Beautiful vision! I seek thy face; Inspire my soul with the wonderful grace When I wake, light my world Call up thy bright dreams! Beautiful vision! be ever near, And bear me on through this Life's small sphere In the beam of thine eye; In thy smile let me die! How brief was the delusion-for it was a delusion-nothing morelet the following passage, written on reading the above lines five years afterwards, declare: My early strain! years, years, long years have pass'd- Since o'er thy boyish rhymes I linger'd last, And deem'd the rude attempt was Poesy; And with those years have fled—great Heav'n how fast !— My youth's bright dreams, and in their place I see Reality-how stern-how cold! Oh, Truth! Why dost thou open the blind eyes of Youth? Why not permit the day dreams of the boy Of young Life's thronging dreams? Oh! Is it well With thy stern voice, Illusion to destroy, And wake him to the True? But I must quell I lean on Thee, and trust Thee to the end. And now that I have dared to look back so far into the Past, there are other records that I would fain drag from their hiding-places in my Note-Book. Here are some bitter lines written on the day that completed my nineteenth year-when I felt that the boy died and that the man began to live: To day I leave my teens ; Ah me! the thought is pain.— For Boyhood's joyful scenes With them take wing-and ne'er will come again! The all-exciting game,— The thoughtlessness of mind, The guileless thirst for fame,— Depart and leave no recompense behind! The innocence of Youth,— The sunshine of its hours,- The thought that all was truth, Where are they? Vanished, like the Spring's first flowers. And lo! I see instead Cares manifold and great, My boyhood's joys all dead, And in their place the dreaded glance of Fate: Dark dusky shades rise o'er My fearful spirit now,—— Young Joy appears no more, But TIME must plough his furrows on my brow : And nearer to the tomb Each moment brings me on I pause!Avaunt this gloom! Death is a thought I cannot dwell upon. I soon felt the clouds I feared. Here are the words of one of my early fits of gloom : I know not why-but latterly my mind Hath yielded up itself to Melancholy; Leaving for those who ought to have a share There is no earthly reason why I thus Should sink in Gloom's dark stream: the arm of Fate Has not opposed my pleasures or my hopes, Has left untouched my friends and dearly lov'd ones, But yet I can't be happy: thoughts of Death A lovely lily gazing modestly Upon the admiring sun that shone in splendour;- It broke in two, and all its beauty withered; Ah here, said I, I see the lordly Hand That strikes the young, the beautiful, the good, And leaves the weed to grow. But oh! my soul CHAPTER XIV. THE ODD MAN SPEAKS ODDLY ABOUT THE OCEAN. I shall never forget the extraordinary feeling that came over me, when I first beheld the "deep, deep sea." It was on a smiling summer's morning, when there was scarcely a breath of air abroad, and the Great Everlasting Thing lay like a vast, a shoreless, lake-unbroken by a ripple-before me. The feeling was awe-speechless, solemn, awe. I felt that I was in a Mighty Presence; the Great Witness of the Past was there, bodily, palpably, visibly. The Giant Watcher that dwelt with Chaos and heard the first words of God; that saw the primeval Cloud of Darkness melt at the Light-calling Fiat, and the bright stars launched into their orbits in the Abyss of Space; that rose at the command of the insulted Pure-One, and deluged the offending Earth; that saw the Stupendous Monarchies of the World rise, progress, flourish, decay, and fall; that amidst desolation and death has yet remained unchanged and companionless; the dread and Solitary Spectator of earth's guilt and sorrow :-was before me! Then awe rose into Homage. I felt my insignificance :— Oh! when we stand alone on such a shore, And see the mighty deep before us roll,- And mark its waves that mock our frail control, Dash all unbridled onward evermore, Then comes that thought that shook the Psalmist's soul, "Lord what is man?" And the wild waves reply "A thing of dust who lives that he may die!" There are some who would-who do-call this mock-humility, and who in presence of such a scene begin to prate about the dignity of human nature; and tell what man has done; what Babylons he has built-what Pyramids he has raised-what lofty temples he has reared. How poor and selfish a thought! Oh, what a weak and narrow soul has he, Who there, in hearing of that roaring surge,- Cannot a moment from his clay emerge, But falls in raptures o'er Humanity, And Man's transcendent might begins to urge; But whence arises this feeling of insignificance in the mind of man as he stands on the brink of the Ocean? Is there in it too much self abasement ?-too little proper respect for "the dignity of human nature"? No! for if the spectator have a proper sense, he will feel that he is in the presence of God, and will humble himself accordingly. The ocean is the emblem of eternity, and suggests THE ETERNAL. And in the immediate presence of the CREATOR, how should the creature stand? With a self applausive boast of his own dignity on his lying lip ?-or with bowed head and bended kneeawestricken, humble and speechless? Here I may perhaps be allowed to transcribe a few lines I wrote when first fairly on the Sea : Hail Everlasting! Hail! Thou Great Sublime! Thou that art conqueror of the great God Time,— That gath'rest worshippers from every clime,- How broad is thy expanse! How more than grand! Without a limit thou dost scorn the land, And bid the monarch Earth bow down to thee; I trust myself upon thy heaving breast! I know that what thou doest is of God; He formed thee, and thou canst not but obey; Shall quench the light that animates my day, THE AGE OF GREAT CITIES.