much the same; and both have received a sensible shock from the progress
of experimental philosophy. It is the undefined and uncommon that gives
birth and scope to the imagination; we can only fancy what we do not
know. As in looking into the mazes of a tangled wood we fill them with
what shapes we please, with ravenous beasts, with caverns vast, and
drear enchantments, so in our ignorance of the world about us, we make
gods or devils of the first object we see, and set no bounds to the
wilful suggestions of our hopes and fears.

"And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Hang on each leaf and cling to every bough."

There can never be another Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens
have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse
to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the squares of the
distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture
brings the matter nearer to us.--It is not only the progress of
mechanical knowledge, but the necessary advances of civilization that
are unfavourable to the spirit of poetry. We not only stand in less awe
of the preternatural world, but we can calculate more surely, and look
with more indifference, upon the regular routine of this. The heroes of
the fabulous ages rid the world of monsters and giants. At present we
are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or evil, to the incursions
of wild beasts or "bandit fierce," or to the unmitigated fury of the
elements. The time has been that "our fell of hair would at a dismal
treatise rouse and stir as life were in it." But the police spoils all;
and we now hardly so much as dream of a midnight murder. Macbeth is only
tolerated in this country for the sake of the music; and in the United
States of America, where the philosophical principles of government are
carried still farther in theory and practice, we find that the Beggar's