VIII. "LAST, as observant Imitation stands, Turns her quick glance, and brandishes her hands, With mimic acts associate thoughts excites, And storms the soul with sorrows or delights; Life's shadowy scenes are brighten'd and refin'd, And soft emotions mark the feeling mind. [Footnote: _And soft emotions_, l. 466. From our aptitude to imitation arises what is generally understood by the word sympathy, so well explained by Dr. Smith of Glasgow. Thus the appearance of a cheerful countenance gives us pleasure, and of a melancholy one makes us sorrowful. Yawning, and sometimes vomiting, are thus propagated by sympathy; and some people of delicate fibres, at the presence of a spectacle of misery, have felt pain in the same parts of their bodies, that were diseased or mangled in the object they saw. The effect of this powerful agent in the moral world, is the foundation of all our intellectual sympathies with the pains and pleasures of others, and is in consequence the source of all our virtues. For in what consists our sympathy with the miseries or with the joys of our fellow creatures, but in an involuntary excitation of ideas in some measure similar or imitative of those which we believe to exist in the minds of the persons whom we commiserate or congratulate!] "The Seraph, SYMPATHY, from Heaven descends, And bright o'er earth his beamy forehead bends; On Man's cold heart celestial ardor flings, And showers affection from his sparkling wings; 470 Rolls o'er the world his mild benignant eye, Hears the lone murmur, drinks the whisper'd sigh; Lifts the closed latch of pale Misfortune's door, Opes the clench'd hand of Avarice to the poor, Unbars the prison, liberates the slave, Sheds his soft sorrows o'er the untimely grave, Points with uplifted hand to realms above, And charms the world with universal love. "O'er the thrill'd frame his words assuasive steal, And teach the selfish heart what others feel; 480 With sacred truth each erring thought control, Bind sex to sex, and mingle soul with soul; From heaven, He cried, descends the moral plan, And gives Society to savage man. "High on yon scroll, inscribed o'er Nature's shrine, Live in bright characters the words divine. "IN LIFE'S DISASTROUS SCENES TO OTHERS DO, WHAT YOU WOULD WISH BY OTHERS DONE TO YOU." --Winds! wide o'er earth the sacred law convey, Ye Nations, hear it! and ye Kings, obey! 490