The PENSIVE man at one time walks UNSEEN to muse at midnight, and at
another hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he
sits in a room lighted only by "glowing embers;" or by a lonely lamp
outwatches the North Star, to discover the habitation of separate
souls, and varies the Shades of meditation by contemplating the
magnificent or pathetic scenes of tragic and epic poetry. When the
morning comes--a morning gloomy with rain and wind--he walks into
the dark, trackless woods, falls asleep by some murmuring water, and
with melancholy enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or
some music played by aerial performers.

Both mirth and melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the
breast, that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention
is therefore made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant
companion. The seriousness does not arise from any participation of
calamity, nor the gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle.

The man of CHEERFULNESS, having exhausted the country, tries what
"towered cities" will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendour,
gay assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere
spectator, as, when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild
dramas of Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre.

The PENSIVE man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the
cloister, or frequents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet
forsaken the Church.

Both his characters delight in music; but he seems to think that
cheerful notes would have obtained from Pluto a complete dismission