vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord she

shall be praised."

CHAPTER XII.

IMAGINATION.

The highest developement of the Intellect is in the power it has of combining its conceptions, so as to form creations of its own; a world within itself. This is the province of Imagination. In the words of Shakspeare,

"Imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown."

The understanding is occupied with objects that have been brought to the mind by means of sensible perceptions; the reason is concerned with truth above or out of the reach of sense; the imagination by its creative power forms, from the materials furnished by the understanding and the reason, what has never yet been known to exist. In this process of thought all the powers of the mind are in full operation. Attention fixes itself upon the objects or subjects already discerned and brings them as finished pictures before the conception. Memory sets out its treasured resources. Association connects things present and past, near and afar,

similar and dissimilar; congruous and incongruous. Abstraction marks the essential differences, clearing the conception of whatever might cause confusion, while Judgment distinguishes between the real and the counterfeit, the beautiful and the deformed, the useful and the useless, the good and the hurtful, and reason furnishes truth natural and moral, making a boundary beyond which thought may not pass." Reason may be called the natural light of the mind; Imagination the life, the animating, vivifying power, its creative energy. Without it the intellect would be spiritless, man a clod, and nature a matter-of-fact assemblage of earth and sky; of water and herbage; of beasts and birds and fishes. Imagination gives to man the

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thoughts which breathe and words which burn," and clothes all nature in glorious beauty. It finds crystals in the dew-drops, gold and silver in the waves of the ocean; hangs the heavens at the morning twilight with a canopy of ruby, at night spangles them with living diamonds; while it covers the earth with a tapestry of emerald, filling the air, the groves and the streams with melody. Imagination

"Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And gives to airy nothings.

A local habitation and a name."

* Note O.

It fills all earth and heaven with loveliness, producing pleasures independent of the bare sensations of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, that belong to, and exist in the mind itself. "Take away the intelligence," says Cousin, "and there is for us no longer any beauty in external forms and things." Not only does it invest all material objects with qualities discoverable by itself alone, but by its power of combining parts in objects, often dissimilar and incongruous, it creates new wholes and presents to the mind forms of beings and things unknown; it even frames worlds unseen by mortal eye, and peoples them with inhabitants of its' own conception.

ས

The imaginative power of the mind shews its affinity to minds celestial. Were man a mere animal he would be confined to the objects of sense, and to such qualities in them as the senses convey, but bearing within him a higher nature he discovers qualities beyond the reach of sight and hearing, and overleaping the boundaries of external perception, he wanders in fairy regions of his own creation, luxuriates in the enjoyments of ideality. The mind being by its constitution fitted to look at things unseen, and to enjoy without the aid of the senses, it seeks the refined and purely intellectual qualities of beauty, sublimity, harmony and grace;

in fine, what may be termed perfection in objects, and failing to find what it seeks in this present state of being, the imagination creates what it esteems perfection in idealities of its own; shewing plainly the soul's alliance with worlds unknown, and its capability of enjoying the perfection of beauty, in glory ineffable.

The lowest effort of the imagination is a conception of the ideal. This depends upon the knowledge of what is real, as well as upon the associations depending on circumstances, the abstractions resulting from reflection, and the judgment formed upon experience. Here we have the reason why the imagination is the slowest in its developement; it is the fruit of the combined operation of all the intellectual powers. Here also, we see why, in children, it is so imperfect in its exercise; but being the "richest blossom of the mind's flower-garden," it should be nurtured with care and skilfully trained. The imaginative power in children is seen in their early love of fiction, their frequent and earnest request for another story, their anticipations of the future in which they fancifully enact their part. The little girl is mistress of her own household, and fills her imaginary sphere with beings and with cares, while her brother is the hero of his own romance.

The first effort of the imagination is the con

ception of the fictions addressed to it; but it must be noticed that the conception of the ideal in children depends upon the training of their minds. Where the infant fancy is left to expand itself upon the absurd fictions of the nursery, it will be long, perhaps, before it can reach the conception of such a character as Milton's Adam. Pope, who at the age of twelve years wrote an Ode on Solitude, had his mind early trained by the reading of the Latin and Greek classics; when only eight, he was regularly initiated into the perusal of Homer.

This activity in the minds of children is like the growth of certain plants, which shoot out with wonderful rapidity in any direction, and attach themselves to every thing that comes within their reach. They mount the branches of the lofty oak or they entwine themselves around the gloomy cyprus; they would clasp the deadly nightshade, or meanly creep among the coarse weeds that grow around them. Thus with the mind in childhood. Carefully then should the mother or teacher seek to train the active spirit, which, like the bird of heaven, may ascend the loftiest heights that intellect, still in humanity, can reach, basking in the sunbeams of honour, until it become dizzy and dazzled with its own aspirings. Had the imaginative soul of Byron frequently refreshed itself in the