clergy had been compelled to make use of them in some of their instructions to the people. Alfred began the great work in England; and Charlemagne led the way after him on the continent, by ordering the collection of all the songs then extant in the Frank dialect, the compiling of a grammar, and the promulgating of laws in it. Thus, another dialect or branch of the German language was reduced to writing, and employed in public documents. The example was followed about a century after in the Romanic, or Provençal, and somewhat later in Italian and Spanish; the Gothic, which had been previously written in Dacia, Italy, and Spain, having in the mean time perished with that nation. It may be supposed that these changes in the different countries were attended with a corresponding revolution in the minds of the people, even before the general introduction of paper. This, as already stated, took place about the latter part of the 12th century. From that period we may trace a rapid improvement in the European mind, more or less accelerated and developed by accessary and local circumstances; which, however, to trace, would rather belong to a general history of literature, than to a limited essay. From that time, authors of more or less repute, rose almost in every country; the poets mostly writing in their native tongues, but the great majority of those treating on arts, sciences, and literature, still employing Latin. We see the public and legal documents gradually improving in grammatical correctness, and, what is of more importance in our view, as it indicates the general advance of the people in knowledge, the signatures of names are increasing, and the ominous crosses are disappearing, more and more. During these centuries of gradual improvement and of numerous inventions, the linen-rag paper was invented or introduced, which being made of a very cheap material, and the invention being taken up with that zeal which novelty necessarily produces in times of a general mental fermentation, was manufactured at a much cheaper rate than it is now. Books were thereby multiplied, and learning still more propagated; when the great foundation on which the stupendous edifice of European civilization was to be raised, was completed by the invention of printing; and, at the same time, Constantinople being taken by the Turks, the remaining treasures of ancient literature were added to those already possessed in the west, and by that sudden accession a new stimulus was given to learning, which has ever since been on the increase, and is becoming more and more adapted to that purpose to which all human efforts should tend the universal happiness of our race.

VOL. IV. PART I.

mm

I

THE VOICE OF DEATH.

"WHOSE is the voice that bursts by day-Whose is the voice that rings at nightThat slave and king alike obey;

That wakes distress-despair-affright-
That calls the great-the proud away;
And summons hearts and souls of might?
Death answers-" It is mine!"

My call resounds o'er sea and air;
And shakes the very ends of earth;
Awakes life's last and worst despair,
And sheds a cold and midnight dearth,
Where all was joyous, bright, and fair-
All who e'er had, or shall have birth,
I summon to my shrine.

I speak! the monarch quits his crown,
Amidst plebeian dust to lie;
The giant ones of earth are thrown
From their exalted place on high;
The conqueror my command must own,
And drop his sword, and close his eye---
My fiat is divine!

Insatiate over earth I rove;

I call the mother yields her child;
Resigns it from her breast of love,

By anguish wrung, with terrors wild:
Me prayers ne'er moved, nor tears beguiled;
And thus my despot power I prove-
All of this world are mine!

My sentence speeds-the lover sees
The darling of his soul expire;
Friend drops from friend, as autumn's breeze
Bereaves the woods of their attire:
Where'er I shed my breath, I freeze
The bounding heart-the eye of fire,
That never more shall shine.

My voice is fate! If I but speak-
Earth parts and tombs a thousand souls!
Over the seaman's blanching cheek
The ocean at my bidding rolls;
Volcanoes burst my wrath to wreak-
One voice alone my will coutrols;

But his command is mine.

My voice is in the thunder's roar !
The lightning executes my will;
And stretches on the smitten shore,
The black en'd body, cold and still;
And war, that stains the earth with gore,
Obeys but my command to kill;

Fearful and brave are mine.
The gay-the beautiful-the young-
If I but whisper, meet their doom:
All whom the bard hath vainly sung-
All who have name on marble tomb-
All on whom other's hopes were hung;
Tho' rich in worth, and bright in bloom,
I scorn to draw a line.

Amidst the banquet rich and rife ;

Where bowls are full, and features glow;
I speak! I claim the forfeit life!

The scene is changed to fright and woe!
I bid the desperate lift his knife;
And dare uncall'd, unshrived to go,
To brave the wrath divine.

From east to west-from pole to pole,
I call my victims and they come;
Although, to show I spurn control,
I oft refuse the call of some,
There does not live on earth the soul
That may refuse my summons home:
The choice of time is mine.

