these baleful aids were resorted to at all, I should consider opium a thousand times preferable to alcohol. I know, from my own experience, that this reality of actual and present existence may be imparted to the creations of the imagination, by long habits of subjecting it to the control of the will. The enjoyment, resulting from reality, may be more intense, but it is, also, more tumultuous and feverish. I know of no happiness, more pure, prolonged and tranquil, more like what we may imagine to be the bliss of higher intelligences, than to be able to create this sunshine of the soul, this fair and celestial world within ourselves, and make ourselves free denizens of the country. From these fairy mansions labor, care and want are excluded. The obstacles and impediments of time, distance, and disease, both of body and mind, are excluded. The inhabitants, walking in the light of truth and the radiance of immortal beauty, from sin and death forever free, unite the wisdom of angels to the simplicity and affectionate confidence of children. Note 50, page 146. No people, in my estimation, are farther from true wisdom, than they, who denounce these pleasures of the imagination, as the puerile follies of weak minds. They who are most prompt to bring the charge, are generally destitute of the faculty, and its kindred endowments themselves; and seem to desire that other minds should be reduced to their own scale of sterility. Puerile, to avail ourselves of the power of rendering ourselves innocently happy! To me the puerility belongs to those who mostly abstain from contemplating the few gleams of sunshine, that we can behold between the cradle and the grave. ‘But these joys are unreal!’ What is there in the _vain show_ of life, that is not so? See the greedy scramble of ambition, after honor, wealth and distinction, the painted baubles of insects, who hold all by the frail tenure of life! Life itself, what is it, but a dream, sometimes illumined by the rainbows of imagination and hope? Note 51, page 149.