is turned with intereft, either by the fway of public paffion or by its own impulse, among statesmen, and warriors, and philosophers, and poets, he will diftinguish some favoured names on which he may fatisfy his admiration. And there, just as in the little circle of his own acquaintance, seizing eagerly on every merit they poffefs, he will supply more from his own credulous hope, completing real with imagined excellence, till living men, with all their imperfections, become to him the representatives of his perfect ideal creation ;-till, multiplying his objects of reverence, as he enlarges his prospect of life, he will have furrounded himself with idols of his own hands, and his imagination will seem to discern a glory in the countenance of the age, which is but the reflection of its own effulgence.

He will poffefs, therefore, in the creative power of generous hope, a preparation for illufory and exaggerated admiration of the age in which he lives: and this predisposition will meet with many favouring circumstances, when he has grown up under a system of education like ours, which (as perhaps all education muft that is placed in the hands of a distinct and embodied class, who therefore bring to it the peculiar and hereditary prejudices of their order) has controlled his imagination to a reverence of former times, with an unjust contempt of his own. For no fooner does he break loose from this control, and begin to feel, as he contemplates the world for himself, how much there is furrounding him on all fides, that gratifies his noblest de

fires, than there springs up in him an indignant sense of injustice, both to the age and to his own mind; and he is impelled warmly and eagerly to give loose to the feelings that have been held in bondage, to feek out and to delight in finding excellence that will vindicate the infulted world, while it juftifies, too, his refentment of his own undue subjection, and exalts the value of his new found liberty.

The

Add to this, that fecluded as he has been from knowledge, and, in the imprisoning circle of one fyftem of ideas, cut off from his fhare in the thoughts and feelings that are stirring among men, he finds himself, at the firft fteps of his liberty, in a new intellectual world. Paffions and powers which he knew not of start up in his foul. human mind, which he had seen but under one afpect, now presents to him a thousand unknown and beautiful forms. He fees it, in its varying powers, glancing over nature with restless curiofity, and with impetuous energy striving for ever against the barriers which fhe has placed around it; fees it with divine power creating from dark materials living beauty, and fixing all its high and transported fancies in imperishable forms. In the world of knowledge, and science, and art, and genius, he treads as a stranger: in the confufion of new fenfations, bewildered in delights, all feems beautiful; all feems admirable. And therefore he engages eagerly in the pursuit of false or infufficient philofophy; he is won by the allurements of licentious

art; he follows with wonder the irregular tranfports of undisciplined imagination. Nor, where the objects of his admiration are worthy, is he yet skilful to distinguish between the acquifitions which the age has made for itself, and that large proportion of its wealth which it has only inherited: but in his delight of discovery and growing knowledge, all that is new to his own mind seems to him newborn to the world. To himself every fresh idea appears instruction; every new exertion, acquifition of power: he seems just called to the consciousness of himself, and to his true place in the intellectual world; and gratitude and reverence towards those to whom he owes this recovery of his dignity, tend much to subject him to the dominion of minds that were not formed by nature to be the leaders of opinion.

All the tumult and glow of thought and imagination, which seize on a mind of power in such a scene, tend irresistibly to bind it by stronger attachment of love and admiration to its own age. And there is one among the new emotions which belong to its entrance on the world, one almost the nobleft of all, in which this exaltation of the age is effentially mingled. The faith in the perpetual progreffion of human nature towards perfection gives birth to such lofty dreams, as fecure to it the devout affent of the imagination; and it will be yet more grateful to a heart juft opening to hope, Alushed with the consciousness of new ftrength, and exulting in the prospect of destined achieve

ments. There is, therefore, almost a compulfion on generous and enthusiastic spirits, as they truft that the future fhall tranfcend the prefent, to believe that the present transcends the past. It is only on an undue love and admiration of their own age that they can build their confidence in the melioration of the human race. Nor is this faith, which, in some shape, will always be the creed of virtue, without apparent reason, even in the erroneous form in which the young adopt it. For there is a perpetual acquifition of knowledge and art, an unceafing progress in many of the modes of exertion of the human mind, a perpetual unfolding of virtues with the changing manners of fociety: and it is not for a young mind to compare what is gained with what has paffed away; to discern that amidst the inceffant intellectual activity of the race, the intellectual power of individual minds may be falling off; and that amidst accumulating knowledge lofty science may disappear; and still less, to judge, in the more complicated moral character of a people, what is progreffion, and what is decline.

Into a mind poffeffed with this perfuafion of the perpetual progress of man, there may even imperceptibly steal both from the belief itself, and from many of the views on which it refts, something like a diftruft of the wisdom of great men of former ages, and with the reverence, which no delufion will ever overpower in a pure mind, for their greatness, a fancied difcernment of imperfection and of incomplete excellence, which wanted for

its accomplishment the advantages of later improvements: there will be a surprise that so much should have been poffible in times fo ill prepared; and even the study of their works may be fometimes rather the curious research of a speculative inquirer, than the devout contemplation of an enthufiaft, the watchful and obedient heart of a difciple listening to the inspiration of his mafter.

Here then is the power of delufion that will gather round the first steps of a youthful fpirit, and throw enchantment over the world in which it is to dwell;-hope realizing its own dreams; ignorance dazzled and ravished with fudden sunshine; power awakened and rejoicing in its own consciousness ; enthusiasm kindling among multiplying images of greatness and beauty, and enamoured, above all, of one fplendid error; and, fpringing from all these, such a rapture of life and hope, and joy, that the foul, in the power of its happiness, tranfmutes things effentially repugnant to it, into the excellence of its own nature: these are the spells that cheat the eye of the mind with illufion. It is under these influences that a young man of ardent spirit gives all his love, and reverence, and zeal, to productions of art, to theories of science, to opinions, to systems of feeling, and to characters diftinguished in the world, that are far beneath his own original dignity.

Now as this delusion springs not from his worse but his better nature, it seems as if there could be no warning to him from within of his danger: for