LIFE,-Being,-Activity,-Fancy,-Reproduction,-Creation-are

each and all but different phases-divisions and subdivisions-in man's existence. As marks upon the dial-plate of Time, they indicate his progress from infancy to childhood, to boyhood, to youth, to manhood, to Maturity. As tokens of the subtler shades of Intellect, they herald him forth, and point out Nature's nobility. And as both chronicles and gages, they tell of a purer, a nobler Intellectual Spirit-Life whose mazes none may thread save the greatest and the mightiest-the heirs of Thought. The genial warmth of a summer sun may entice the worm from its hiding-place-may recall to life and to joy the minutest insect-may make the green grass to smile and be glad, and may diffuse happiness throughout all the domain of nature. But its charm cannot lull to quietude the soul of man: life and happiness will not content him, and the feverish energy of his being can only find its proper outlet when he has conjured up new worlds around him. He must become the author of new life-his mind must be prolific, selfproductive, original, or he sinks from his high estate. He must know, and feel, and exercise the creative power, or the deep-seated passion for mental offspring-glowing, intense, burning as his own soul-will make sleep but a waking dream, life but an unreal shadow. More than half the world halt in their career at Activity-contenting them

selves with mere physical deeds, and pleasures, and glories. Others again plod on so far as Fancy-cull only exotic flowers of Imagination. Critics and Scholars Reproduce from the past-brush up old coin while a few-a very few-reach the landmarks of Genius, and become themselves Creators. Turn we then to that sphere where man has dared rival his God, and where the magic charm of his "sealed mystery”

"gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

Phases of Literature! What are they but counterparts of the phases in our physical nature? What mean they but shifting scenes in the realm of Beauty and of Reason? What do they denote but different species in the Life Intellectual-distinct races of fairy-spiritual disembodied Thoughts, that " Ariel"-like do man's bidding, and weave his destiny? They certify only the existence of ideas-abstract ideas those active, incessant, ever-moving beings, that serve, like the Elves-the Oberons-the Titanias of old, to connect Heaven and Earth. They are, in fine, but the shadows of a shade, whose dimness only shows that light was and is, without betraying its intensity. Separate then the Intellectual-the Creative-from the Physical Life, and we have far higher ground from which to view Literature. We stand apart and may scrutinize closely the "inner life" of the world, and of man, aside from the matter that encases it. Those who have most busied themselves in digesting what other men have thought out, would restrict man's creative powers, as referred to its largest development, to the range of the Fine Arts. They would have the painting, the statue, the distich, embody the highest forms of created thought. They would deny to the author of new systems to the founder of new dynasties-to the prophets of a new religion, that conceptive power by which life-intellectual-life clothed in the garb of thought-is generated. Carlyle, however, in his usual quaint manner, has shown that the same soul of "Heroism” animates the demigod-the prophet-the poet-the priest the kingthat the same "inner life" characterized an Odin-a Mahomet-a Shakspeare a Luther-a Napoleon, and that it is impossible to conceive of a great mind laboring in any one calling, and diffusing light and life upon all around-which would not have been equally conspicuous, had it chanced to have been directed elsewhere. This is the light in which we would view it. We will then first cursorily glance at this Creative Power, in connection with the Fine Artsnoting more closely its bearing with respect to Letters. Afterwards it will not be amiss to examine whether this limitation may, or may not, be strictly true; as also, whether Philosophy does not afford a proper sphere in which to exercise the creative art.

The intimate and fervent sympathy between Mind and Matter-between the soul which shadows forth, and the plastic material which receives the impression-is the origin of all the pleasure that we derive from the creations of Art, or of Nature. We recognize the ex

pression of kindred life in all that moves or excites us. Nature with her blooming rose-her smiling landscape--her hills-her vales-her mosscovered tree, and silver stream, chimes in with our own Phantasma of Beauty. They are but varied manifestations of that all-pervading life-principle which binds together the world and man. At least so thought Byron, as he wrought that gem of passionate imagery

"From the high host

Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain coast,

All is concenter'd in a life intense,

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,

But hath a part of being, and a sense

Of that which is of all Creator and defence."

We gaze upon the delicately-traced carving of a Corinthian column-we behold the gracefully-moulded proportions of Grecian artand our love yearns for the silent, yet voiceful being of beauty enshrined within. We wander over the broad flag-stones, and stand beneath the lofty arches or swelling dome of a Gothic Cathedral, and we feel that the spirit of vastness of immense solitude-is hovering around us-a spirit which we may worship but dare not embrace. Who, then, shall say that there is no life there? Every flower of the field lisps forth its Creator's name, and why may not every object of artevery embodied conception of man-hallow his memory, and reflect back the undying soul of its Architect? It may-it can-it must; the soul warms not towards that which is lifeless, nor holds communion with the dead; and that Gothic pile, even in ruins, still bodies forth the mind which conceived it, chained though it be, like Prometheus of old, to the time-worn rock. The Grecian Phydias, as he labored over the unhewn mass, must have infused into the Olympian Jove, not merely a thought, or an idea, but the more aspiring and commanding portion of his own soul; and the beholder, as he dwells upon it communes not with the polished stone, but through the living marble with the soul of Phydias. The sympathy that would otherwise slumber within us warms toward a congenial spirit, and that spirit is full of life, though entombed.

This, then, may be assigned as the reason that scarce any one of mortals and certainly no one deserving the name of immortal-ever lived, and moved, and acted, who had not some chosen day-dream lurking within him—some "ideal creation," to give form and animation to which seemed the object of his existence. Every one must have felt this; and every one, were their hearts bared, would evince this. We are also aware that all things that border upon this mental conceptionthis Phantasma-either in Nature or in Art-either in Mind or in Matter, exert through this means a claim upon our sympathy; we cherish them -we associate them-we brood over them-and those who succeed in embodying them, become immortal. Burns has touched this thought -touched it with the wand of his genius, and bodied as follows: