means of promoting individual as well as social happiness, is that of one of the faculties of the human mind, the cultivation of which is too little regarded in the training of youth. I mean the faculty of admiration, which, if properly directed, under the influence of religious feeling, has the effect of raising, by imperceptible degrees, the moral nature of man in his intellectual, as well as his spiritual enjoyments.
It is too much the tendency of the present day to confine the exercise of admiration to what is of man's invention, elaborate, costly, and artificial—to the arts and manufactures which belong to a high state of civilization, to the patent inventions of the day, to the newest fabrics, or the most expensive ornaments—in short, to all which may be regarded as characteristic of an "age of great cities;" rather than to a development of those principles of harmony and beauty, which pervade the universe at large. I presume not to say that these are not good—good in a certain manner, and to a certain extent; but good as the objects of our highest admiration, they certainly are not, and especially for this reason—because they are material, and only gratify the senses, without leaving any beneficial or indelible impression upon the soul.
The cultivation of a true taste necessarily belongs to this part of our subject, because it rests very much with parents to direct their children's admiration as they choose; and whatever they most admire, becomes naturally the standard of true taste to them. It may fairly be said, then, that the taste of the present day is for everything material. When young people now turn their attention to intellectual pursuits, it is to collect specimens, not ideas. Imagination in its higher walks is discarded, and even our works of fiction are only valued so far as they present a succession of active scenes, so exaggerated as to produce the effect of startling the senses. All this may be tolerated in the present generation, because we have yet among us the remains of a higher order of thought and feeling; but it will tell to a lamentable extent upon the next, when all enthusiasm for poetry and the fine arts will have become extinct. Already it may be said that poetry is banished from our world; and if painting still lingers on the stage of public
