ctive to
turn over the ancient volume, and to see how year by year the verses
copied grew fewer, and finally ceased entirely. I do not say that all
growth is progress: sometimes it is like that of the muscle, which once
advanced into manly vigor and usefulness, but is now ossifying into
rigidity. It is well to have fancy and feeling under command: it is not
well to have feeling and fancy dead. That season of life is Vealy in
which you are charmed by the melody of verse, quite apart from its
meaning. And there is a season in which that is so. And it is curious
to remark what verses they are that have charmed many men; for they are
often verses in which no one else could have discerned that singular
fascination. You may remember how Robert Burns has recorded that in
youth he was enchanted by the melody of two lines of Addison's,--

"For though in dreadful whirls we hung,
High on the broken wave."

Sir Walter Scott felt the like fascination in youth (and he tells us it
was not entirely gone even in age) in Mickle's stanza,--

"The dews of summer night did fall;
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall,
And many an oak that grew thereby."

Not a remarkable verse, I think. However, it at least presents a
pleasant picture. But I remember well the enchantment which, when
twelve years old, I felt in a verse by Mrs. Hemans, which I can now see
presents an excessively disagreeable picture. I saw it not then; and
when I used to repeat that verse, I know it was without the slightest
perception of its meaning. You know the beautiful poem called the
"Battle of Morgarten." At least I remember it as beautiful; and I am not
going to spoil my recollection by reading it now. Here is the verse:--

"Oh! the sun in heaven fierce havoc viewed,
When the Austrian turned to fly:
And the brave, in the trampling multitude,
Had a fearful death to die!"

As I write that verse, (at which the critical reader will smile,) I am
aware that Veal has its hold of me yet. I see nothing of the miserable
scene the poet describes; but I hear the waves murmuring on a distant
beach, and I see the hills across the sea, the first sea I ever beheld;
I see the school to which I went daily; I see the class-room, and the
place where I used to sit; I see the faces and hear the voices of my old
companions, some dead, one sleeping in the middle of the great Atlantic,
many scattered over distant parts of the