It ry analysis in each particular case. If I were to treat of them only as elementary feelings, they might be classed under a very few heads, the whole, as I conceive, or certainly, at least, the greater number of them, under the following: Joy, grief, desire, astonishment, respect, contempt, and the two opposite species of vivid feelings, which distinguish to us the actions that are denominated vicious or virtuous. But, though the vivid feelings, to which we give these names, may, from their general analogy, admit of being comprehended in this brief arrangement, it must be remembered, that brief as the vocabulary is, it comprehends feelings, which, though analogous, are still not precisely the same,-that the single word joy, for example, expresses many varieties of delightful feelings, the single word desire, many feelings, which, in combination with their particular objects, are so modified by these, as to appear to us, in their complex forms, almost as different as any other feelings of our mind which we class under different names. is in their complex state that they impress themselves most strongly on our observation in others, and form, in ourselves, all that renders most interesting to us the present and the future, and all that is most vivid in our remembrances of the past. Considered, therefore, in this aspect, they admit of much illustration from the whole field of human life, and afford opportunities for many practical references to conduct, and many analyses of the motives that secretly influence it,-for which there would scarcely be a place, if they were to be considered simply as elementary feelings. I repeat, therefore, that the order in which I intend to treat of them, will regard them in their ordinary state of complication with particular conceptions or other emotions, though I shall be careful, at the same time, to state to you, in every case, as minutely as may be in my power, the elements of which the complex whole is composed. In treating of them in this view, the most obvious principle of general arrangement seems to me to be one of which I have already more than once availed myself,-their relation to time,—as immediate, or involving no notion of time whatever, as retrospective, in relation to the past,-or as prospective, in relation to the future. Admiration, remorse, hope, may serve as particular instances, to illustrate my meaning in this distinction which I would make. We admire what is before us, we feel remorse for some past crime, we hope some future good. In conformity with this arrangement of our emotions, as immediate, retrospective, prospective, the first set which we have to consider, are those which arise without involving necessarily any notion of time. These immediate emotions, as I have termed them, may be subdivided, according to the most interesting of their relations, as they do not involve any feeling that can be termed moral, or as they do involve some moral affection. Of the former kind, which do not involve necessarily any moral affection, are cheerfulness, melancholy,—our wonder at what is new and unexpected,—our mental weariness of what is long continued without interest,—our feelings of beauty, and that opposite emotion, which has no corresponding and equal name, since ugliness can scarcely be regarded as coextensive with it,—our feelings of sublimity and ludicrousness. To the latter subdivision may be referred the vivid feelings, that constitute to our heart what we distinguish by the names of vice and virtue,-if these vivid feelings be considered simply as emotions, distinct from the judgments, which may at the same time measure actions, in reference to some particular standard of morality, or to the amount of particular or general good, which they may have tended to produce, and which might so measure them, without any moral emotion, as a mathematician measures the proportion of one figure to another, our emotions of love and hate, -of sympathy with the happy and with the miserable,-of pride and humility, in the various forms which these assume. These, if not all, are at least the most important of our immediate emotions. The first emotions, then, which we have to consider, of that order which has no reference to time, are Cheerfulness and Melancholy. Cheerfulness, which, at every moment, may be considered only as a modification of joy, is a sort of perpetual gladness. It is that state, which, in every one,-even in those of the most gloomy disposition, remains for some time after any event of unexpected happiness, though the event itself may not be present to their conception at the time ;-and which, in many of gayer temperament, seems to be almost a constant frame of the mind. In the early period of life, this alacrity of spirit is like that bodily alacrity, with which every limb, as it bounds along, seems to have a delightful consciousness of its vigour. To suspend the mental cheerfulness, for any