I call the guilty ones away,

Nor yield one hour to calm their fears; In vain they tremble, turn and pray,

To me to me, whom groans and tears Ne'er won to grant another day

To wash away the crimes of years;

The shrieking soul is mine!

I call'd the heirs from Egypt's land;
And all the babes that Herod slew:
I bade the surges whelm the band

That Pharoah down to ocean drew;
Mine was the sudden-dread command,
That o'er Assyria's legions flew-

I spake and they were mine!

Whose sentence makes that wailing cry

That heart sent sob-that lengthen'd groanThat shriek of fear that rends the sky? Who bids the widow weep aloneThe orphan heave the hopeless sighWho wakes the universal moan?

That ruthless voice is mine!

IS IT TRUE THAT, AS THE BOUNDARIES OF SCIENCE ARE EXTENDED, THE EMPIRE OF IMAGINATION IS DIMINISHED?

It is difficult (said those who maintained the affirmative,) to prove that which is almost self-evident. Knowledge and Imagination are incompatible with each other. In certain degrees, indeed, they may exist together; but in their fullest extent their co-existence is impossible. We cannot fancy except concerning things of which we are ignorant. If we were ignorant of every thing, we might imagine any thing. On the contrary, if we were acquainted with all the powers and properties of nature, we could not fancy that things were otherwise than we knew them to be, and the province of imagination would be at an end: conjecture would be lost in certainty-the possible in the true-the indistinct, the visionary, the unknown-in the palpable, the tangible, the demonstrable. Knowing all things, we could have nothing to imagine. This perfection of knowledge, indeed, is not attained, nor is ever likely to be attained; but every degree of approximation to it diminishes the empire of the imagination, the gain of one is the loss of the other.

In whom is the power of imagination the strongest? Is it in the sage who has carefully disciplined his reasoning powers to discriminate truth from error,-who has pursued nature into her inmost recesses,-who has submitted her to the severest interrogation of experiment, and wrung from her a reluctant confession of her most secret operations? No; to such a one imagination would be useless,-would be mischievous. It would seduce him from the stern pursuit of truth; and in proportion as his speculations became more

amusing, would they be less valuable. The philosopher has rarely any taste for the charms of poesy. The mightiest efforts of the sons of song usually appear to him but laborious idleness, their sweetest strains but a babble of idle sounds. A learned mathematician, after reading Milton's sublime epic, coolly observed, that he did not find that the author had proved any thing.

In youth the imagination is most active. Fancy spreads its brightest and warmest tints over the untrodden path of life. The experience of manhood sobers the mind. Knowledge puts imagination to flight; we know, therefore, we no longer fancy. The individual is a type of the species. Before science has revealed to man the world as it exists, he forms a world for himself, brighter and fairer, and more magnificent. But here, as with the individual, the dreams of youth vanish before the realities of experience. They depart, occasionally indeed to be recalled, like the fond recollections of early life, which sometimes refresh the spirit and swell the heart of the individual; but never again, as once, to occupy the mind, to lead captive the senses, to satisfy the soul; never to be unaccompanied by the reflection that, all is empty, and vain, and false.

The multiplicity of knowledge distracts and divides the attention. Men, have no time to be imaginative, when they are required to be conversant with every description of facts. When the facts relating immediately to man himself,-those of history,-facts which the imagination can ennoble into the loftiest poetry; when the knowledge of these is not enough, but we are required to be conversant with chemistry, and galvanism, and mineralogy, and geology, and zoology, and meteorology, and a thousand other studies which relate entirely to things without, we have no leisure to look within; and the imaginative faculty decays and perishes for want of exercise. These great collections of facts, also, render ineffective the imaginative powers where they are possest. The hapless owner of them finds that they give him little influence over his fellow-men. He may people the earth with fantastic creations, may give to every tree a spirit, and to every spring a tutelary deity. He will gratify no one but himself. The world will listen to him with coldness, and marvel at the perversion of his powers. He arouses no sympathy. The fashionable fact-mongers will tell him that these things are impossible; that they have traversed the woods, and fathomed the waters, and penetrated into the bowels of the earth, and that they have never met with either sylphs, or gnomes, or dæmons; and that, after a careful enquiry into what nature