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deep blue outline melting into the firmament,—are all objects tending to enliven the mind of the way-farer who is within their influence. If his journey have an ascertained goal, the circumstance is conducive to the beauty of the imagery; if, on the contrary, it have no definite point of termination, this is in favor of its sublimity. We know that obscurity is essential to grandeur - that the most sublime images of poetry are arrayed, if the expression be permitted, in shapelessness. To travel onwards, and still on, waiting for events, on the watch for incidents, is a position highly interesting to the mind. A person of inert imagination will rarely be found in such a situation perhaps never voluntarily. If it were possible, even his energies must be excited-even he must feel the agitating influence of uncertainty; and wonder, not unmixed with apprehension, will wind up his mind to a higher key

note than he could ever have experienced in dissimilar circumstances.

The next gradation of this feeling is that which affects a man, the goal of whose journey is indeed ascertained, but who knows nothing of the persons and things that are to meet him at the end of it, except their local position and their relative affinity with himself. This is precisely my present situation.

The total obscurity of the future is the real power which communicates its deepest and intensest interest to the present. We believe, indeed, from analogy, that the sun will rise on the morrow, and that he will fade away beneath the shades of evening. But who can insure this to us? Who can say, that instead of the rosy and gradual dawning, a portentous and fiery noontide shall not prematurely startle the blackness of night, and flash its conflagrations over a shriek. ing world? or that the sun, once risen upon us, shall not forget his ocean-home,

and drive his fiery chariot-wheels into the realms of midnight?

Repeated experience of the futility of speculating on unknown persons, has not diminished my habitual propensity to these speculations. There is so much delight in painting from the imagination alone, with the power of changing every displeasing and ungraceful feature at will, with no expense of pain! It is seldom, indeed, that the result is unattended with disappointment, but even this, paradoxical as it may appear, is accompanied with a degree of pleasure. I find the enjoyment of novelty when I had anticipated resemblance; I see a new combination of forms, and I study nature in a new mode.

What a relief! I have just escaped from the tumult of crowded streets and offensive spectacles! The wheels of my carriage no longer clatter over an irregular pavement; the hallooing of uncouth boys, the embryos of turbulent

men, has died away; the thick vapours of smoke are dissolved, and welcome once again the freshness of green verdure, and the cheerfulness of a fine champaign country! I could not exist during the spring, and summer, and autumn, in a town, on any terms less than the price of existence. Should I not even love the loveliest less in such a situation? Far for ever far from me be the perilous experiment!

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A mile stone -five miles farther and my journey is completed!

What an agitation of spirits! what a mingling of emotions! If I analyse my sentiments, of what an amalgam of feelings and passions are they composed! If I have any prejudice towards these unknown relatives, it is a predisposition to love them. They excepted, whom have I to love? In their veins flows the blood of my father - of my mother. Do they resemble those dear lost friends, those best- those unwearied those

enduring friends? Will they, with uncomplaining patience, submit to my waywardness my solitary habits-my habitual melancholy? They may concede somewhat, perhaps; but they also will require concessions. And they have a right to demand them, and they shall receive them. My solitary position has not necessarily tended to make me selfish or misanthropic. I will not expect too much; my father's approving monitions—his benignant cautions — rational advice his equal friendship his unostentatious imparting of the fruits of experience no- I am not so foolishly sanguine these I do not expect. And my mother's sweet and gentle smile - her dewy eye glistening approbation and love her unwearied promotion of all my minor comforts - her perpetual surrendering up of her own enjoyments

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I dream not of it

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-I do not even wish it. I do not wish

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