length of time, is, then, as difficult, as to keep fixed, for any length of time, those muscles, to which exercise is almost a species of repose, and repose itself fatigue. In more advanced life, this sort of animal gladness is rarer. We are not happy, without knowing why we are happy; and though we may still be susceptible of joy, perhaps as intense, or even more intense, than in our years of unreflecting merriment, our joy must arise from a cause of corresponding importance. Yet, even down to the close of extreme old age, there still recur occasionally some gleams of this almost instinctive happiness, like a vision of other years, or, like those brilliant and unexpected coruscations, which sometimes flash along the midnight of a wintry sky, and of which we are too ignorant of the circumstances that produce them, to know when to predict their return. Of Melancholy, I may remark, in like manner, that it is a state of mind, which even the gayest must feel, for some time, after any calamity, and which many feel for the greater part of life, without any particular calamity, to which they can ascribe it. Without knowing why they should be sorrowful, they still are sorrowful,even though the weathercock should not have moved a single point nearer to the east, nor a single additional cloud given a little more shade to the vivid brightness of the sun. I need not speak of that extreme depression, which constitutes the most miserable form of insanity, the most miserable disease,— that fixed and deadly gloom of soul, to which there is no sunshine in the summer sky,-no verdure or blossom in the summer field, no kindness in affection,-no purity in the very remembrance of innocence itself,-no Heaven, but hell, no God, but a demon of wrath. With what strange feelings of more than commiseration, must we imagine Cowper to have written that picturesque description, of which he was himself the subject:: "Look where he comes. In this embower'd alcove Lips busy, and eyes fix'd, foot falling slow, Arms hanging idly down, hands clasp'd below!-- Nor gales that catch the scent of blooming groves, Can call up life, into his faded eye That passes all he sees, unheeded by.t Cases of this dreadful kind, however, are fortunately rare ;but some degree of melancholy all must have experienced-that internal sadness, which we diffuse unconsciously from our own mind over the brightest and gayest objects without, almost in the same manner, and with the same unfailing certainty, as we invest them with the colours, which are only in our mental vision. The scenery, which Eloise describes, is sufficiently gloomy of itself. But with what additional gloom does she cloud it in her description: "The darksome pines, that o'er yon rock reclined, The wandering streams that shine between the hills, The dying gales, that pant upon the trees, And breathes a browner horror on the woods." * Then,-Orig. + Cowper's Poems. Retirement, v. 283–286. 289–292. 331—2. 337–340. Pope's Epistle of Eloise to Abelard, v. 155-170. Of the melancholy of common life, there are two species that have little resemblance. There is a sullen gloom, which disposes to unkindness, and every bad passion; a fretfulness, in all the daily and hourly intercourse of familiar life, which, if it weary at last the assiduities of friendship, sees only the neglect which it has forced, and not the perversity of humour which gave occasion to it, and soon learns to hate, therefore, what it considers as ingratitude and injustice,-or, which, if friendship be still assiduous as before, sees, in these very assiduities, a proof not of the strength of that affection, which has forgotten the acrimony to sooth the supposed uneasiness which gave it rise, but a proof that there has been no offensive acrimony to be forgotten, and persists, therefore, in every peevish caprice, till the domestic tyranny become habitual. This melancholy temper, so poisonous to the happiness, not of the individual only, but of all those who are within the circle of its influence, and who feel their misery the more, be cause it may, perhaps, arise from one whom they strive, and vainly strive, to love, is the temper of a vulgar mind. But there is a melancholy of a gentler species, a melancholy which, as it arises, in a great measure, from a view of the sufferings of man, disposes to a warmer love of man the sufferer, and which is almost as essential to the finer emotions of virtue, as it is to the nicer sensibilities of poetic genius. This social and intellectual effect of philosophic melancholy is described with a beautiful selection of moral images, by the Author of the Seasons. "He comes! he comes! in every breeze the Power Of Philosophic Melancholy comes! His near approach the sudden-starting tear, The glowing cheek, the mild dejected air, The soften'd feature, and the beating heart, Pierc'd deep with many a virtuous pang, declare. Beyond dim earth exalts the swelling thought. |