ty of the imagination, than we can see all objects
without light or shade. Some things must dazzle us by their
preternatural light; others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our
curiosity to explore their obscurity. Those who would dispel these
various illusions, to give us their drab-coloured creation in their
stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the
glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning
nothing but a little grey worm; let the poet or the lover of poetry
visit it at evening, when beneath the scented hawthorn and the crescent
moon it has built itself a palace of emerald light. This is also one
part of nature, one appearance which the glow-worm presents, and that
not the least interesting; so poetry is one part of the history of the
human mind, though it is neither science nor philosophy. It cannot be
concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a
tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip the
wings of poetry. The province of the imagination is principally
visionary, the unknown and undefined: the understanding restores things
to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful
pretensions. Hence the history of religious and poetical enthusiasm is
much the same; and both have received a sensible shock from the progress
of experimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives
birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not
know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with
what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and
drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make
gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the
wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears.

"And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough."

There can never be another Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens
have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse
to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the squares of the
distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture
brings the matter nearer to us.--It is not only the progress of
mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of civilization that
are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less awe
of the preternatural world, but we can calculate mo