Of Fancy's toil* aspiring, I unlock The springs of ancient Wisdom! while I join Thy name, thrice honour'd! with the immortal praise I point the high example of thy sons And tune to Attic themes the British lyre."t It is this peculiar tendency of objects of perception, to throw a brighter colouring on the ideas they suggest, that gives the chief value to the monuments of national gratitude. The conquests of the Roman generals must have been known to all the citizens of Rome; but it was in the triumphal procession to the capitol, that they must have felt most proudly the grandeur of the Republic, and the honour of the individual victor; and must have caught that emulation, which was to lead them afterwards through fields of equal danger, to ascend the same glorious car. Themistocles, we are told, could not sleep, for thinking of the trophies of another distinguished chief; and it was thus, perhaps, that the victory of Marathon, in the combat of a later period, again delivered Greece. The trophy, the obelisk, the triumphal arch, would, indeed, be of little interest, if they were only to recall to us the names and dates of the actions they commemorate; but, while they record past honours, they are, in truth, the presages, and more than presages, of honours to come. In Sparta, an oration was every year pronounced on the tomb of Leonidas. Is it possible to suppose, that, in such a scene, and with such an object before them, the orator, and the assembled nation, who listened to him, felt no deeper emotion, than they would have done, if the same language had been addressed from any other place, unconnected with so sacred a remembrance? "To abstract the mind," says Dr. Johnson, in a passage which has become almost trite from frequent quotation, and which is strongly marked with all the peculiarities of his style,--" to abstract the mind from all local emotion, would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, --whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends," he continues, "be such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us, indifferent and unmoved, over any ground which has been dignified by wis • Fancy's plume.-Orig. Pleasures of Imagination, v. 567, 604, with the exclusion of v. 571, 579; and the substitution, from the second form of the poem, (B. I. v. 707, 8,) of "hid his face," &c. to "Kings," instead of "gnashed his teeth To see thee rend the pageants of his throne."-v. 583, 4. dom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."* When Antony, in his funeral eulogium of Cæsar, uncovered the body before the people, he knew well what powerful persuasion the wounds, which he pointed out, would give to his oratory. It has been well remarked," that never had funeral eloquence so powerful an impression, for it prepared the slavery of twenty nations. The dead body of Lucretia had freed Rome from the fetters of its tyrants,-the dead body of Cæsar fastened on it again its chains." "This influence of perceptible objects in awakening associated thoughts and associated feelings," says Mr. Stewart, seems to arise, in a great measure, from their permanent operation as exciting or suggesting causes. When a train of thought takes its rise from an idea or conception, the first idea soon disappears, and a series of others succeeds, which are gradually less and less related to that with which the train commenced; but, in the case of perception, the exciting cause remains steadily before us; and all the thoughts and feelings which have any relation to it, crowd into the mind in rapid succession; strengthening each other's effects, and all conspiring in the same general impression."+ This explanation of a very striking phenomenon, is simple and beautiful; and, it may be remarked, in confirmation of it, that it is not every object of perception, which renders the trains of ideas that succeed it more vivid, but only such objects as are, in themselves, interesting; and, therefore, lead the mind to dwell on them, giving that time, therefore, which Mr. Stewart supposes to be necessary, for gathering and bringing forward the crowd of associate ideas, which conspire in heightening the particular emotion. The sight of any thing indifferent to us, may suggest various conceptions, without any peculiar liveliness of the conceptions suggested. In the instance of the pewter spoon, so pathetically related by Captain King, an instance, I may remark by the way, which shows how much it is in the power of circumstances to give interest, and even a species of dignity, to the most vulgar object, there can be no doubt, that, often before the discovery of it, innumerable objects, familiar to all the crew, must have brought their distant home to their remembrance. But such a spoon, found in a country so distant, must have been an object of astonishment; and the importance which the surprise Journal of a Tour, &c.-Works, v. IX. p. 319. Edit. Edin. 1806. † Philosophy of the Human Mind, Chap. V. Part 1. Sect. 1. at the discovery gave to it, must have caused them to dwell on it, till it awakened all those tender remembrances, which an object more familiar, and therefore, less interesting, would have failed to excite. Just, however, as I conceive Mr. Stewart's explanation to be, to the whole extent to which the circumstances assigned by him can operate, I am inclined to think, that there is another circumstance, which concurs very forcibly in the effect, and is probably the chief source of the vivid emotion. That there is something more than the mere permanence of the object of perception, concerned in giving additional liveliness to the ideas it suggests, is, I think, evident from this, that, when the external object is very interesting, it produces a considerable effect, before the permanence can have operated so far as to have collected and condensed, if I may so express it, any very considerable number of ideas. After the first impulse of emotion, indeed, the longer the object continues present, so as to produce a greater number of associate thoughts and feelings,-all, as Mr. Stewart says, strengthening each other's effects, and all conspiring in the same general impression," the more lively, of course, or at least, the more permanent, must the emotion become. Yet still, the first burst of feeling almost at the very moment of the perception, remains unexplained. To a woman of lively sensibility, who, after many years of happy wedlock, has been deprived by death of the father of her children, and who has learned, at length, that sort of tender resignation which time