despair
From ruin and from change, and all the griefs
The passing shows of Being leave behind_,
Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live
Where meditation was. I turn'd away,
And walk'd along my road in happiness."

These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in face of them, to deny the
power of the beauty and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow of us
mortal beings, who live for awhile on her breast. Assuredly there is
sorrow that may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here spoken of--for poor
Margaret, many years dead--was of that kind. But does not the heart of a
man beat painfully, as if violence were offered to its most sacred
memories, to hear from the lips of wisdom, that "sorrow and despair from
ruin and from change, and all the griefs" that we can suffer here below,
appear an idle dream among plumes, and weeds, and spear-grass, and
mists, and rain-drops? "Where meditation is!" What meditation? Turn
thou, O child of a day! to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest
find comfort. It matters not whether a spring-bank be thy seat by Rydal
Mere, "while heaven and earth do make one imagery," or thou sittest in
the shadow of death, beside a tomb.

We said, that for the present we should confine our remarks on this
subject to the story of Margaret; but they are, more or less,
applicable to almost all the stories in "The Excursion." In many of the
eloquent disquisitions and harangues of the Three Friends, they carry
along with them the sympathies of all mankind; and the wisest may be
enlightened by their wisdom. But what we complain of is, that neither in
joy nor grief, happiness nor misery, is religion the dominant principle
of thought and feeling in the character of any one human being with whom
we are made acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single one, man or
woman, are we made to feel the beauty of holiness--the power and the
glory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought before us whom we pity,
respect, admire, love. The great poet is high-souled and
tender-hearted--his song is pure as the morning, bright as day, solemn
as night. But his inspiration is not drawn from the Book of God, but
from the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails to sustain his genius when
venturing into the depths of tribulation and anguish. Therefore
imperfect are his most truthful delineations of sins and sorrows; and
not in his philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found alleviation or
cure of the maladies that k