power over the past, till it becomes the present,
and then, on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till
all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in
illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the Muses; and how
divinely indeed they sang around her as she lay in the pensive shade!

You know the words of Milton--

"Till old experience doth attain
To something like prophetic strain;"

and you know, while reading them, that Experience is consummate Memory,
Imagination wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with
Genius, and in its "prophetic strain"--Inspiration.

We would fain lower our tone--and on this theme speak like what we are,
one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap now
twenty-three feet on level ground (our utmost might be twenty-three
inches), nevertheless we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty
minutes,"--ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel.
What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first, worms
though we be, we cannot even crawl;--disdainful next of that
acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig;--pretty lambs,
we then totter to the terror of our deep-bosomed dames--till the welkin
rings with admiration to behold, _sans_ leading-strings, the weanlings
walk;--like wildfire then we run, for we have found the use of our
feet;--like wild-geese then we fly, for we may not doubt we have
wings;--in car, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and sky, and
universal nature. The car runs on a post--the ship on a rock--the "air
hath bubbles as the water hath"--the balloon is one of them, and bursts
like a bladder--and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons.
Where, pray, in all this is there a single symptom or particle of
Imagination? It is of Passion "all compact."

True, this is not a finished picture--'tis but a slight sketch of the
season of Youth; but paint it as you will, and if faithful to nature you
will find Passion in plenty, and a dearth of Imagination. Nor is the
season of Youth therefore to be pitied--for Passion respires and expires
in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent as the unwise
lecture, it is mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth we are the
creatures, the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly
in spite of its severity; for ere long we come to discern through the
dust of our own raising, the pinnacle