what is the greater right which any one human being, under all the circumstances which modify his character, has beyond any other, to be made happy? However, there seems a great difference between man and man in the actual amount of their enjoyments; and if the great silence of Nature keeps us in ignorance of the reason (for superstition does but perplex the matter, instead of unfolding it), it is a comforting reflection, not only that the general yearning of things is towards happiness, but that happiness is produced in proportion as the yearning is general and sympathetic; in other words, in proportion as it tends to the greatest sum of happiness.

Behold one of the advantages of fogs and mists! If the southern nations, with their sunshine and clear air, are more joyous than we are, and have a greater but vaguer instinct to make others partake of their pleasure, our greater share of melancholy sets us upon scheming how to turn that instinct of humanity to the best account. It is thus that England, though slow to enjoy, has of old been quick to relieve,—has had the chief hand in giving those great lifts to the world in knowledge and liberty, for which the sunny Italian was too idle and contented.

It is from the same cause that our great poets (with one exception, perhaps, as to grandeur of invention) are greater than those of Italy. They have seen the dark as well as the bright side of things; and their knowledge of both gives to their writings a depth of charity, as well as imagination, pre-eminently human. All the things that can be said for human nature, as well as about its passions and imaginings, are to be found perhaps in Shakspeare, and in Shakspeare only; but his contemporaries had a good share of the same gentle spirit of arbitration.

On the other hand, where the English do not cultivate the more genial part of experience, they are likely to err more than most nations for pain, when it does not turn into knowledge, is apt to turn into sullenness and malignity. Its reliefs also become of the grossest and most selfish nature; and nothing

can be more disgustingly pitiable than a gross, arrogant Englishman, who in the plenitude of his egotism talks against vanity, and, in the midst of the most selfish and sordid vices,-moneyscraping, or gormandising, or drinking, or cock-fighting,—thinks himself entitled to despise other nations, whose vices are rather the excesses of sympathy.

Such a man is not worthy of his very fogs; for even they have their bright sides, and help to increase the comforts of our houses. And now, then, to say something of their merits and treatment.

upon

Fogs and mists, being nothing but vapours which the cold air will not suffer to evaporate, must have body enough to present a gorgeous aspect next the sun. To the eye of an eagle, or whatever other eyes there may be to look down them, they must appear like masses of cloudy gold. In fact, they are but clouds unrisen. The city of London, at the time we are writing this article, is literally a city in the clouds. Its inhabitants walk through the same airy heaps which at other times float far over their heads in the sky, or minister with glorious faces to the setting sun.

We do not say that any one can "hold a fire in his hand " by thinking on a fine sunset; or that sheer imagination of any sort can make it a very agreeable thing to feel as if one's body were wrapped round with cold wet paper; much less to flounder through gutters, or run against posts. But the mind can often help itself with agreeable images against disagreeable ones; or pitch itself round to the best sides and aspects of them. The solid and fiery ball of the sun, stuck, as it were, in the thick, foggy atmosphere; the moon just winning her way through it into beams; nay, the very candles and gas-lights in the shop windows of a misty evening,—all have, in our eyes, their agreeable varieties of contrast to the surrounding haze. We have even halted, of a dreary autumnal evening, at that open part of the Strand by St Clement's, and seen the church, which is a poor structure of itself, take an aspect of ghastly

grandeur from the dark atmosphere; looking like a tall white mass mounting up interminably into the night overhead.

The poets, who are the common friends that keep up the intercourse between nature and humanity, have in numberless passages done justice to these our melancholy visitors, and shown us what grand personages they are. To mention only a few of the most striking :-When Thetis, in Homer's "Iliad" (Book I. v. 359), rises out of the sea to console Achilles, she issues forth in a mist; like the gigantic Genius in the "Arabian Nights." The reader is to suppose that the mist, after ascending, comes gliding over the water, and, condensing itself into a human shape, lands the white-footed goddess on the shore.

When Achilles, after his long and vindictive absence from the Greek armies, reappears in consequence of the death of his friend Patroclus, and stands before the appalled Trojan armies, who are thrown into confusion at the very sight, Minerva, to render his aspect the more astonishing and awful, puts about his head a halo of golden mist, streaming upwards with fire (Book XVIII. v. 205). He shouts aloud under this preternatural diadem; Minerva throws into his shout her own immortal voice with a strange unnatural cry; at which the horses of the Trojan warriors run round with their chariots, and twelve of their noblest captains perish in the crush.

