or the melancholy demon, that fitfully possessed the
first king of Israel, was expelled by the skilful hand of his successor,
even when his youthful fingers awoke the melodies of the lyre, how much
more puissant the exquisite Odes of the sweet Psalmist, inspired as they
were with sentiments and views alike honorable to God and man, to
elevate the conceptions, purify the heart, ennoble the aspirations, and
adorn the life of man!

As the cask long retains the odor of the wine put into it, so the moral
and religious fragrance of many a fine poetic effusion, securely lodged
in the recesses of memory, may yield, and often does yield, a rich
repast of pleasurable associations and emotions which, beside their
opportune recurrence in some trying or tempting hour or season of
adversity, do often energize our souls with a moral heroism to deeds of
nobler daring, which result in enterprises full of blessings to
ourselves, and not unfrequently to our associates in the walks of life,
and radiate through them salutary light for generations to come.

Imagination, like every other faculty, is to be cultivated. But here we
are interrogated--'What is Imagination?'

No distinction has given critics more trouble, in the way of definition,
than that between Imagination and Fancy. Fancy, it is held, is given to
beguile and quicken the temporal part of our nature; Imagination to
incite and support the eternal.

It would be vain to enumerate the various definitions of this term, or
to attempt to give even an abstract of the diversity of views
entertained by philosophers respecting the nature and extent of its
operations. It is regarded by some writers as that power or faculty of
the mind by which it conceives and forms ideas of things communicated to
it by the organs of sense. So defines our encyclopaedias. Bacon defined
it to be the 'representation of an individual thought.' But Dugald
Stewart more philosophically defines it as the 'power of modifying our
conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones so as to form new
wholes of our own creation.' The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, not satisfied
with this, says Webster defines it to be the _will working on the
materials of memory, selecting parts of different conceptions, or
objects of memory, to form some new whole_.

This has long been our cherished view of Imagination. It creates only as
a mechanic creates a chest of drawers, a sideboard, a clock, or a watch.
It originates not a sing