till some imperious circumstance of real life call it thence, and gladly escapes thither again as soon as the cause of the avocation can be got rid of. There, every thing is beautiful and noble as could be desired to form the residence of angels. If a tenth part of the felicities that have been enjoyed, the great actions that have been performed, the beneficent institutions that have been established, and the beautiful objects that have been seen, in that happy region, could have been imported into this terrestrial place—what a delightful thing, my dear friend, it would have been each morning to awake and look on such a world once more.

It is not strange that a faculty, of which the exercise is so easy and bewitching, and the scope infinite, should obtain a predominance over judgment, especially in young persons, and in such as may have been brought up, like Rasselas and his companions, in great seclusion from the sight and experience of the world. Indeed, a considerable vigour of imagination, though it be at the expense of a frequent predominance over juvenile understanding, seems necessary, in early life, to cause a generous expansion of the passions, by giving the most lively aspect to the objects which must attract them in order to draw forth into activity the faculties of our nature. It may also contribute to prepare the mind for the exercise of that faith which converses with things unseen, but converses with them through the medium of those ideal forms in which imagination presents them, and in which only a strong imagination can present them impressively.* And I should deem it the indication of a character not destined to excel in

* The Divine Being is the only one of these objects which a Christian would wish it possible to contemplate without the aid of imagination; and every reflective man has felt how difficult it is to apprehend even this Object without the intervention of an image. In

the liberal, the energetic, or the devout qualities, if I observed in the youthful age a close confinement of thought to bare truth and minute accuracy, with an entire aversion to the splendours, amplifications, and excursions of fancy. The opinion is warranted by instances of persons so distinguished in youth, who have become subsequently very intelligent indeed, in a certain way, but dry, cold, precise, devoted to detail, and incapable of being carried away one moment by any inspiration of the beautiful or the sublime. They seem to have only the bare intellectual mechanism of the human mind, without the addition of what is to give it life and sentiment. They give one an impression analogous to that of the leafless trees observed in winter, admirable for the distinct exhibition of their branches and minute ramifications so clearly defined on the sky, but destitute of all the green soft luxury of foliage which is requisite to make a perfect tree. And the affections which may exist in such minds seem to have a bleak abode, somewhat like those bare deserted nests which you have often seen in such trees.

If, indeed, the signs of this exclusive understanding indicated also such an extraordinary vigour of the faculty, as to promise a very great mathematician or metaphysician, one would perhaps be content to forego some of the properties which form a complete mind, for the sake of this pre-eminence of one of its endowments; even though the person were to be so defective in sentiment and fancy, that, as the story goes of an eminent mathematician, he could read through a most animated and splendid epic poem, and on being asked

thinking of the transactions and personages of history, the final events of time foretold by prophecy, the state of good men in another world, the superior ranks of intelligent agents, &c. he has often had occasion to wish his imagination much more vivid.

what he thought of it, gravely reply, "What does it prove ?" But the want of imagination is never an evidence, and perhaps but rarely a concomitant, of superior understanding.

Imagination may be allowed the ascendency in early youth; the case should be reversed in mature life; and if it is not, a man may consider his mind either as not the most happily constructed, or as unwisely disciplined. The latter indeed is probably true in every such instance

LETTER II.

THE ascendency of imagination operates in various modes; I will endeavour to distinguish those which may justly be called romantic.

The extravagance of imagination in romance has very much consisted in the display of a destiny and course of life totally unlike the common condition of mankind. And you may have observed in living individuals, that one of the effects sometimes produced by the predominance of this faculty is, a persuasion in a person's own mind that he is born to some peculiar and extraordinary destiny, while yet there are no extraordinary indications in the person or his circumstances. There was something rational in the early presentiment which some distinguished men have entertained of their future career. When a celebrated general of the present times exclaimed, after performing the common military exercise, as one of a company of juvenile volunteers, "I shall be a commander-in-chief,"* a sagacious observer of the signs of talents yet but partially developed, might have thought it indeed a

• Related of Moreau.

rather sanguine but probably not a quite absurd anticipation. An elder and intelligent associate of Milton's youth might without much difficulty have believed himself listening to an oracle, when a spirit which was shaping in such gigantic proportions avowed to him a confidence, of being destined to produce a work which should distinguish the nation and the age. The opening of uncommon faculties may be sometimes inspirited by such anticipations; which the young genius may be allowed to express, perhaps as a stimulus encouraged to indulge. But in most instances these magnificent presumptions form, in the observer's eye, a ludicrous contrast with the situation and apparent abilities of the person who entertains them. And in the event, how few such anticipations have been proved the genuine promptings of an extraordinary mind.

The visionary presumption of a peculiar destiny is entertained in more forms than that which implies a confidence of possessing uncommon talent. It is often the flattering self-assurance simply of a life of singular felicity. The captive of fancy fondly imagines his prospect of life as a delicious vale, where from each side every stream of pleasure is to flow down to his feet; and while it cannot but be seen that innumerable evils do harass other human beings, some mighty spell is to protect him against them all. He takes no deliberate account of what is inevitable in the lot of humanity, of the sober probabilities of his own situation, or of any principles in the constitution of his mind which are perhaps very exactly calculated to frustrate the anticipation and the scheme of happiness.

If this excessive imagination is combined with tendencies to affection, it makes a person sentimentally romantic. With a great, and what might, in a mind of finer elements, be a just contempt of the ordinary

rate of attachments, both in friendship and love, he indulges a most assured confidence that his peculiar lot is to realize all the wonders of generous, virtuous, noble, unalienable friendship, or of enraptured, uninterrupted, and unextinguishable love, that the inebriation of fiction and poetry ever sung; while perhaps a shrewd indifferent observer can descry nothing in the horoscope, or the character, or the actual circumstances of the man, or in the qualities of the human creatures that he adores, or in the nature of his devotion, to promise an elevation or permanence of felicity beyond the destiny of common mortals.

If a passion for variety and novelty accompanies this extravagant imagination, it will exclude from its bold sketches of future life every thing like confined regularity, and common plodding occupations. It will suggest that I was born for an adventurer, whose story will one day be a wonder of the world. Perhaps I am to be an universal traveller; and there is not on the globe a grand city, or ruin, or volcano, or cataract, but I must see it. Debility of constitution, deficiency of means, innumerable perils, unknown languages, oppressive toils, extinguished curiosity, worn out fortitude, failing health, and the shortness of life, are very possibly all left out of the account.

If there is in the disposition a love of what is called glory, and an idolatry of those capacious and intrepid spirits one of which has often, in a portentous crisis, decided, by an admirable series of exertions, or by one grand exploit of intelligence and valour, the destiny of armies and of empires, a predominant imagination may be led to revel amidst the splendours of military achievement, and to flatter the man that he too is to be a hero, a great commander.

When a mind under this influence recurs to prece