12

THE HIGHEST MORAL EMOTIONS

judgment of the characters of men, the feeling or emotion of beauty will not exist at all-but that it will have melted away and disappeared in a state of mind more suitable to the solemn, the sacred subject. A human being has done his duty, and gone to his reward. "God grant, in His infinite mercy, that I may do mine, and escape from darkness into eternal light!" That is, or ought to be the first feeling, or thought of selfso suddenly interfused with the moral judgment on our dead brother, that it is as one and the same feeling and thought— too awful-too dreadful to be beautiful,-for the soul is with gloom overshadowed-and the only light that breaks through it is light straight from Heaven,-light ineffable, and that must not be profaned by an earthly name, whose very meaning evanishes with the earth, and is merged into another state of being-when we can only say,

"Come then, expressive Silence, muse his praise."

English Opium-Eater. And so, sir, in like manner, many descriptions may be given, and ought to be given, of suffering virtue, in which the sense or feeling of beauty is strong-for the love of virtue is thus excited and encouraged by delight. But carry on the representation of the trials of virtue to the last extremity defeated or triumphant, failing or victorious. -and then the moral mind-the conscience-will not be satisfied with the beautiful-nay, will be impatient of it—will turn from it austerely away-and will be satisfied and elevated by the calm, clear perception, that the poor, frail, erring, and sinful creature, lying, perhaps, on its forsaken bed of straw, has striven, with all its heart and all its soul, to do the will of its heavenly Father-and dares to hope that, by the atonement, it may see the face of God. In such a scene as this, the spirit of the looker-on is gathered up into one Thought—and that is a Mystery of its own origin and of its own destiny—and all other thoughts would be felt repugnant to that awe-struck mood, nor would they coalesce with feelings breathed on it from the promised land lying in light unvisited beyond death and the grave.

North. You pause-and, therefore, I say that such states of mind as these cannot be of long endurance. For they belong only to the most awful hours and events of this life. They pass away, either entirely, to rise up again with renovated

ARE DISTINCT FROM THE FEELING OF BEAUTY.

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force, on occasions that demand them, or they blend with inferior states, solemnising and sanctifying them; and then to such states the term beautiful may, I think, be correctly and well applied. For the mere human natural affections of love, and delight, and pity, and admiration,—these all blend with our moral judgments and emotions—and the picture of the entire state of mind, if naturally and truly drawn, may be, nay, ought to be, bright with the lights of poetry. To such pictures we apply the term Beautiful;-they find their place among the moral literature of a people, and when studied, under the sanction and guidance of thoughts higher still, they cannot fail to be friendly to virtue.

English Opium-Eater. May I speak, sir ?—That the highest moral judgment, however, is something in itself, apart from all such emotions, excellent and useful as they are, and how amiable and endearing I need not say, is proved by this— that there are many men of such virtue as awes us, and seems to us beyond and above our reach, who have nevertheless seemed to have never felt at all, or but very faintly, the emotion of the beauty of virtue. The Word of God they knew must be obeyed-to obey it they set themselves with all their collected might: To avert the wrath-to gain the love of God, was all their aim, day and night—and that was to be done but by bringing their will into accordance with, and subjection to, the will of God. The struggle was against sin -and for righteousness-shall a soul be saved or lost? And no other emotion could be permitted to blend with thoughts due to God alone, from his creature striving to obey his laws, and hearing ever and anon a "still small voice" whispering in his ear that the reward of obedience, the punishment of disobedience, must be beyond all comprehension,-and, necessarily (the soul itself being immortal), enduring through all eternity.

Shepherd. If you will alloo a simple shepherd to speak on sic a theme

North. Yes, my dearest James, you can, if you choose, speak on it better than either of us.

Shepherd. Weel, then, that is the view o' virtue that seems maist consistent wi' the revelation o' its true nature by Christianity. Isna there, sirs, a perpetual struggle—a ceevil war -in ilka man's heart? This we ken, whenever we have an

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THE SHEPHERD'S ILLUSTRATION.

opportunity o' discerning what is gaun on in the hearts o' ithers, this we ken, whenever we set ourselves to tak a steady gaze intil the secrets o' our ain. We are, then, moved-ay, appalled, by much that we behold; and wherever there is sin, there, be assured, will be sorrow. But arena we aften cheered, and consoled, too, by much that we behold? And wherever there is goodness, our ain heart, as weel's them o' the spectators, burns within us! Ay-it burns within us. We feel we see, that we or our brethren are pairtly as God would wish-as we must be afore we can hope to see his face in mercy. I've often thocht intil mysel that that feeling is ane that we may desecrate (is that the richt word?) by ranking it amang them that appertains to our senses and our imagination, rather than to the religious soul.

North. Mr De Quincey?

English Opium-Eater. Listen. An extraordinary man, indeed, sir!

