DEPARTED HOPES.

WRITTEN BY ONE ON RETURNING TO HIS NATIVE LAND AFTER A LONG ABSENCE.

I CAME, but they had pass'd away

The fair in form, the pure in mind;
And, like a stricken deer, I stray,

Where all are strange, and none are kind-
Kind to the worn, the wearied soul,

That pants, that struggles for repose:
O that my steps had reached the goal
Where earthly sighs and sorrows close!
Years have pass'd o'er me like a dream
That leaves no trace on memory's page:
I look around me, and I seem

Some relic of a former age.
Alone, as in a stranger-clime,

Where stranger-voices mock my ear,
I mark the lagging course of time,
Without a wish-a hope-a fear!
Yet I had hopes-and they have fled;
And I had fears were all too true:
My wishes too-but they are dead!
And what have I with life to do?
"Tis but to bear a weary load

I may not, dare not cast away;
To sigh for one small, still abode,
Where I may sleep as sweet as they-
As they, the loveliest of their race,
Whose grassy tombs my sorrows steep;
Whose worth my soul delights to trace-
Whose very loss 'tis sweet to weep;
To weep beneath the silent moon,
With none to chide, to hear, to see.
Life can bestow no dearer boon

On one whom death disdains to free.

I leave a world that knows me not,
To hold communion with the dead;
And fancy consecrates the spot

Where fancy's softest dreams are shed.
I see each shade all silvery white-
I hear each spirit's melting sigh;
I turn to clasp those forms of light,
And the pale morning chills my eye.
But soon the last dim morn shall rise,

(The lamp of life burns feebly now,)
When stranger-hands shall close my eyes,
And smooth my cold and dewy brow.
Unknown I liv'd-so let me die;

Nor stone, nor monumental cross,
Tell where his nameless ashes lie,
Who sigh'd for gold, and found it dross.

WRITERS OF IMAGINATION.

Do we not owe much more to writers of imagination than is generally acknowledged? This is a query which I think must be answered affirmatively. Literature has mainly contributed to the present advanced state of civilization; and, in enquiring what branches of it have more particularly tended to those refinements which spring from generous and noble feelings, it must be conceded to our poets and romance writers. Much was gained from the ancients, that produced an influence upon the character of modern nations; but perhaps their writings operated most beneficially, by exciting a love of research, and arousing genius to exertion. This idea gathers strength from the fact, that the study of the ancients did little in awakening the flame of civil liberty. They were long the inmates of cloisters and of courts, but they effected no direct change in favor of liberal feelings. Inquisitors tortured, popes duped, monks cheated, and princes trampled on mankind, but no spontaneous spirit of resistance was roused among the people by the free circulation of the classics. They were, no doubt, an indirect cause of original thinking and the uncontroled operations of genius, by propagating a taste for study, and feeding the flame of emulation; but, directly, they were harmless enough to be tolerated by the present Czar of Russia, or the sovereign of Austria himself. It will be found that their present state of literature, or, at least, that state in which there is the most extensively diffused taste for letters, is a pretty good criterion of the gradations of the different nations of the world in refinement. Whatever each separate class of authors may have contributed to this end, the diffusion of high and generous feelings is principally owing to writers of imagination. To them we

are largely indebted for the better sentiments of the age, and for all that, by exciting the passions, leads to eminence and renown. This is mainly owing to their prominent principle of keeping the mind dissatisfied with common-place things— their power of creating images superior, in every respect, to reality, which we admire, and would fain imitate—and the admiration they infuse for what is good and excellent, sublime and daring. Writers on science have meliorated the physical condition of man, enlarged his stock of information, and increased his luxuries. In devoting themselves to their peculiar studies, they were urged on by the desire of improvement; which very desire—the moving spring of all-is increased by the dislike of standing still, and the spirit of ambition which imaginative writers greatly assist nature in sustaining. Like the trophies of Miltiades, that would not let Themistocles rest, the visions and day-dreams that haunt the mind and fill the soul with things better than the world and society afford it, by making us discontented, spur us to pursue those beyond our reach, and keep us in progression.

