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    achievements . To a child , one picture or statue i 3 as good as another , except from causes foreign to the excellence of the work , as a resemblance to some beloved and familiar object , &c . But after a due degree of study , his feelings become warm and vivid to a remarkable degree , so that one piece excites disgust or contempt , while another awakens emotions of rapture , and he can gaze upon it hour after hour , and day after day , with renewed pleasure . Bring a sculptor and an Otaheitan savage together , to take a first

    view of the Apollo Belvidere , and compare the depth and extent of feeling which is excited in each . The one will gaze with mute delight till the evening dackness has veiled every limb and feature , while the other will , after a slight and careless survey , gladly transfer his attention to a bunch of peacock ' s feathers , or a string ; of gaudy beads . Transport both men to the island home of the savage , and he will bend with awe and delight before his uncouth deities , while the artist feels nothing but disgust and contempt at the hideousness of their form and the absurdity of their proportions .

    How remarkably bad habits tend to cherish malignant feelings , it is needless to point out ; and where all sensibility appears to be extinguished by vice , it will usually be found that some outlet exists for the baleful fires which make a hell of the corrupted heart . And should it be objected , that men of depraved habits sometimes afford examples of a refined and exalted sensibility , it is replied , that , in such men , sensibility is usually morbid , and always partial ; that it leaves the heart from which it sprung , and takes up

    its abode in the fancy , where it grows more and more sickly , and would , in course of time , expire . The poet who rouses our passions , awakens our sympathies , opens to us the hidden recesses of the soul , and unveils the secrets of nature , may , by the cultivation of pure habits of thought and action , obtain a still increasing power over the hearts of men . But if he should live in the frequent violation of moral laws , if he should habitually disregard the interests of others , concentrate his desires on the attainment of

    his own ends , and exercise his powers solely for the gratification of his pride , and with a view to the increase of his fame , his friends will soon discover that his sensibilities become less and less like those of other men . They will be disappointed to find that the affecting incidents of life which stir up emotions in their hearts , are regarded by him with carelessness and indifference ; at the same time that he sends forth from his closet strains which cause many tears to start , and which kindle flames in many hearts more ingenuous than

    his own . In course of time , a change will be as evident to distant observers as to surrounding friends . Notwithstanding all the advantage he has gained over the public mind — the favourable prepossession , the long-standing admiration and affection—the power and the fame for which he has sacrificed so much , will melt away ; for his appeals no longer reach the heart , and his illustrations are found to be too overstrained to engage the imagination , or to

    please the taste . If he live long enough to undergo the full punishment which here awaits the perversion of intellectual and moral powers , how awful is the warning ! Yet all this might be as distinctly foreseen by an accurate observer of human nature , as that the vine would yield no golden clusters while its root was mouldering , or that the waters of the fountain would not retain their sweetness when the source had become bitter .

    On the contrary , the powers are ever-growing , the sensibility still becomin g more pure and lively , of the poet who has trained up his thoughts in unceasing devotion to God , and the diligent service of his rac ^ and who has so carefully associated his emotions with reason and principle as to re-

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    On the Jgency of Ha lit 8 in the Regeneration of Feelings . 161

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1829, page 161, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2570/page/9/