Shepherd. No me; there's naething extraordinar about me, mair than about a thousand ither Scottish shepherds. But ca' not, I say, the face o' that father beautifu' who stands beside the bier o' his only son, and wi' his ain withered hands helps to let doun the body into the grave-though all its lines, deep as they are, are peacefu' and untroubled, and the grey uncovered head maist reverend and affecting in the sunshine that falls at the same time on the coffin of him who was last week the sole stay o' his auld age! But if you could venture in thocht to be wi' that auld man when he is on his knees before God, in his lanely room, blessing him for a' his mercies, even for having taken awa the licht o' his eyes, extinguished it in a moment, and left a' the house in darkness-you would not then, if you saw into his inner spirit, venture to ca' the calm that slept there-beautifu'! Na, na, na! In it you would feel assurance o' the immortality of the Soul-o' the transitoriness o' mere human sorrows-o' the vanity o' a' passion that clings to the clay-o' the power which the spirit possesses in richt o' its origin to see God's eternal justice in the midst o' sic utter bereavement as might well shake its faith in the Invisible-o' a' life where there is nae decaying frame to weep over and to bewail; and sae thinkin—and sae feelin-ye would behold in that auld man kneelin in your unkent presence, an eemage o' human nature by its intensest sufferings raised and reconciled to that feenal

WHEN BEAUTY BLENDS WITH MORAL FEELING.

15

state o' obedience, acquiescence, and resignation to the will o' the Supreme, which is virtue, morality, piety, in ae word RELIGION. Ay, the feenal consummation o' mortality putting on immortality, o' the soul shedding the slough o' its earthly affections, and reappearing amaist in its pristine innocence, nae unfit inhabitant o' Heaven.

English Opium-Eater. Say not that a thousand Scottish shepherds could so speak, my dear sir.

Shepherd. Ay, and far better, too. But hearken till meWhen that state o' mind passed away frae us, and we became willing to find relief, as it were, frae thochts sae far aboon the level o' them that must be our daily thochts, then we micht, and then probably we would, begin to speak, sir, o' the beauty o' the auld man's resignation, and in poetry or painting, the picture might be pronounced beautifu', for then our souls would hae subsided, and the deeper, the mair solemn, and the mair awfu' o' our emotions would o' themselves hae retired to rest within the recesses o' the heart, alang wi' maist o' the maist mysterious o' our moral and religious convictions.-(Dog barks.) Heavens! I could hae thocht that was Bronte !

North. No bark like his, James, now belongs to the world of sound.

--

Shepherd. Purple black was he all over, except the star on his breast as the raven's wing. Strength and sagacity emboldened his bounding beauty, and a fierceness lay deep down within the quiet lustre o' his een that tauld ye, even when he laid his head upon your knees, and smiled up to your face like a verra intellectual and moral cretur,- -as he was,that had he been angered, he could hae torn in pieces a lion.

North. Not a child of three years old and upwards, in the neighbourhood of the Lodge, that had not hung by his mane, and played with his fangs, and been affectionately worried by him on the flowery greensward.

Shepherd. Just like a stalwart father gambollin wi' his lauchin bairns!—And yet there was a heart that could bring itsel to pushion Bronte! When the atheist flung him the arsenic ba', the deevil was at his elbow.1

1 Bronte was poisoned-at least so it is very confidently believed-by some of Dr Knox's students, in revenge for the exposure (in Noctes XIX.) of the principles on which their anatomical school was conducted.

16

THE MURDER OF BRONTE.

North. And would that my fist were now at his jugular! Shepherd. What a nieve' o' airn!-Unclinch't, sir, for its

fearsome.

North. Had the murder been perpetrated by ten detected Gilmerton carters, I would have smashed them like crockery! Shepherd. En masse or seriawtim, till the cart-ruts ran wi' their felon bluid, and a race o' slit noses gaed staggerin through the stour, and then like a heap o' bashed and birzed paddocks walloped intil the ditch.

North. 'Twas a murder worthy of Hare or Burke, or the bloodiest of their most cruel and cowardly abettors.

Shepherd. I agree wi' you, sir;-but dinna look sae white, and sae black, and sae red in the face, and then sae mottled, as if you had the measles; for see, sir, how the evening sunshine is sleeping on his grave!

North. No yew-tree, James, ever grew so fast before-Mrs Gentle herself planted it at his head. My own eyes were somewhat dim, but as for hers-God love them!—they streamed like April skies - and nowhere else in all the

garden are the daisies so bright as on that small mound. That wreath, so curiously wrought into the very form of flowery letters, seems to fantasy like a funeral inscription-his very name- -Bronte.

Shepherd. Murder's murder, whether the thing pushioned hae four legs or only twa-for the crime is curdled into crime in the blackness o' the sinner's heart, and the revengefu' shedder even of bestial blood would, were the same demon to mutter into his ears, and shut his eyes to the gallows, poison the well in which the cottage-girl dips the pitcher that breaks the reflection o' her bonny face in that liquid heaven.-But hark! wi' that knock on the table you hae frichtened the mavis! Aften do I wonder whether or no birds, and beasts, and insecks, hae immortal sowls!

English Opium-Eater. What God makes, why should he annihilate ? Quench our own Pride in the awful consciousness of our Fall, and will any other response come from that oracle within us-Conscience-than that we have no claim on God for immortality, more than the beasts which want indeed "discourse of reason," but which live in love, and by love, and breathe forth the manifestations of their being through 1 Nieve-fist.