Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 | Page 4

making the hues and lineaments of the phantoms it calls up grow fainter and fainter, till they are wholly dispelled. But this applies only to one class of images. The ghost of Banquo, for instance, may pale away and vanish utterly before the light of knowledge; but the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth is immortal like the mind itself. Knowledge cannot throw its illumination upon eternity, or dissipate the influences by which men feel they are surrounded. A candle brought into a darkened room discloses the material forms of the things in the midst of which we are standing, and which may have been involved, to our imagination, in a poetical mystery. But the light itself, as an unexplained wonder--its analogies with the flame of life--the modifications it receives from the faint gleam of the sky through the shadowed window--all are poetical materials, and of a higher character. Where one series of materials ends, another begins; and so on in infinite progression, till poetry seems to spurn the earth from beneath her foot--
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Telling of things which no gross ear can hear; Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begins to cast a beam on the outer shape-- The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal.
Science with us, however, is a business instead of an ambition; ingenuity a trade rather than a taste. We go on from discovery to discovery, from invention to invention, with an insatiate but prosaic spirit, which turns everything to a profitable and practical account--imprisoning the very lightning, that it may carry our messages over land and under sea! We do not stop to look, to listen, to feel, to exalt with a moral elevation the objects of our study, and snatch a spiritual enjoyment from imagination. All with us is material; and all would be even mean, but for the essential grandeur of the things themselves. And here comes the question: Is this material progress incompatible with spiritual progress? Is the poetry of life less abundant because the conveniences of life are more complete and admirable? Is man less a spirit of the universe because he is a god over the elements? We answer, No: the scientific and the prosaic spirit are both independent elements in the genius of the age; or, if there is a necessary connection, it is the converse of what is supposed--the restless mind in which the fervour of poetry has died, plunging into science for the occupation that is necessary to its happiness. Thus one age is merely poetical, another merely scientific; although here, of course, we use, for the sake of distinctness, the broadest terms, unmindful of the modifications ranging between these extreme points. The age, however, that has least poetry has most science, and vice versa.
But man, unlike the other denizens of the earth, has power over his own destiny. He is able to cultivate the poetical as if it were a plant; and if once convinced of its important bearing upon his enjoyment of the world, he will do so. The imagination may be educated as well as the moral sense, and the result of the advancement of the one as well as the other is an expansion of the mind, and an enlargement of the capacity for happiness. The grand obstacle is precisely what we have now endeavoured to aid in removing--the common mistake as to the nature of the poetical, which it is customary to consider as something remote from, or antagonistic to, the business of life. So far from this, it is essentially connected with the moral feelings. It neutralises the conventionalisms of society, and makes the whole world kin. It enlarges the circle of our sympathies, till they comprehend, not only our own kind, but every living thing, and not only animate beings, but all created nature.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Journal, No. 425. Article, 'Dibdin's Sailor-Songs.'
[2] Tennyson.

A DUEL IN 1830.
I had just arrived at Marseilles with the diligence, in which three young men, apparently merchants or commercial travellers, were the companions of my journey. They came from Paris, and were enthusiastic about the events which had lately happened there, and in which they boasted of having taken part. I was, for my part, quiet and reserved; for I thought it much better, at a time of such political excitement in the south of France, where party passions always rise so high, to do nothing that would attract attention; and my three fellow-travellers no doubt looked on me as a plain, common-place seaman, who had been to the luxurious metropolis for his pleasure or on business. My presence, it seemed, did not incommode them, for they talked on as if I