What can some branches of literature effect towards the refinements of social life-writers on law, for example? They may enable the lawyer to improve his practice, and arrive at the end for which he labors-his private profit; for, in spite of cant, this is the sole object of the profession. For this, the members drudge and dispute on both sides of a question, or on either side, just as they are hired; and their efforts, in plain fact, are alone directed to their individual advantage. There is no enthusiasm in the pursuit beyond what springs from the love of gain; and, inasmuch as it is for the public good that intricate and contradictory laws should be made clear, when they can be made so at all, writers on law may be merely styled useful, and nothing more. A pure legislation must depend on civilization; but this is not the lawyer's, but the statesman's calling, and emanates from public opinion, expressed by its representatives, and its spirit must be governed by the variations of time and circumstances. Writers on grammar, medicine, and technical and limited arts contribute, indirectly and remotely, to refine

ment.

Those writers who appeal to reason, make very slow progress in imposing conviction, compared with those who operate the other way. By the alchemy of association, and the power to appeal to the heart through its vivid pictures, more impression is made by one writer of imagination, than by twenty reasoners. Reason will never be any other than a regulator. The writer of imagination leads us to better objects and desires than the world exhibits to our senses, and thereby keeps alive a perpetual wish of improvement by the contemplation of what ought to exist, and dissatisfying us with what really does.

Let us examine facts. Writers of imagination, far above all others, have been in advance of the time in which they lived. Gifted with a species of intellectual foresight, they have appeared to pour forth their effusions as if in the midst of times they were never destined to see, but in the more refined spirit of which they were fully qualified to partake. They breathed a different intellectual atmosphere from contemporaries, and were acknowledged by those of the highest refinement in their day, with a respect that could only have arisen from a sense of discriminating admiration. Monarchs. and courts, till late times, associated with poets and romancewriters: the court formerly being the most enlightened and refined circle in the state, the centre of knowledge and fine feeling, there was a natural affinity between them. As a portion of the people attained a higher state of mental culture, they approached the court itself, and at least equalled, and a numerous body of them surpassed, most of the individuals composing it, in cultivated intellect. Writers then naturally felt the tone of a considerable portion of the popu lar feeling to be most in unison with their own; and the latter became to writers of imagination, what courts had been in earlier times. Part of the people having become as discerning as the individuals whom chance, interest, or caprice may have elevated to carry on affairs of state for the monarch, where talent and intellect should have constituted the qualification-talent that, discarding prejudice, would have assimilated things to the light of the age-is one great cause

of the present feverish feeling of some European nations. In Russia, for instance, where the court is among a dark people, it is still the centre of the intellectual refinement of the empire. Writers of imagination, born with more vivid conceptions than other men, have lived in an ideal world, which the nature of human desires led them to portray more perfect and noble than the world of reality. This gave them more independent spirits, more lofty and romantic ideas, and also enabled them to reason; for Locke allows, that it is not necessary for men to devote their lives in the study of logic, to reason well. Pure thoughts and lofty principles, influenced by genius, that do not suffer common prejudices to affect them, will weigh things with the greatest impartiality, and come to the most rational conclusions. In past, and even in the present days, how much that the world sanctions, appears absurd and barbarous in the eye of genius. The judges would have burnt all the old women in England without compunction, if evidence had been tendered that they were witches, in the days of John Milton, and even for fifty years afterwards: the poet, we may answer for it, would not have condemned one. Dante would never have made a hell for many great men of his time, deemed by the multitude among the mighty and noble, had he looked upon them with the eyes of his own age. He contemplated them as not of his own time, and with the impartiality of a future and wiser generation. Vulgar minds cannot comprehend the ideas of men of genius; they think them audacities or chimerical innovations; but they who contribute to the improvement of mankind, belong but a small part of them to the present time-they are the heritage of unborn ages. Honest and good men may labor in their world of realities in a circle of minute duration, be useful, industrious, and virtuous followers in a beaten track, content with what they see, and thinking the world precisely as it should be in every respect. They, however, are but the wheels of society, not the moving causes. Sir Thomas More is a remarkable instance among imaginative writers, and seems at first to constitute an exception to the foresight, if it may be demon