are liable to do. All these abuses of the imagination are possible, likely enough to occur. Against them we must guard. But to cry out against the culture and due exercise of the imagination, because of these abuses to which it is liable, is not the part of wisdom or highest benevolence. To hinder its fair and full development, and to preclude its tse, is to cut ourselves off, and shut ourselves out, from the source of some of the highest, purest, noblest, pleasures of this our mortal life.

No Faculty perhaps of more Value. It is not too much to say, that there is, perhaps, no faculty of the mind which, under due cultivation, and within proper bounds, is of more real service to man, or is more worthy of his regard, than this. Especially, is it of value in forming and holding before the mind an ideal of excellence in whatever we pursue,

standard of attainment, practicable and desirable, but lof tier far than any thing we have yet reached. To present such an ideal, is the work of the imagination, which looks not upon the actual, but the possible, and conceives that which is more perfect than the human eye hath seen, or the human hand wrought. No man ever yet attained excellence, in any art or profession, who had not floating before his mind, by day and by night, such an ideal and vision of what he might and ought to be and to do. It hovers before him, and hangs over him, like the bow of promise and of hope, advancing with his progress, ever rising as he rises, and moving onward as he moves; he will never reach it, but without it he would never be what he is.

§ X-CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION.

Strengthened by Use. In what way, it is sometimes asked, may the faculty under consideration be improved and strengthened? To this it may be replied, in general, that the ideal faculty, like every other, is developed and strengthened by exercise, weakened and impaired by neglect. There

is no surer way to secure its growth than to call its present powers, whatever they may be, into frequent exercise. The mental faculties, like the thews and muscles of the physical frame, develop by use. Imagination follows the same general law.

Study of the Works of others. -I do not mean by this exclusively the direct exercise of the imagination in ideal creations of our own, although its frequent employment in this way, is of course necessary to its full development. But the imagination is also exercised by the study of the ideal creations of others, especially of those highly gifted minds which have adorned and enriched their age with pro ductions of rarest value, which bear the stamp and seal of immortality. With these, in whatever department of letters or art, in poetry, oratory, music, painting, sculpture, architecture--whatever is grand, and lofty, and full of inspiration, whatever is beautiful and pleasing, whatever is of choicest worth and excellence in its own proper sphere; with these let him become familiar who seeks to cultivate in himself the faculty of the ideal. Every work of the imagination appeals to the imagination of the observer, and thus develops the faculty which it calls into exercise. No one can be familiar with the creations of Shakspeare and Milton, of Mozart and Beethoven, of Raphael and Michael Angelo, and not catch something of their inspiration.

Study of Nature. Even more indispensable is the study of nature; and it has this advantage, that it is open to those who may not have access to the sublime works of the highest masters of art. Nature, in all her moods and phases — in her wonderful variety of elements -the grand and the lowly, the sublime and the beautiful, the terrible and the pleasing nature in her mildest and most fearful displays

of

power, and also in her softest and sweetest attractions,

is open to every man's observation, and he must be a

close observer and a diligent student of her who would cultivate in himself the ideal element. The most gifted

sons of genius, the minds most richly endowed with the power of ideal creation, have been remarkable for their love and careful study of nature.

Mistake on this Point. I must notice in this connec tion, however, a mistake into which some have fallen in regard to this matter. The simple description of a scene in nature, just as it is, is not properly a work of the imagina tion. It is simply perception or memory that is thus exer cised, along with judgment and artistic power of expres sion. Imagination gives not the actual, but the idcal. She never satisfies herself with an exact copy. The mere portrait painter, however skillful, is not in the highest sense an artist. The painter, mentioned by Wayland, who copied the wing of the butterfly for the wing of the Sylph, was not, in so doing, exercising his imagination, but only his power of imitation. So, too, when Walter Scott gives us, in the cave of Denzel, a precise description of some spot which he has seen, even to the very plants and flowers that grow among the rocks, that scene, however pleasing and life-like, is not properly a creation of his own imagination; it is a description of the actual, and not a conception of the ideal. Much that is included under the general title of works of the imagination is not properly the production of that faculty.

Coleridge has made essentially the same remark, that in what is called a work of imagination, much is simple narra tion, much the filling up of the outline, and not to be attribu ted to that faculty.

The Student of Nature not a mere Copyist. - The tru study of nature, is not to observe simply that we may copy what she presents, but rather to gather materials on which our own conceptive power may work, and which it may fashion after its own designs into new combinations and results of beauty. Nature, too, is full of hints and sugges tions which a discerning mind, and an eye practised to the beautiful, will not fail to catch and improve. It is only

when we do this, when we begin, in fact, to depart from, and go beyond the actual, that we exercise the imagination.

Difference illustrated by an Example. The difference between simple description, and the creations of the con ceptive faculty, may be shown by reference to a single example :

"The twilight hours, like birds, flew by,

As lightly and as free;

Ten thousand stars were in the sky,

Ten thousand in the sea;

For every wave, with dimpled cheek

That leaped upon the air,

Had caught a star in its embrace,

And held it trembling there."

The quiet stillness of the evening, the reflection of the stars in the sea, are the two simple ideas which enter into this beautiful stanza. They would have been faithfully and fully expressed, so far as regards all the perfections of exact description, by the simple propositions which follow: "The evening hours passed swiftly and silently; many stars appeared in the sky, and each was reflected in the sea."

The poet is not content with this description. The swiftness and silentness of those passing hours remind him of the flight of birds along the sky. The resemblance strikes him a beautiful. He embodies it in his description. It is an ideal conception. He goes further. He sees in the water, not the reflection merely of the stars, bat the stars them selves, as many in the sea as in the sky. Here is a departure from the truth, from the actual, an advance into the region of the ideal. Imagination, thus set free, takes still further liberties: attributes to the inanimate wave the dimpled cheek of beauty, ascribes its restlessness not to the laws of gravitation, but to the force of a strictly human passion, un ler the influence of which it leaps into the air

toward the object of its affection, seizes it, and holds it, rembling, in its embrace

§ XI. HISTORICAL SKETCH.

VARIOUS DEFINITIONE AND THEORIES OF IMAGINATION BY DIFFERENT WRITERS.

Definition of Dr. Reid.- Reid makes it nearly synonymous with simple apprehension. "I take imagination, in its most proper sense, to signify a lively conception of objects of sight," the conception of things as they appear to the eye. Addison employs the term with the same limitation, that is, as confined to objects of sight.

Of Stewart.-Stewart regards this as incorrect, holds that imagination is not confined to visible or even sensible objects. He regards it as a complex, not a simple power, including simple apprehension, abstraction, judgment, or taste, and association of ideas; its province being to select, from dif ferent objects, a variety of qualities and circumstances, and combine and arrange ther so as to form a new creation of its own.

Of Brown.-Brown differs not essentially from the view of Stewart. He also makes imagination a complex opera tion, involving conception, abstraction, judgment, associa tion. He distinguishes between the spontaneous and the voluntary operation of the imaginative power; in the for mer case, there is no voluntary effort of selection, combi nation, etc., but images arise independently of any desire or choice of ours, by the laws of suggestion; and this he hold to be the most frequent operation of the faculty. In the case of voluntary imagination, which is attended with desire this desire is the prominent thing, and serves to keep the conception of the subject before the mind, in consequence of which, a variety of associated conceptions follow, by the laws of suggestion, in regular train. Of these suggested conceptions and images, some, we approve, others, we do