In our contemplation of great actions, perhaps no exercise affords the imagination more pleasure, than to observe the progress of some mighty revolution. At first, all is apparently calm and peaceful on the surface of society, and the beholder finds nothing in the cloudless sky above, the whispering breeze, or the unruffled serenity beneath, to forebode the fury of the coming tempest. He does not dream that the waves of discord and strife are so soon to dash their foam along the mirror-like tranquillity before him. Yet the principles may be already at work, whose influence is to arouse these slumbering elements to a fearful energy. Some youthful mind, destined to be the master spirit of its age, may be, even at the moment, preparing within the still retreat of its lonely musings, by patient and toilsome research, the great problem whose solution is to shake the existing system of things to its foundations. At length the fullness of the time is come, and “the little cloud like a man’s hand,” rears its shadowy outline far in the distant horizon. The voice of the tempest is heard moaning in suppressed accents, as though wailing a dirge over the wreck it must make. Darker and still darker above, the sky spreads out its drapery of mantling clouds. The spirits of the storm awake, and ride forth on the howling blast, amid the wild roar of the elements, celebrating the festival of their freedom. The tempest at length has spent its rage, the pall of blackness is withdrawn, and the bow of promise gives goodly token of the returning calm. This may seem perhaps a fanciful description of a revolution. But to the cultivated imagination, the reality calls up all the intenseness of interest and excitement which belong to scenes like these. The storm of human passions, when stirred up and left to range uncontrolled through a community, gathering in its ranks the ruthless votaries of ambition, avarice and revenge, urged, as it sweeps onward, by a thousand new impulses from selfish and opposing interests, may well be likened to the strife of the angry elements. There is in the majestic energies of human nature, when aroused and carried forward with a momentum generated by the heart, an exhibition of more terrific sublimity than all the varied convulsions in the physical world can possibly present. But we have said enough on this point, to show, that the source of pleasure to the imagination, which we are at present considering, is one of no ordinary character, both in respect to the nature and degree of the gratification which it induces. And it is now high time that we return to our main object, which is to notice the influence of moral feeling in enhancing our susceptibility to this kind of intellectual enjoyment.