To the rarity of the virtue upon which I have so long dwelt, we may trace the cause of almost all the domestic unhappiness we witness whenever the veil is withdrawn from the secrets of _home_. Alas! how often is this blessed word only the symbol of freely-indulged ill-tempers, unresisted selfishness, or, perhaps the most dangerous of all, exacting and unforgiving requirements. While the one party select their home as the only scene where they may safely and freely vent their caprices and ill-humours, the other require a stricter compliance with their wishes, a more exact conformity with their pursuits and opinions, than they meet with even from the temporary companions of their lighter hours. They forget that these companions have only to exert themselves for a short time for their gratification, and that they can then retire to their own home, probably to be as disagreeable there as the relations of whom the others complain. For then the mask is off, and they are at liberty,--yes, at liberty,--freed from the inspection and the judgments of the world, and only exposed to those of God!
My friend, I am sure you have often shared in the pain and grief I feel, that in so few cases should home be the blessed, peaceful spot that poetry pictures to us. There is no real poetry that is not truth in its purest form--truth as it appears to eyes from which the mists of sense are cleared away. Surely our earthly homes ought to realize the representations of poetry; they would then become each day a nearer, though ever a faint type of, that eternal home for which our earthly one ought daily to prepare us.
Poetry and religion always teach the same duties, instil the same feelings. Never believe that any thing can be truly noble or great, that any thing can be really poetical, which is not also religious. The poet is now partly a priest, as he was in the old heathen world; and though, alas! he may, like Balaam, utter inspirations which his heart follows not, which his life denies, yet, like Balaam also, his words are full of lessons for us, though they may only make his own guilt the deeper.
I have been led to these concluding considerations respecting poetry by my anxiety that you should turn your refined tastes and your acute perceptions of the beautiful to a universally moral purpose. There is no teaching more impressive than that which comes to us through our passions. In the moment of excited feeling stronger impressions may be made than by any of the warnings of duty and principle. If these latter, however, be not motives co-existent, and also in strength and exercise, the impressions of feeling are temporary, and even dangerous. It is only to the faithful followers of duty that the excitements of romance and poetry are useful and improving. To such they have often given strength and energy to tread more cheerfully and hopefully over many a rugged path, to live more closely to their beau-idéal, a vivid vision of which has, by poetry, been awakened and refreshed in their hearts.