Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 443

Edinburgh Journal, No. 443, by
Various

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Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 Volume 17, New Series,
June 26, 1852
Author: Various
Editor: Robert Chambers and William Chambers
Release Date: March 10, 2007 [EBook #20793]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH ***

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CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS,
EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,'
'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
No. 443. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2d.

PROSAIC SPIRIT OF THE AGE.
There are some phrases that convey only a vague and indefinite
meaning, that make an impression upon the mind so faint as to be
scarcely resolvable into shape or character. Being associated, however,
with the feeling of beauty or enjoyment, they are ever on our lips, and
pass current in conversation at a conventional value. Of these phrases is
the 'poetry of life'--words that never fail to excite an agreeable though
dreamy emotion, which it is impossible to refer to any positive ideas.
They are generally used, however, to indicate something gone by. The
poetry of life, we say, with sentimental regret, has passed away with the
old forms of society; the world is disenchanted of its talismans; we
have awakened from the dreams that once lent a charm to existence,
and we now see nothing around us but the cold hard crust of external
nature.
This must be true if we think it is so; for we cannot be mistaken, when
we feel that the element of the poetical is wanting in our constitutions.
But we err both in our mode of accounting for the fact, and in believing
the loss we deplore to be irretrievable. The fault committed by
reasoners on this subject is, to confound one thing with another--to
account for the age being unpoetical--as it unquestionably is--by a
supposed decay in the materials of poetry. We may as well be told that
the phenomena of the rising and setting sun--of clouds and
moonlight--of storm and calm--of the changing seasons--of the
infinitely varying face of nature, are now trite and worn-out. They are
as fresh and new as ever, and will be so at the last day of the world,
presenting, at every recurring view, something to surprise as well as
delight. To each successive generation of men, the phenomena both of
the outer and inner world are absolutely new; and the child of the

present day is as much a stranger upon the earth as the first-born of Eve.
But the impression received by each individual from the things that
surround him is widely different--as different as the faces in a crowd,
which all present the common type of humanity without a single
feature being alike. This fact we unconsciously assert in our everyday
criticism; for when any similarity is detected in a description, whether
of things internal or external, we at once stigmatise the later version as
a plagiarism, and as such set it down as a confession of weakness.
But although the manifestations of nature, being infinite, cannot be
worn out, the capacity to enjoy them, being human, may decay. It may,
in fact, in some natures, be entirely wanting, and in some generations at
least partially so. Seamen, for instance, who live, move, and have their
being in a world of poetry and romance, are the least poetical of men;
even in their songs they affect the prosaic and matter of fact, and
discard everything appertaining to the fanciful.[1] Here is a direct
instance of the materials of poetry being present, and its spirit wanting.
So common, however, is it to confound the poetical with the faculty of
enjoying it, that we find a hygienic power ascribed as an absolute
property to the beauty of that very element, from which they who view
it, both in its sweetest and grandest aspects, derive no elevation of
feeling whatever. Hufeland, who reckons among the great panaceas of
life the joy arising from the contemplation of the beauties of nature, in
estimating the advantage of sea-bathing as the chief natural tonic,
attributes it in great part to the action of the prospect of the sea upon
the nervous system. 'I am fully convinced,' says he, 'that the physical
effects of sea-bathing must be greatly increased by the impression on
the mind, and that a hypochondriac or nervous person may be
half-cured