ance gives us pleasure, and
of a melancholy one makes us sorrowful. Yawning, and
sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated by sympathy; and some
people of delicate fibres, at the presence of a spectacle of
misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their bodies,
that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw.

The effect of this powerful agent in the moral world, is the
foundation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains
and pleasures of others, and is in consequence the source of
all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the
miseries or with the joys of our fellow creatures, but in an
involuntary excitation of ideas in some measure similar or
imitative of those which we believe to exist in the minds of
the persons whom we commiserate or congratulate!]

"The Seraph, SYMPATHY, from Heaven descends,
And bright o'er earth his beamy forehead bends;
On Man's cold heart celestial ardor flings,
And showers affection from his sparkling wings; 470
Rolls o'er the world his mild benignant eye,
Hears the lone murmur, drinks the whisper'd sigh;
Lifts the closed latch of pale Misfortune's door,
Opes the clench'd hand of Avarice to the poor,
Unbars the prison, liberates the slave,
Sheds his soft sorrows o'er the untimely grave,
Points with uplifted hand to realms above,
And charms the world with universal love.

"O'er the thrill'd frame his words assuasive steal,
And teach the selfish heart what others feel; 480
With sacred truth each erring thought control,
Bind sex to sex, and mingle soul with soul;
From heaven, He cried, descends the moral plan,
And gives Society to savage man.

"High on yon scroll, inscribed o'er Nature's shrine,
Live in bright characters the words divine.
"IN LIFE'S DISASTROUS SCENES TO OTHERS DO,
WHAT YOU WOULD WISH BY OTHERS DONE TO YOU."
--Winds! wide o'er earth the sacred law convey,
Ye Nations, hear it! and ye Kings, obey! 490

[Footnote: _High on yon scroll_, l. 485. The famous sentence
of Socrates "Know thyself," so celebrated by writers of
antiquity, and said by them to have descended from Heaven,
however wise it may be, seems to be rather of a selfish
nature; and the author of it might have added