What has this to do with the material world?—with a reversal, or total change of the laws of nature; with studding the Atlantic with islands, or transferring the perfumes of Arabia to replace the dissolved ice-bergs of the pole? Could a universe of Shelleys, with all the sensibility, and virtue, which he recommends, effect the slightest change, in the laws that govern the material world?—Could they transform a shower of snow into a halo of sunbeams—or bid the chilling breezes of the north blow as mildly as Italian zephyrs? out of respect to the "naked beauties" of Ianthe!
Virtue may overcome the severity of nature—and bloom as freshly and as vigorously beneath the frigid, or the burning, as the temperate zone. It is with reason Gray indignantly asks:—
"Need we the influence of the northern star,
To still our souls, or string our nerves to war?
And where the face of nature laughs around,
Must sickening virtue fly the tainted ground?
Unmanly thought! No seasons can controul,
No fancied zone can circumscribe the soul;
Who conscious of the source from whence she springs,
By reason's light, on resolution's wings,
Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes,
Through Lybia's deserts, and through Zembla's snows!
All little wants, all low desires refine,
And raise the mortal to a height divine?"
