ANTIQUARIAN RESEARCHES.

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der that men should be found to puzzle themselvesabout the past, when there is so much to be donewith the present.*

* Under the head Miscellanea Critica in Blackwood'sMagazine for this month (September, 1826), is an article whichprominently introduces the subject we are now attempting toillustrate, and from which we beg to be allowed to glean a fewsentences. It thus begins:—" One use of Poetry is to nursein us the feeling of the Beautiful. Another, among manyothers, to cherish, or produce, the love of Antiquity." Aftershewing how " essentially poetical" are the manners and trans-actions of past ages, and what a high-wrought interest thePoet feels in the " remembrance of long-buried generationsof our kind," the writer thus proceeds :—

" If there be in the Past, as such, the natural aptitude heresupposed for affecting the Imagination, the affection will be en-hanced by intercourse with that Art, which not only especi-ally awakens this Faculty,—but greatly delights to lay open,and draw forth, these particular sources of its pleasure." Andhow this is effected, we learn from the following sensible ob-servations:^—"In the extension of our sympathy with hu-man kind, taking in that portion which may least requireit, indeed, the dead—but, further, those living, in whomthe old times imaged, live yet:—In the wider field putunder the dominion of thought; since that which we learnto love we then first understand:—In the solemnity addedto our meditations on man's nature:—In loftier, calmer,juster views of human affairs:—In increased love of ourcountry, itself ancient:—Lastly—among a high-cultivatedpeople a consideration of no slight importance—In the amplermaterials placed under the hand of those inventive, beautiful

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