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are natural to man, and accompany him from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, and from manhood to decrepid age.

The views of nature are not only pleasing in themselves, but become still more so from their association with other pleasures which enliven our early days. It is then that a redundant flow of health and spirits produces a sense of vigour, and a secret gladness of heart, not unlike what our common progenitor is supposed to have felt immediately upon his creation, and which he is made to express as follows:

As new wak'd from soundest sleep,
Strait toward heav'n my wond'ring eyes I turn'd,
And gaz'd a while the ample sky, till rais'd
By quick instinctive motion, up I sprung,
As thitherward endeavouring, and upright
Stood on my feet :-

Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
Surveyed, and sometimes went and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigour led
And felt that I was happier than I knew.

It is this fulness of life and self-enjoyment which sheds a brightness on every surrounding object, on hill and dale, forest and plain, along with every part of animated nature; and which renders the placid murmurs of a rivulet, the rushing of a distant torrent, or the wild music of the woods, more exquisitely delightful than all the harmony of Handel at a later period, when the sensitive organs are become obtuse, and the mind less susceptive of agree✔able emotions. Hence arises our fondness for rural scenes, and for those above all where we have spent the early part of life. There is no man, I suppose, who can fail to recover some pleasing image of his school-boy days, upon revisiting, though after the longest absence, those fields and woods where he was accustomed to wander, at a season when his senses and imagination were no less impressible by the novelty than by the beauties of nature.

This predilection for places and objects with which we were first conversant, ex

tends itself to others that resemble them, and consequently may afford one reason why the same natural scenery is not equally agreeable to every spectator: and, should we be required more fully to account for this difference, we might add to the effect of early associations that which arises from variety of character. Men are apt to be best pleased with whatever bears the greatest likeness to themselves: whence, in general, those who have a turn for sublimity will be most delighted with vast plains or majestic forests, with ranges of lofty mountains, or spacious vallies watered with copious rivers; others, of a less elevated genius, will love to dwell on scenes which partake more of beauty than of grandeur; while the philanthropist will take the greatest pleasure in the view of lands for pasture or tillage, waving with harvests or stocked with cattle.

Such appears to be the various impression of nature upon different individuals; and it is often no less various upon the

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same individual at different times. According as he is cheerful or melancholy, grave or gay, the same prospect will be overcast with gloom, or bright with illumination. The mind sheds its own hue on every thing around it, and, as it were with the wand of a magician, converts a paradise into a desert, and a desert into a paradise.

Hence it may seem probable, that the greater part of the pleasure we experience in the contemplation of external nature, arises from a reflected image of ourselves. But whatever be the delight it affords us, from this or other causes, the amount I apprehend to be much less than is sometimes represented.

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Were we to listen to certain writers, we might almost be led to imagine, that little more is necessary to charm away all our disquietudes, than some rural scene agreeably diversified. We may all, says a late author, live in Arcadia, if we please. The

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beauties of a crystal spring, a' silent grove, a daisied meadow, will chasten the feelings of the heart, and afford at all times a permanent and pure delight*. Such sentimental notions savour strongly of puerility, and are no proof of that extraordinary progress of reason and philosophy which is the great boast of the present age. Rather, they seem to indicate a retrograde motion, from reason to imagination, and from imagination to sense and mere animal instinct. Who would not, observes the same writer, renounce the universe for one single tear of love ! An exclamation more suited to Anthony and Cleopatra, or to some silly romance, than to the gravity of a discourse either moral or philosophical.

Zimmermann knew very well, as every man must know, that happiness is infinitely more dependent on the state of the mind than upon any external circumstances; and that virtue is the chief source of

* Zimmermann on Solitude, p. 268. + Id. p. 240.

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