To a Lady on the Death of her Daughter The Ocean of Nonsense The Deluge Noah, a Poem . The Dead of 1832 . 380 382 . 386 They appeared in the [THE paper entitled "Association," together with "The German's Story," to which it serves as an introduction, was first published in "the Talisman," a miscellaneous work undertaken by Mr. Sands, in conjunction with two of his literary friends, under the name of Francis Herbert, Esq. last volume of that work, in the year 1830. which follows, was published in the second volume, in the year 1829. The story entitled "Boyuca" was one of the latest productions of the author. It formed part of a collection of original tales, by different writers, published under the name of "Tales of the Glauber Spa," in November, 1832.] ÁSSOCIATION. "WE change our clime, but not our nature, when we run beyond the sea." Neither time, nor place, nor circumstance, can affect the identity of the individual man. I am not about to weary the patience of any too indulgent reader, by expatiating on this old but sage proposition. All that is true is trite; yet truth is often received by sophisticated mankind, with the startling effect of an entirely new revelation. Axioms which reason and experience constrain us to assent to, do not prevent us from entertaining and fos tering pleasant delusions. Hope and Imagination triumph over Truth. Under a different sky-with different associates among other forms of things-the venerable relics of by-gone ages-or the fresh and newly-crested honours of a rising nation "Among unknown men In lands beyond the sea," we dream that we should act a wiser and better part. Circumstances may favour the self-deception in some instances. Disappointment must of course attend upon most of them. But truth tells us that it is a deception in all. Man is not the creature of circumstances; he is the creature of OMNIPOTENCE. We are not changed by any difference in the persons and objects around us. Yet how do they seem changed to us! The reasons why they do so are obvious, and are oftener VOL. II.-B felt, than well expressed in prose. Poetry is indebted to them for half of its stock in trade. In plain and gently-ambling prose, however, steering clear of the whirlpools and quicksands of metaphysics, every one can understand how what we have seen, heard, felt, and undergone, in an intervenient space of time, affects the picture presented to our mind's eye by external objects at different periods. The most familiar illustration of the effects of comparison is, that what had at one time seemed grand in size, or beautiful in proportion, will subsequently strike us, and generally with a melancholy sensation, as diminutive or misshapen. Theodore Hook, as pleasant a writer in his way as any English author I know of, seems to think, from the manner in which he dwells upon it, and the frequency of the ob servation in his "Sayings and Doings," that he has made a profound discovery in relation to this subject-to wit: that when we leave, for the first time, scenes of humble pretensions, we are not so much struck with the altitude or vastness of other objects, as we are, on returning, with the littleness and mean proportions of what we had once been accustomed to regard, not only with complacency, but respect. The rules of optics and of perspective furnish an easy solution of the first part of this supposed phenomenon; while the simplest consideration of the nature of association as readily explains the latter. When Captain Lemuel Gulliver returned from Brobdignag, he ducked very naturally on entering his own door, though he had grown no taller than he had been when he entered it with "front sublime," and all the upright dignity of man. Why the respectable animal which we call a goose, does, or is supposed to, in the common conundrum, stoop in entering a barn by the door-way, is satisfactorily accounted for by the children's answer to the quibble; at least to my apprehension. If there be a deeper solution of the mystery, I suppose it can only be obtained by devising some direct means of intercommunion with the |