The history of the devotional sentiments, or the natural history of man considered in relation to his Creator, in all its present existing diversities, in connection with its annals throughout all ages and countries, has never yet been broadly and philosophically written, disconnected with the polemics of particular churches.

We have alluded to the faculty of imagination as being the author of language and of poetry, and blending with the devotional inheritance of the nations. Imagination, though often libelled, is a most essential active faculty of the mind, giving force and energy to the objects it presents; energy to the passions, ardor to devotion, identity to superstition. Imagination entrances the enthusiast in love, and the devotee to science; it affects the hypochondriac with thousands of unreal evils; it maddens the fanatic to his wildest aberrations, and deludes the bigot when he esteems himself the peculiar favorite of Heaven. The Pharisee, whose prayer at the temple of Jerusalem is recorded in St. Luke, “God I thank thee that I am not as other men are," was evidently under the influence of imagination. It was imagination which sustained the constancy of Ulysses in his protracted wanderings; inspired with indefatigable perseverance those knights of the cross who led their bands of pilgrims across the burning sands of Syria to the tomb of the Saviour; and 't is the future delights which it pictures which give to the Moslem warrior his recklessness amid the storm of battle, and enable him to die calmly for his religion and his country, beneath the standard of his Prophet.

It is a common error which needs to be corrected, to suppose that those individuals who write, or attempt to write rhymes or romance, are the only weak and wayward brethren whom imagination lures from truth and soberness.

It is imagination which bewilders the votaries of the silliest superstitions, as well as the aspirants after the sublime and the beautiful. It is the principle on which quacks and

demagogues exert so predominating an influence, and forms the basis on which charlatanism in politics, in medicine, and in literature, entrenches itself, constituting what has been called the gullibility of mankind.

Imagination undoubtedly inspires the votaries of the fine arts; it is essential to the sculptor and the architect; to the painter, the musician and the poet; it allures the naturalist with a thousand visions, lovely as nature's delightful realities; fills your would-be philosophers and men of leisure with every variety of miscellaneous folly; and warms your men of wealth with the delusions of avarice.

It is admitted that madness invariably takes possession of the mind that broods overmuch or overlong on one engrossing idea; and ill-regulated imagination, producing various misconceptions, often exists in men who imagine themselves. of all mankind the most correct and prudent, and monomania of some sort seems almost to be a common inheritance.

The imagination may exert as remarkable activity in schemes of traffic and speculation as in any thing else. Over-estimations of particular objects, as the South Sea bubbles, the Holland tulip mania, the merino sheep fever, and morus multicaulis speculation of the United States, are among the thousand results of diseased imagination in matters of commerce.

The attaching undue importance to particular pursuits, or to particular men, to one's own partisans and one's own achievements, and over-estimating the importance of our actions and opinions to society, although often doubtless constituting much individual self-regard, are remarkable. follies of the imagination.

Imagination, however, though capable of countless absurdities, certainly exists as an important and inseparable element of man's noblest, as well as his humblest nature; blending extensively alike with the happiness and hopes of

his youth; with the deliberations and maturest reflections of manhood; and with those bright anticipations of a future and better existence, to which the aspirations of all nations and ages direct the attention of the species.

"Men of imagination” have been denounced as a select class, and have been accused of disqualification for the sober realities of life; the truth is and ought to be acknowledged, that all men, stupid or not stupid, are men of imagination.

In early inexperienced infancy our imagination deceives us as to the value of reddening unripe fruit; in youth, the soldier's imagination deludes him with the pomp and equipage and circumstance of war, till he leaves his peaceful home, and follows proudly to the tented field.

Imagination lends itself to love's enchantment, and lovers often are, or appear to others to be, excessive in their devotedness. The coward over-estimates life in comparison. with duty and patriotism, self-respect and honor.

The fondness for what is ancient and unique, the passion of antiquarians, often amounts to folly in the estimates of men not possessing the same tastes, just as the fondness for novelties, for the newest mode, often induces men of fashion to disregard obvious utility.

In short, every thought and every act which is not based on broad, comprehensive, complete views of nature, is pedantry, puerility, passion, superstition; all which does not teach men carefully to think, and to embrace the entire truth of every subject, is not reality, it is imagination.

It must be acknowledged that we are constantly liable to exaggerate the importance of certain pursuits and of certain objects; our ideas even of utility often deceive us, when we neglect health and tranquillity in the inordinate pursuit of gain or pleasure; we cherish one particular train of ideas, we do not sufficiently generalize and compare the real value of the various pursuits of men, the real comparative importance of wealth, of knowledge, of health, of tranquillity, of

the affections, of religion, to the happiness of human existence.

We have many homilies on the frailties of genius and on the follies of literary men-" the genus irritabile vatum"-this is perfectly fair, if you will also give us the follies of men of every variety and contrast of character. It is beyond dispute that men of genius, who may be defined to be, men of extraordinary intellectual achievements in every department of knowledge, have been addicted to every vice as well as to every virtue; but it should be borne in mind that no class of men are so well known to the public as those distinguished for their mental characteristics. The public, whether for good or evil, interests itself more in their vices and foibles, while the vices of men of rank, station, fortune, of princes, of politicians, of millionaires, are comparatively unnoticed by the critics, the gossiping vulgar, and the public.

In connection with the effect of imagination in exaggerating the value of wealth in general or some species of worldly possession, may be instanced that remarkable variety of insanity, a sense of poverty in the midst of affluence, with which God frequently afflicts the votaries of avarice, which the Romans well designated "miser," miserable, and which is so common among the rich and retired traders and bankers of metropolitan cities as to have acquired the designation of "the city disease." The want of foresight and improvidence in spendthrifts is equally insane, and forms at once the antithesis and the apology of avarice.

Imagination is equally active in producing all manner of predilections, prejudices, suspicions and jealousies, as it is in castle building and in all the cherished follies to which poor human nature is liable. In short, as no man is without imagination, that man only is wise and happy whose imagination is well regulated, whose discretion and judgment control his own decisions as well as the thousand sugges

tions which the imaginations of those around him are constantly presenting. How few are truly wise!

Imagination, in this its best significance, is that faculty of mind to which we are indebted for most or all of the inventions and improvements of civilization; for those developments of the sublime and beautiful in nature; of the past, the distant and the future, which its votaries in all ages have left us, and for those combinations of physical and analogies of abstract phenomena, which constitute the grandest discoveries in the useful arts, and the sublimest achievements of genius, both in eloquence and in action.

Imagination is the basis of both poetry and eloquence; it has existed in no ordinary degree in the greatest men, those who have risen above the beaten paths of their fellows, in all nations and ages. It inspired Homer and Demosthenes, Job the patriarch, and Mahomet the prophet ; it gave grace and illustration to the mighty conceptions of Dr. Johnson, to the gigantic projects of Napoleon.

The despotic influence which imagination has exerted, and the thralls which superstition has fastened upon mankind, until they have become sanctioned by the assent of ages, are fading slowly before the light of truth and reason; while its sound and legitimate exertions will continue to be highly and justly estimated, during the most enlightened eras of the future, to which our race may be destined.

But it is time to resume your careful observation of the scenes below us.

You will notice the immense populousness of Asia, compared with that of the American continent. You are one of a thousand millions of cotemporary human beings. Of these thousand millions, more than half are inhabitants of the continent of Asia, which is now gliding in broad perspective below us. You may observe that the population is not universally distributed, but that while many portions are teeming with fertility, and sustaining