy, without knowing why we are happy; and though we may still be susceptible of joy, perhaps as intense, or even more intense than in our years of unreflecting merriment, our joy must arise from a cause of corresponding importance. Yet, even down to the close of extreme old age, there still recur occasionally some gleams of this almost instinctive happiness, like a vision of other years, or like those brilliant and unexpected coruscations, which sometimes flash along the midnight of a wintry sky, and of which we are too

VOL. III.

D

ignorant of the circumstances that produce them, to know when to predict their return.

Of Melancholy, I may remark, in like manner, that it is a state of mind, which even the gayest must feel for some time after any calamity, and which many feel for the greater part of life, without any particular calamity to which they can ascribe it. Without knowing why they should be sorrowful, they still are sorrowful, even though the weathercock should not have moved a single point nearer to the east, nor a single additional cloud given a little more shade to the vivid brightness of the sun.

I need not speak of that extreme depression, which constitutes the most miserable form of insanity, the most miserable disease; that fixed and deadly gloom of soul, to which there is no sunshine in the summer sky, no verdure or blossom in the summer field, no kindness in affection, no purity in the very remembrance of innocence itself; no heaven, but hell,-no God, but a demon of wrath. With what strange feelings, of more than commiseration, must we imagine Cowper to have written that picturesque description, of which he was himself the subject:

Look where he comes. In this embower'd alcove
Stand close conceal'd, and see a statue move;
Lips busy, and eyes fix'd, foot falling slow,
Arms hanging idly down, hands clasp'd below!-
That tongue is silent now; that silent tongue
Could argue once, could jest, or join the song,
Could give advice, could censure or commend,
Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend.—
Now, neither heathy wilds, nor scenes as fair
As ever recompensed the peasant's care,-
Nor gales that catch the scent of blooming groves,
And waft it to the mourner as he roves,

1 Then, in the original.

Can call up life, into his faded eye,

That passes all he sees unheeded by.1

Cases of this dreadful kind, however, are fortunately rare: but some degree of melancholy all must have experienced; that internal sadness which we diffuse unconsciously from our own mind over the brightest and gayest objects without, almost in the same manner, and with the same unfailing certainty, as we invest them with the colours which are only in our mental vision.

The scenery, which Eloisa describes, is sufficiently gloomy of itself. But with what additional gloom does she cloud it in her description:

The darksome pines that o'er yon rock reclined
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,
The wandering streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid:
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long sounding aisles and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose.
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades every flower, and darkens every green;
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,

And breathes a browner horror on the woods. 2

Of the melancholy of common life, there are two species that have little resemblance. There is a sullen gloom, which disposes to unkindness, and every bad

1 Cowper's Poems; Retirement, v. 283-286, 289-292, 331, 332, 337-340.

Pope's Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, v. 155-170.

passion; a fretfulness, in all the daily and hourly intercourse of familiar life, which, if it weary at last the assiduities of friendship, sees only the neglect which it has forced, and not the perversity of humour which gave occasion to it, and soon learns to hate, therefore, what it considers as ingratitude and injustice; or which, if friendship be still assiduous as before, sees, in these very assiduities, a proof not of the strength of that affection which has forgotten the acrimony to soothe the supposed uneasiness which gave it rise, but a proof that there has been no offensive acrimony to be forgotten; and persists, therefore, in every peevish caprice, till the domestic tyranny become habitual. This melancholy temper, so poisonous to the happiness, not of the individual only, but of all those who are within the circle of its influence, and who feel their misery the more, because it may perhaps arise from one whom they strive, and vainly strive, to love, is the temper of a vulgar mind. But there is a melancholy of a gentler species, a melancholy which, as it arises, in a great measure, from a view of the sufferings of man, disposes to a warmer love of man the sufferer, and which is almost as essential to the finer emotions of virtue, as it is to the nicer sensibilities of poetic genius. This social and intellectual effect of philosophic melancholy is described with a beautiful selection of moral images, by the Author of the Seasons.

He comes! he comes! in every breeze the Power
Of Philosophic Melancholy comes!

His near approach the sudden-starting tear,

The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air,

The softened feature, and the beating heart,

Pierc'd deep with many a virtuous pang, declare.
O'er all the soul his sacred influence breathes!
Inflames Imagination; through the breast

Infuses every tenderness; and far

Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought.
Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such

As never mingled with the vulgar dream,
Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye.
As fast the correspondent passions rise
As varied, and as high: Devotion rais'd
To rapture, and divine astonishment;
The love of Nature, unconfin'd, and, chief,
Of human race; the large ambitious wish,
To make them blest; the sigh for suffering worth
Lost in obscurity; the noble scorn

Of tyrant-pride; the fearless great resolve;
The wonder which the dying patriot draws,
Inspiring glory through remotest time;
Th' awaken'd throb for virtue, and for fame ;
The sympathies of love, and friendship dear:
With all the social offspring of the heart.1

The same influence is, by another poet, made peculiarly impressive, by a very happy artifice. In Akenside's Ode to Cheerfulness, which opens with a description of many images and impressions of gloom, and in which the Power, who alone can dispel them, is invoked to perform this divine office, he returns at last to those images of tender sorrow, which he would be unwilling to lose, and for the continuance of which, therefore, he invokes that very cheerfulness, which he had seemed before to invoke for a gayer purpose:

Do thou conduct my fancy's dreams
To such indulgent placid themes,
As just the struggling breast may cheer,
And just suspend the starting tear,

Yet leave that sacred sense of woe

Which none but friends and lovers know.2

How universally a certain degree of disposition to melancholy is supposed to be connected with genius, 1 Thomson's Seasons; Autumn, v. 1002-1027.

2 157-162.