ARGUMENT. State of feeling produced by the foregoing Narrative.---A belief in a superintending Providence the only adequate support under affliction.-Wanderer's ejaculation.-Acknowledges the difficulty of a lively faith. Hence immoderate sorrow.-Exhortations.How received.-Wanderer applies his discourse to that other cause of dejection in the Solitary's mind.— Disappointment from the French Revolution.—States grounds of hope, and insists on the necessity of patience and fortitude with respect to the course of great revolutions.-Knowledge the source of tranquillity.-Rural Solitude favourable to knowledge of the inferior Creatures; Study of their habits and ways recommended; exhortation to bodily exertion and communion with Nature.-Morbid Solitude pitiable. —Superstition better than apathy.—Apathy and destitution unknown in the infancy of society. The various modes of Religion prevented it.-Illustrated in the Jewish, Persian, Babylonian, Chaldean, and Grecian modes of belief.-Solitary interposes. Wanderer points out the influence of religious and imaginative feeling in the humble ranks of society, illustrated from present and past times.-These principles tend to recal exploded superstitions and popery. Wanderer rebuts this charge, and contrasts the dignities of the Imagination with the presumptuous littleness of certain modern Philosophers.-Kecommends other lights and guides.-Asserts the power of the Soul to regenerate herself; Solitary asks how. Reply.-Personal appeal.-Exhortation to activity of body renewed.-How to commune with Nature. Wanderer concludes with a legitimate union of the imagination, affections, understanding, and reason.— Effect of his discourse.-Evening; Return to the Cottage. DESPONDENCY CORRECTED. 5 HERE closed the Tenant of that lonely vale "One adequate support 10 For the calamities of mortal life } 15 20 25 Soul of our Souls, and safeguard of the world! 30 Then, as we issued from that covert nook, He thus continued, lifting up his eyes To heaven :-" How beautiful this dome of sky; And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed At thy command, how awful! Shall the Soul, Human and rational, report of thee 35 Even less than these!-Be mute who will, who can, Yet I will praise thee with impassioned voice: Me didst thou constitute a priest of thine, Reared for thy presence: therefore am I bound From childhood up, the ways of poverty ; Perpetual sabbath; come, disease and want; And let thy favour, to the end of life, Repose and hope among eternal things- 65 “And what are things eternal ?—powers depart,' The grey-haired Wanderer steadfastly replied, Answering the question which himself had asked, "Possessions vanish, and opinions change, 70 For our support, the measures and the forms, Which an abstract intelligence supplies; Whose kingdom is, where time and space are not. 75 Of other converse which mind, soul, and heart, Do, with united urgency, require, What more that may not perish ?-Thou, dread source, Prime, self-existing cause and end of all 80 Set and sustained;-thou, who didst wrap the cloud Of infancy around us, that thyself, 85 Might'st hold, on earth, communion undisturbed; Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep, 90 95 And reason's steadfast rule-thou, thou alone 100 105 Loved haunts like these; the unimprisoned Mind May yet have scope to range among her own, day I 115 His bounteous gift! or saw him toward the deep The measure of my soul was filled with bliss, 120 "Those fervent raptures are for ever flown; |