the Affections of Religion, they will still bear that character. And they do so, for they still appear to us in themselves pure and holy. If that is their character, then their very presence in the soul will be in some degree a restoration of its own purity and holiness. And this also is universally felt to be true: to such a degree that, most strongly to describe those feelings, we apply to them terms derived from the language of religion. We call those ties sacred: we call those duties Piety. They re-induce upon the Soul that purer, loftier nature, which the ordinary course of the world has troubled; and in doing so, they not only bring the Mind into a State which is in harmony with the Divine Law, but they do, to a certain degree, begin Religion in the Soul. This intimate connection between the strongest feelings of the heart and its holiest thoughts, discovers itself when the whole heart is wrung by the calamities to which through those feelings it lies open. When the hand of Death has rent in one moment from fond affection the happiness of years, and seems to have left to it no other lot upon Earth than to bleed and mourn, then, in that desolation of the spirit, are discovered what are the secret powers which it bears within itself, out of which it can derive consolation and peace. The Mind, torn by such a stroke from all those inferior human sympathies which, weak and powerless when compared to its own sorrow, can afford it no relief, turns itself to that Sympathy which is without bounds. Ask of the forlorn and widowed heart what is the calm which it finds in those hours of secret thought, which are withdrawn from all eyes?—ask what is that hidden process of Nature, by which Grief has led it on to devotion? That attraction of the Soul in its uttermost earthly distress to a source of consolation remote from Earth, is not to be ascribed to a Disposition to substitute one emotion for another, as if it hoped to find relief in dispelling and blotting out the vain passion with which it laboured before: but, in the very constitution of the Soul, the capacities of human and of divine affection are linked together; and it is the very depth of its passion that leads it over from the one to the other. Nor is its consolation forgetfulness. But that affection which was wounded becomes even more deep and tender in the midst of the calm which it attains.

SEWARD.

Assuredly such a spectator of human nature as we have imagined could not be indifferent to such a tendency of these natural emotions. He could not observe with unconcern even the nascent streaks of light, the dawning of a religious mind. He would call that GooD which, though it had no distinct and conscious reference to anything above the Earth, did yet, by the very preparation it made in the Soul for the reception of something more holy, vindicate to itself a heavenly origin.

NORTH.

Even the Ancients, contemplating that Power in the Mind which judges so supremely of Right and Wrong, could call it nothing else than a God within us. He then who, in the highest light of knowledge, contemplates the human mind, will be yet more strongly impressed with this SANCTITY of the Conscience, which affected even minds lying under much darkness and abasement, and therefore alienated from such perceptions. He undoubtedly will regard this principle as a part of original Religion not yet extinct in the Soul: will, as such, esteem and revere it; and conceiving the highest perfection of human nature to consist in its known and willed Conformity to the Divine Will, will regard with kindred feelings even this imperfect and unconscious conformity to that Law, which is thus maintained by the human spirit, resolutely and proudly struggling, in the midst of its errors, against a yet deeper fall.

TALBOYS.

And, sir, it must be remembered that, as the degrees of moral goodness are different in the various dispositions and actions of men, though they all fall under the description of one morality; so, too, the feeling of moral approbation exists in very different degrees in different minds, though in all it bears a common name. If the moral sensibility is not enlightened and

quickened by those feelings which belong to its most perfect state, its judgments will be proportionally faint and low. As in its virtue there is a lower virtue, which tends merely to a Harmony with the Divine Will, so, in the judgment of virtue, there is a lower judgment, which implies no more than that he who judges has his own mind brought into a state in which there is a tendency to the same sacred and solemn apprehensions.

NORTH.

