tense impression of the brevity of life, the certain and rapid approach of death, and the awfulness of the infinite future. By this I do not mean the solemnity of mind naturally produced by a contemplation of these grave subjects; nor the terror of the timid or the guilty; nor the gloomy visions of the hypochondriac, founded on peculiar theological doctrines. The state of mind to which I allude may be experienced by men of the most cheerful tempers and the most opposite persuasions, although not perhaps by any but those whose nerves have been made sensible of delicate and refined impressions by intellectual culture and contemplative habits. It is usually in the depth of night when this peculiar feeling comes over the spirit:

'How solemn, shut within the noiseless room,
To start awake mid night's profoundest gloom;
To cast around a look of dubious fear,
While not a sound falls on the listening ear!
As if the world had made a dreary pause,
And life in still suspension held her laws.
Cut off from light, from scenes of day remote,
And all that dulls and dissipates the thought,
Freed from the calls of sense, from care's control,
Then almost disembodied seems the soul,

Laid bare to all the stream of thought that flows
With force resistless on its deep repose.

Ideas how dread, and feelings how sublime!

They leave the world, they spurn the bounds of time;
Almighty power appals our beating hearts;

Close at our side, Death's spectre-shadow starts,
And awed imagination shrinks to see

Th' unveiling prospect of eternity."-(MS. Poem.)

A similar state of mind is vividly described in the following passage of a work to which I have already been indebted for several illustrations in the course of writing this series of Letters :

"And yet, amid the hurry, toil, and strife,

The claims, the urgencies, the whirl of life,—
The soul-perhaps in silence of the night-

Has flashes, transient intervals of light;
When things to come, without a shade of doubt,

In terrible reality stand out.

Those lucid moments suddenly present

A glance of truth, as though the heavens were rent;
And through that chasm of pure celestial light,
The future breaks upon the startled sight:
Life's vain pursuits, and Time's advancing pace,
Appear, with death-bed clearness, face to face;
And immortality's expanse sublime,

In just proportion to the speck of time:
While Death, uprising from the silent shades,
Shows his dark outline ere the vision fades:

In strong relief, against the blazing sky,
Appears the shadow as it passes by;

And, though o'erwhelming to the dazzled brain,
These are the moments when the mind is sane." *

I am aware, that in treating of such feelings as these, I am in danger of being unintelligible to the multitude; and I must console myself with the hope of being understood by some; of finding "fit readers, though few." At all events, it is useful to mark these peculiarities. The more the unknown regions of the mind are explored, the more its unusual movements are observed and put on record; and, thus subjected to scrutiny and comparison, the less room there is for the illusions of romance and superstition.

LETTER XX.

Propensity of Mankind to Imitation in the Pursuit of Pleasure -Exemplified in modern social Parties-Analysis of the Pleasure of Society-Amusement not susceptible of being long protracted-The Art of managing social Intercourse yet to be discovered.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

There is not, perhaps, a commoner mistake in all ranks of society, than performing acts and submitting to customs, not because they are agreeable to ourselves, but because they are deemed pleasant by others. A man seldom thinks of trying to ascertain what objects, what habits, pursuits, or employments, are adapted to give pleasure to his own mind: he seems scarcely ever to consult himself in the business, but, with marvellous disinterestedness, is at much trouble to get to know what circumstances of this kind yield delight to his neighbours, that he may instantly set about

placing himself under the influence of the

H

same.

He is naturally, one would think, his own standard; best knows what suits his taste; best feels what pleases or displeases his sensitive organs: but, practically, he takes the perceptions of others for the criterion of his own enjoyments. The vane on his own house ought to show him the direction of the wind, but he climbs the adjacent hill, and looks down into the valley beyond, where the gilded toy of his neighbour is sparkling in the sun and veering in the current of the glen, before he ventures to decide how the breeze blows at home. One luckless human being, who has no taste for gaiety, gives and goes to parties from which he receives actual pain; and for no reason on earth but that the world is positive such things are delightful, and he dreams not for a moment that the world can be mistaken. Another listens for hours to a musical performance under the greatest constraint, and with secret denunciations against the tumult kept up on the tympanum of his ear, purely because he has heard many a gentle soul profess rapture at a concert or an opera. A third buys a stud, and rides after the hounds, although he internally abhors a rapid motion, undulated by