* THIS age is emphatically the age of books: the press was never so inundated with the lucubrations of Authors, as it has been during the present century. And how few, compared with the many productions which are unceasingly presented to the public, boast either of circulation or a long remembrance. It was with these musings that we opened the pages of Robert Vaughan's "Age of Great Cities" with the consciousness, however, that he is not of the class of those whose compositions are as trivial as the majority of those that are always falling under our notice: but on the contrary, judging from his past testimonials, we felt assured that the present volume would prove (as indisputably as its predecessors from the same pen) that he is a profound scholar, a close investigator after truth, a man of extensive knowledge, and whose reflections are at all times, deserving of serious attentiveness. The "Age of Great Cities" is not only an enquiry of magnitude, but it involves more or less the history of the world. The past is as essential to the elucidation of the subject as the present; for the object recognized by Dr. Vaughan is to demonstrate that Cities have now reached a stage of importance not only without precedent in the annals of nations, but that their effect and influence are working, and will progress in achieving, an incalculable blessing to humanity. Although the subject is so extensive in its bearings, yet it is dwelt upon by the author with remarkable sententiousness, without injuring the current of available arguments. This merit is obviously by no means unimportant; for the reader is relieved of the tedium of wading through a mass of minute details, and as the work contains far more matter than verbosity, we presage that it will be favoured with a fair share of popularity. Indeed, considering the number of historic references, and the many allusions to existing peculiarities connected with European social systems, that are made points for commentation in the work, we were as astonished as we were pleased at the author's power of concentration. As might readily be supposed the volume commences with a narration of the social characteristics of the great cities in ancient times, embracing Asia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, showing the various circumstances which accelerated their decline. The first great and paramount cause of the fall of ancient States,-the insatiate thirst for conquest, which marred and frustrated all permanent advancement in commerce and the arts of peace, is dwelt on with considerable learn The Age of Great Cities; or Modern Society viewed in its relation to Intelligence, Morals, and Religion: by Robert Vaughan, D.D. London, Jackson and Walford. ing, and allows an opportunity to the Doctor to contrast with much appositeness the civilization of the modern, against that of the antique world. The ancients made the sword the grand instrument to open the pathway to greatness and renown, but with what duration of success, the ruins of the cities of antiquity awfully proclaim. How true is it that when an empire's stability is based on war and rapine, its robust and wholesome existence cannot be perpetuated, and that states founded on military authority have a tendency to decline, and a fatality to be vanquished. Thus the Babylonians were victorious over the Assyrians, the Assyrians with the Medes were engulphed in the monarchy of the Persians; they in turn were humbled by Macedon. Greece again, following the train of her predecessors, became the sacrifice to war, and submitted to the yoke of Imperial Rome. And lastly the "Eternal City" herself, the conqueror of conquerors, was dismantled of her glories, her triumphs scattered, her temples profaned, all her greatness prostrated, and her soil over-run by barbarian hordes. This review would almost dispose us to concur with Burke's opinion "that all states have a proneness to rise, flourish, and fall, and that they inherit an infancy, a manhood, and a decrepitude." Such a conclusion is but too true, as regards the nations of old, nor is such a result to be marvelled at, when we consider their internal organization and in what consisted their independence and But when we contrast the nations of modern general prosperity. Europe (the cities especially) with those of the Old World, we must perceive a wide dissimilarity between them. The nations of Europe, instead of supporting their power almost exclusively by acts of aggression and unpardonable violence, find it more to their interest to "Our age," encourage the pursuits of peaceful industry among their people, and to promote all the arts that tend to humanize mankind. observes Dr. V. " is pre-eminently the age of great cities. Babylon and Thebes, Carthage and Rome, were great cities, but the world has never been so covered with cities as at the present time, and society generally has never been so leavened with the spirit natural to cities." This change has been for centuries working its way more and more into the governments of Europe, with what progress is question. We trust also traced with great exactness by the author in question. that the maxim of peace rather than that of war will be equally progressive indeed we would fain hope that nations can, and will, continue to see the historic fact, that war generally ceases where it begins, as regards territory, but leaves behind it a long retribution on a country. We are glad that the following remarks encourage the belief we have imbibed: : "Men seem to have learnt, at least in some degree, that it is possible to find a better employment than that of bringing the greatest available skill to the business of destroying each other. It is beginning to be suspected that the sword, after all, may not be the only species of argument to which men may, with dignity, betake themselves, with a view to the adjustment of disputes. Some progress has certainly been made toward the conclusion, that it may be both wise and humane to do what we can in order to prolong life, in place of shortening it; and to increase the means of human enjoyment in place of diminishing them. Judging from these appearances, we |