The Moral judgments of men are vague and undefined; but they are accompanied universally with a solemn feeling: not merely of dislike-not, in the highest degree, of mere detestation and hate-not merely with reproach and resentment for violating the benevolence, and invading the happiness of human nature; but there is a sensation of awe accompanying the sentiment of condemnation, which visibly refers to something more than what is present to our eyes on the face of the smiling or the blasted Earth. Among all nations, the abhorrence and punishment of crime has always reference to some indignation that is conceived of among higher powers. Their Laws are imagined to be under a holier sanction, and in their violated majesty there is apprehended to be something of the anger of offended Deity. Hence the wrath of Punishments, which have been conceived of as fulfilling heavenly displeasure; and those who have inflicted signal retributions have imagined that they avenged their Gods as well as the broken laws of men.

TALBOYS.

This feeling of a superhuman authority present in the affairs of men shows decisively what is the tendency, in natural minds, of moral feeling, when it is aroused to its greatest height; the season in which it may be expected best to declare its own nature.

NORTH.

Nor did this awe of a superior power present in the consciences of men, and violated there, discover itself solely in the vindications of punishment ; but the great acts of virtue also led men to thoughts above humanity; nor did they otherwise conceive of the impulses of the mind, in the noblest actions, than as inspirations from the divinity.

SEWARD.

These opinions and views have prevailed in nations ignorant of religion, but in whose powerful nature the native sentiments of the human spirit disclosed themselves in full force; among whom, therefore, its actual tendencies may best be ascertained.

NORTH.

The same truths, deeply buried in human nature, may be recognised in different forms wherever its voice speaks in its strength. If one people have believed that Furies rose from their infernal beds to dog the steps of the murderer, wandering upon the Earth, others, from the same source of preternatural feeling, have believed that the body would bleed afresh at his approach, and that his unappeased ghost would haunt the place where Guilt had driven it out from life. The very conception of such crimes dilates the spirit to conceptions of the unseen powers which reign over human life, which walk unperceived among the paths of men, and which are universally believed to be enemies or punishers of human wickedness. If the history of superstition might be told at large, it would represent to us the conscience of man laid open by his Imagination, and would disclose, in fearful pictures, the reality of that connection which subsists in our nature between the apprehension of Good and Evil in the soul of man, and the apprehensions cognate with it of a world of invisible power, of which it is the eternal law that Good is required, and Evil hated and pursued.

TALBOYS.

These evidences attest that, even among those who have the least knowledge of Religion, whose judgments are least moulded by its spirit, there is an inseparable connection between Conscience and Religion; that its strong emotions always carry the soul to those conceptions which are most akin to its powers.

NORTH.

If, under the circumstances which produce the strongest feeling, such a tendency shows itself distinctly and in remarkable forms, then, under all circumstances, there will be fainter and more indistinct perception of this tendency?

Even so, sir.

SEWARD.

NORTH.

For this is the nature of the human Mind. Our feelings are not always determined by distinct thought; but there is a sort of presaging faculty in the soul, by which it foresees whither its own conception tends, and feels, in anticipation of those thoughts, into which the imagination would run if it were left free.

SEWARD.

I am not sure, sir, that I fully understand you.

NORTH.

Thus certain strains of thought are felt to be joyous or solemn when they are barely touched, and in the ready sensibility, feeling begins to arise, though no ideas are yet distinctly present to which such feeling fitly belongs. The mind shudders or is gladdened at the distant suggestion of what it knows, if pursued, would shake it with horror, or fill the blood with joy.

TALBOYS.

Every human being must have had such experience.

NORTH.

This is a fact of our nature too well understood by those whose mind labours with any store of fearful or bitter recollection, into which they dread to look. The approach to some place hideous to the memory, produces the shivering of horror before it is beheld; and even within the spirit, in like manner, the approach to those dark places of thought where unsoothed sorrows lie buried, startles the mind, and warns it to turn the steps of thought another way.

TALBOYS.

The feeling that "that way madness lies;" and the recoiling from it, through a forefeeling of the pain which lies in the thoughts that might arise, is common to all strong passion that has held long possession of the mind.

NORTH.