A mist was the usual clothing of the gods when they descended to earth; especially of Apollo, whose brightness had double need of mitigation. Homer, to heighten the dignity of Ulysses, has finely given him the same covering, when he passes through the court of Antinous, and suddenly appears before the throne. This has been turned to happy account by Virgil, and to a new and noble one by Milton. Virgil makes Eneas issue suddenly from a mist, at the moment when his friends think him lost, and the beautiful Queen of Carthage is wishing his presence. Milton-but we will give one or two of his minor uses of mists, by way of making a climax of the one alluded to. If Satan, for instance, goes lurking about Paradise,

E

it is "like a black mist low creeping." If the angels on guard

glide about it, upon their gentler errand, it is like fairer

vapours

"On the ground

Gliding meteorous, as evening-mist

Risen from a river o'er the marish glides,

And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel

Homeward returning."-Par. Lost, Book XII. v. 628.

Now, behold one of his greatest imaginations. The fallen demigods are assembled in Pandæmonium, waiting the return of their "great adventurer" from his "search of worlds."

"He through the midst unmark'd,

In show plebeian angel militant

Of lowest order pass'd; and from the door
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible,
Ascended his high throne; which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down awhile
He sat, and round about him saw unseen.
At last,-as from a cloud, his fulgent head
And shape star-bright appear'd, or brighter; clad
With what permissive glory since his fall
Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng

Bent their aspect; and whom they wish'd beheld
Their mighty chief return'd."

There is a piece of imagination in Apollonius Rhodius, worthy of Milton or Homer. The Argonauts, in broad daylight, are suddenly benighted at sea with a black fog. They pray to Apollo, and he descends from heaven, and, lighting on a rock, holds up his illustrious bow, which shoots a guiding light for them to an island.

Spenser, in a most romantic chapter of the "Faery Queene " (Book II.), seems to have taken the idea of a benighting from Apollonius, as well as to have had an eye to some passages of the "Odyssey ;" but, like all great poets, what he borrows only brings worthy companionship to some fine invention of his own. It is a scene thickly beset with horror. Sir Guyon, in the

course of his voyage through the perilous sea, wishes to stop and hear the Syrens; but the Palmer, his companion, dissuades him :

"When suddeinly a grosse fog over spred
With his dull vapour all that desert has,
And heaven's chearefull face envelopéd,
That all things one, and one as nothing, was,
And this great universe seem'd one confuséd mass.
"Thereat they greatly were dismay'd, ne wist
How to direct theyr way in darkness wide,
But fear'd to wander in that wastefull mist,
For tombling into mischiefe unespyde:
Worse is the daunger hidden than descride.
Suddeinly, an innumerable flight

Of harmfull fowles about them fluttering cride,
And with theyr wicked wings them oft did smight,
And sore annoyéd, groping in that griesly night.

"Even all the nation of unfortunate

And fatall birds about them flocked were,
Such as by nature men abhorre and hate :—
The ill-faced owle, death's dreadful messengere:
The hoarse night-raven, trump of dolefull drere:
The lether-winged batt, dayes enimy:
The ruefull stritch, still waiting on the bere:
The whistler shrill, that whoso heares doth dy:
The hellish harpies, prophets of sad destiny.
"All these, and all that els does horror breed,
About them flew, and fild theyr sayles with fear;
Yet stayd they not, but forward did proceed,
Whiles th' one did row, and th' other stifly steare."

Ovid has turned a mist to his usual account, an amatory one. It is where Jupiter, to conceal his amour with Io, throws a cloud over the valley of Tempe. There is a picture of Jupiter and Io, by Correggio, in which that great artist has finely availed himself of the circumstance; the head of the father of gods and men coming placidly out of the cloud, upon the young lips of Io, like the very benignity of creation.

We must mention another instance of the poetical use of a mist, if it is only to indulge ourselves in one of those masterly passages of Dante, in which he contrives to unite minuteness of detail with the most grand and sovereign impressiveness. It is