alone inspires, so as to think of his memory, not indeed without sorrow, but with a sort of tranquil sadness,-to such a person the discovery of a letter, a book, a drawing, or any other trifling and unexpected memorial, is sufficient to fill the eyes and the heart with instant and overwhelming emotion. It is probable, that Captain King had often thought, for a longer time together, of Britain, and had thus gathered in his imagination more circumstances connected with his home, than at the moment, when he began to be powerfully affected by the sight of the spoon. Beside the mere permanence, therefore, of objects of perception, there must be some other circumstance of influence, which precedes the effect of the permanence, and probably continues to augment it. This additional circumstance appears to me to be the following: When any object of preception is so interesting as to lead us to pause in considering it, the associate feelings which it suggests, are not consecutive merely to the perception; but, as the perception is continued for a length of time, they coexist, and are mingled with it, so as to form with it one complex feeling. With the perception, however, is, of course, combined, the belief of the actual external reality of its object; and this feeling of reality being a part of that complex whole, of which the coexisting associate ideas are also constituent parts, mingles with them all, so as, when the imaginary part readily harmonizes with the real, to diffuse over the whole, which is felt as if one scene or group, a sort of faint temporary impression of reality. In such a process, the illusive impression of reality, which the perception communicates to the coexisting associate ideas, must of course be greater in proportion as the perception is itself more lively; and in proportion, too, as by the interest which it excites, it leads the mind to dwell on it longer, so as to produce that heightened effect of emotion, so justly ascribed by Mr. Stewart to the groups of kindred ideas and feelings. Yet, independently of the influence of these groups, as a number of conceptions, the mere illusion produced by the mingling reality of the perception, with which they blend and harmonize, may, of itself, in very interesting cases, be sufficient to account for that sudden burst of overpowering emotion, which, otherwise, it would be so difficult to explain. It is not to be supposed, indeed, that the illusion remains very long. On the contrary, there is reason to believe, that, almost every moment, the conviction of the absolute unreality of what is merely conceived, recurs, and the whole which seemed to exist before us vanishes again, and is lost; but, almost every moment, likewise, the illusion itself recurs, by the mere coexistence of the perception of the real object with the unreal, but harmonizing conceptions. That the illusion is frequently broken, however, and the feeling of the presence of a number of beloved objects renewed and lost in rapid succession, is far from unfavourable to the violence of the emotion which it produces; since innumerable facts shew, that the mind is never so readily moved to extreme emotion, as when it fluctuates between two opposite feelings. In the sudden alternations of joy and grief, hope and fear, confiding love and jealousy, the agitation of each seems not to lessen the violence of the other, but to communicate to it, in addition, no small portion of its own violence. Hence it happens, that eyes, which can retain their tears, with firm and inflexible patience under the pressure of any lasting affliction, dissolve instantly into the very softness of sorrow, not on any increase of misery, but on the sudden impulse of some unexpected joy. The agitation of an interesting allusion, therefore, rapidly conceived, and rapidly dispelled, is the very state which, from our knowledge of the analogous phenomena of mind, might be suppos ed the most likely to produce an overflow of any tender emotion. I have already stated the general mode in which I conceive perception to give peculiar vividness to the associate feelings which it suggests. The general doctrine, however, will perhaps be best illustrated by the analysis of what takes place in a particular instance. When the Swiss is at a distance from his country, some accidental image, in a train of thought, may lead him in fancy to his native mountains; but, in this case, the ideas of his imagination are not attached to any thing external and permanent, and are, therefore, comparatively faint. When, however, he actually hears, in all the vividness of external sense, the song of his home,-the conception of his home is immediately excited, and continues to coexist with the impression produced by the well-known air. That air, however, is not a faint imagination, but a reality. It is not the remembrance of a perception, but is, in truth, the very same perception, which once formed a part of his complicated sensations, when the song was warbled along his valley, and the valley and the song were together present to his eye and ear. That actual song, and, not the perception indeed, but the conception of the valley, are now again present to his mind : and it is not wonderful, therefore, that the reality of the song, as actually coexisting and blending with the conception of the scene, in the same manner as they had often been mingled when both were real, should communicate to it, in the momentary illusion, a portion of its own vividness. There is a very pleasing example of the influence which we are at present considering, related by the late Dr. Rush of Philadelphia, in the volume which he published of his Introductory Lectures. "During the time I passed at a countryschool, in Cecil County, in Maryland," says this ingenious and amiable medical philosopher, "I often went on a holiday, with my schoolmates, to see an eagle's nest, upon the summit of a dead tree in the neighbourhood of the school, during the time of the incubation of that bird. The daughter of the farmer, in whose field this tree stood, and with whom I became acquainted, married, and settled in this city about forty years ago. In our occasional interviews, we now and then spoke of the innocent haunts and rural pleasures of our youth, and, among other things, of the eagle's nest in her father's field. A few years ago, I was called to visit this woman when she was in the lowest stage of a typhus fever. Upon enter ing her room, I caught her eye, and, with a cheerful tone of voice, said only, The eagle's nest. She seized my hand, with |
