_Hal._ I think I can promise you green meadows, shady trees, the song of
the nightingale, and a full, clear river.
_Poiet._ This last is, in my opinion, the most poetical object in
nature. I will not fail to obey your summons. Pliny has, as well as I
recollect, compared a river to human life. I have never read the passage
in his works but I have been a hundred times struck with the analogy,
particularly amid mountain scenery. The river, small and clear at its
origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and
meanders through a wild and picturesque country, nourishing only the
uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, its state of
infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy
and strength of imagination are predominant—it is more beautiful than
useful. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the
plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions; it is applied to move
machinery, to irrigate meadows, and to bear upon its bosom the stately
barge; in this mature state it is deep, strong, useful. As it flows on
toward the sea, it loses its force and its motion, and at last, as it
were, becomes lost, and mingled with the mighty abyss of waters.
_Hal._ One might pursue the metaphor still further, and say that in its
origin—its thundering and foam, when it carries down clay from the bank,
and becomes impure—it resembles the youthful mind affected by dangerous
passions. And the influence of a lake, in calming and clearing the
turbid water, may be compared to the effect of reason in more mature
life, when the tranquil, deep, cool, and unimpassioned mind is freed
from its fever, its troubles, bubbles, noise, and foam. And, above all,
the sources of a river—which may be considered as belonging to the
atmosphere—and its termination in the ocean, may be regarded as imaging
the divine origin of the human mind, and its being ultimately returned
to, and lost in, the Infinite and Eternal Intelligence from which it
originally sprung.