The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1857-09-09

veri-similitude, being closely connected
with their sense of truth in all things
But it is not necessary to be great, in Or
der to possess reasonable variety of per-
ception. That nobody may despair of
being able to indulge the two passions to-
gether, | can answer for them by my own
experience. | can pass, with as much
pleasure as ever, from the reading of one
of Hume's Essays to that of the Arabian
Nights, and vice versa; and / think, the
longer | live, the closer, if possible, will
the union grow. The roads are found to
approach nearer, in proportion as we adj
vance upon either; and they both termin-
ate in the same prospect.
am far from meaning that there is
nothing real in either road. The path
of matter of fact is as solid rs ever, but
they who do not see the reality of the 9th
er, keep but blind and prone beating
upon their own surface. To drop the
metaphor, matter of fact is our PERCEPTION
of the grosser and more external shapes
of truth; fiction represents the residuum
and the mystery. TO love matter of fact
is to have lively sense of the visible and
immediate; to love fiction is to have as
lively a sense of the possible and the re-
mote. Now these two senses, if they ex-
list at all, are of necessity as real, the one
as the other. The only proof of either is
in our PERCEPTION. To blind man, the
most visible colors no more exist, than
the hues of a fairy tale to man destitute
of fancy. To man of fancy, who sheds
tears over tale, the chair in which he
sits has no truer existence in its way, than
the story that moves him. His being
touched is his proof in both instances.
But says tho mechanical understand
ing. modern discoveries have acquainted
us with the cause of lightning and thun-
der, of the nature of optical decisions,
and fifty other apparent wonders; and
therefore there is no more to be feigned
about them. Fancy has done with them,
at least with their causes; poetry is at a
stand. The strong glass of science has
put an end to the assumptions of fiction.
This is favorite remark with pretty
numerous set of writers; and it is very
desperate one. 1t looks like reasoning !;
| and by singular exercise of the very fac
ulty which il asserts the death of, many
persons take the look of an argument for
the proof Of it. Certainly, no observation
can initiate more strongly against exist
ing matter of fact: and this is reason
why it is made The mechanical writer's
of verse find that it is no longer SO easy
to be taken for poets, because fancy and
imagination are more than usually in re-
quest; so they have their revenge, by
asserting, that poetry is no longer to be
written.
When on understanding of this descrip-
ton is told, that thunder is caused by a
collision of clouds, and that lightning is
a well-known result of electricity, there
may be an end, if he pleases, of his poetry
with him. He may, if he thinks fit, or
if he cannot help it, no longer see any
thing in the lightning but the escape of
subtitle fluid, or hear anything more
noble in the thunder than the crack of a
bladder of water. Much good may his
ignorance do him. But it is not so with
understandings of loftier or moro pop
ular kind. The wonder of children, and
the lofty speculations of the wise, meet
alike on point, higher than he can attain
to, and look over the threshold of the
world. Mechanical knowledge is a great
and glorious tool in the hands of man,
and will change the globe. But it will
still leave untouched the invisible sphere
above and about US; still leave us all the
great and all the gentle objects of poetry,
the heavens and the humaA heart the
regions of genii and fairies, the fanciful or
passionate images that come to us from
the seas, and from tho flowers, and all
that we behold.
1t is, in fact, remarkable, that the
growth of science, and the temperance
Of more poetical kind Of poetry, have
accompanied one another. Whatever
may be the difference of opinion as to the
extent to which our modern poets have
carried their success, their inclinations can
not be doubted. How is it, that poctical
impulse has taken this turn in genera
ton pronounced to be so mechanical q
Whence has arisen among us this exceed
| ing fondness for the fictions of the East,
for solitary and fanciful reveries, for the
wild taste Of the Germans, themselves
more scientific and wild than ever,) and
even for a more primitive use of the one
Pagan mythology, SO long and SO mechan-
ically abused by the Chloes and Venuses
of the French? Politics may be thought
very unlikely cause Of poetry, and it is
so with mere politicians; yet politics,
pushed farther than common, have been
the cause of the new and greater impetus
given to the sympathies of imagination
for the moro we know Of any one ground
Of knowledge, the farther we see into the
general domains Of intellect il We are not
mere slaves of the soil. A little philoso-
ply, says Bacon, takes men away from
religion; greater brings them ronnd to
| It. This is the case with the reasoning
faculty and poetry. We reason to Ger
tain point, and are content with the dis
coveries Of second causes. We reason
farther, and find ourselves in the same
airy depths as Of old. The imagination
yeco0nizes its ancient field, and begins