A similar state is known in these imitations of passion, the works of art ;— Music has power over us, not by the feelings which it produces distinctly in the mind, but by those many deep and passionate feelings which it barely touches, and of which it raises up, therefore, from moment to moment, obscure and undefined anticipations. In Painting, the Imagination is most powerfully excited often not by what is shown, but by what is dimly indicated. What is shown exhausts and limits the feelings that belong to it; what is indicated merely, opens up an insight into a whole world of feelings inexhaustible and illimitable.

SEWARD.

Such, indeed, is the nature of our mind; and these are examples of a general principle of thought and feeling.

NORTH.

This capacity of the Mind to be affected in slighter degree, but in similar manner, by anticipated feeling, is to be noticed in respect to all its more fixed and important emotions. It enters as a great element into all its moral judgments. The judgment of right or wrong is quick and decisive, but is rather unfrequently attended with very strong emotion. Those strongest emotions belong to rare occurrences; for the greater part of life is calm. But they have been felt, nevertheless, at times; so that the soul distinctly knows what is its emotion of moral abhorrence, and what its emotion of moral veneration. When lesser occasions arise, which do not put its feeling to the proof, it still is affected by a half-remembrance of what those feelings have been a slighter emotion comes over it-an apprehension of that emotion which would be felt in strength, if it could be given way to. Thus even the very name of crimes

affects the mind with a dim horror, though the Imagination is still remote from picturing to itself anything of the reality of acting them. Whatever great conceptions, then, are so linked in actual Nature with our moral emotions, that under the passionate strength of these emotions they must arise, some slight shadow of the same conceptions, some touch of the feelings which they are able to call up, will be present to the mind whenever it is morally

moved.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir, I now see the meaning-of the application-of all your discourse. If there is in the depth of our Nature such a connection between our Moral and our Religious conceptions, that our moral feelings, when exalted or appalled in the highest degree, will assume a decidedly religious character, then even in their slighter affection they will be touched, even from a distance, with that religious temper.

NORTH.

And does not this appear to be precisely the case?

SEWARD,

It does appear that the two kinds of feelings are so connected, that in the strongest moral feeling Religion is sensibly present, and that in its weaker emotion there is a slight colouring of the same feeling-faint and indistinct indeed, but such as to give to all our judgments of right and wrong a something of solemnity that is distinct from the ordinary complexion of human affairs, from the ordinary judgment of human interests or passions.

NORTH.

This connection which is perceived in individual Minds may be observed in considering the differences of national character. The different nations of the earth have exhibited the moral nature of man in very different degrees of strength. It will be found that they have also possessed in very different degrees the spirit of Religion; and that the two have risen or declined together. This is true both of the nations of the old world who were enlightened, and of the Christian nations, who have preserved their Religion in various degrees of purity and truth, and whose morals have always borne a corresponding character. If there is a people light and fickle in their moral character, the same unfixedness and levity will be found in their religion. But whatever nation has embraced with deep and solemn feeling the tenets of their faith, will be found to be distinguished in proportion by the depth of their moral spirit. The dignity of their Mind appears not in one without the other, but in the two united.

TALBOYS.

Thus, then, in those minds in which the two are imperfectly unfolded, they are united, as in those in whom they are most perfectly unfolded. But with this difference :-that where Religion in its most perfect form is known, there it enlightens and exalts the moral feelings. Under its imperfect and erroneous forms, conscience applies to men's hearts in some degree the defects of religion.

FROM STAMBOUL TO TABRIZ.

Reise nach Persien und dem Lande der Kurden. Von MORITZ WAGNER, 2 vols. Leipzig: Arnold. London: Williams & Norgate. 1852.

* "Ararat and the Armenian Highlands." Blackwood's Magazine, No. CCCCIII. + "Caucasus and the Land of the Cossacks." Blackwood's Magazine, No. CCCC. + Reise nach Colchis, &c. Leipzig, 1850.