REFLECTIONS.

LIFE.

LIFE, and the world, and whatever we call that which we are, and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with astonishment at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are the changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions that supported them-what is the birth and extinction of religions, and of political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? what is the universe of stars and suns, and their motions, and the destiny of those that inhabit them, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not because it is so miraculous. If any artist, I do

*It is singular, that Napoleon at St. Helena, as stated in Las Cases' Memoirs, should have been led into a similar reflexion. "Qu'est-ce que la vie? Quand et comment la recevons-nous ? Tout cela est-il autre chose encore que le mystère ?"

not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind, the system of the sun, the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words or upon canvas the spectacle now afforded by the sight of the cope of heaven, and illustrated it by astronomy, what would have been our admiration!—or had imagined the scenery of the earth, the mountains, and the seas, and the rivers, and the grass and the flowers, and the varieties of the forms and the masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colours which attend the rising and the setting sun, and the hues of the atmosphere turbid or serene, truly we should have been wonderstruck, and should have said, what it would have been a vain boast to have said, Truly, this creator deserves the name of a God. But now, these things are looked upon with little wonder; and who views them with delight, is considered an enthusiast or an extraordinary person.

The multitude care little for them. It is thus with life, that includes all. What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise with or without our will, and we employ words to express them.

We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments.

We live, and in living we lose the apprehension of life.

DEATH.

By the word death, we express that condition in which natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be what they were. We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations or apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more, than that those internal organs, and all that fine texture of material frame, without which we have no experience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad.

The body is placed under the ground, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The commonest observer is struck with dejection at the spectacle, and contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be.

The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have perceived him, whose voice was delightful to his ear, whose touch met,

and thrilled, and vibrated to his like sweet and subtle fire, whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his path, these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent on them, have perished in their sources. How can a corpse see and feel? What intercourse can there be in two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling bones piled together?

Such are the anxious and fearful contemplations, that, in spite of religion, we are sometimes forced to confess to ourselves.

LOVE.

The mind selects among those who most resemble it, that which is most its archetype and instinctively fills up the interstices of the imperfect image, in the same manner as the imagination moulds and completes the shape in the clouds, or in the fire, into a resemblance of whatever form, animal, building, &c. happens to be present to it.

Man is in his wildest state a social animal-a certain degree of civilization and refinement ever produces the want of sympathies still more intimate and complete, and the gratification of the senses is no longer all that is desired. It soon becomes

a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment which we call love, which is rather the universal thirst for a communion not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative, and sensitive, and which, when individualized, becomes an imperious necessity, only to be satisfied by the complete, or partial, or supposed fulfilment of its claims. This want grows more powerful in proportion to the developement which our nature receives from civilization; for man never ceases to be a social being.

REMARKS ON MANDEVILLE' AND MR. GODWIN.

THE author of 'Mandeville' is one of the most illustrious examples of intellectual power of the present age. He has exhibited that variety and universality of talent which distinguishes him who is destined to inherit lasting renown, from the possessors of temporary celebrity. If his claims were to be measured solely by the accuracy of his researches into ethical and political science, still it