—"to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet."

The poet lifts our eyes to the beauties of external nature, educates us to a keener participation in the sweet joys of affection, to the loveliness and grace of woman, to the honor and strength of manhood. His ideal world thus becomes an actual one, as the creations of imagination first borrowed from sense, alight from the book, the picture or the statue once again to live and walk among us.

The resemblances which have induced us to bring together our sacred triumvirate of poets, are the common period in which they lived, their similar training in youth, a congenial bond of learning, a certain generous family condition, the inspiration of the old mother church out of which they sprung, the familiar discipline of sorrow, the early years in which they severally wrote.

A brief glance at their respective lives may indicate still further these similarities and point a moral which needs not many words to express—which seems to us almost too sacred to be loudly or long dwelt upon.

* * * * *

Herbert was the oldest of the band, having been born near the close of the sixteenth century, in the days of James, who was an intelligent patron of the family. The poet's brother, the learned Lord Herbert of Cherbury, whose "Autobiography" breathes the fresh manly spirit of the best days of chivalry, was the king's ambassador to France. George Herbert, too, was in a fair way to this court patronage, when his hopes were checked by the death of the monarch. It is a circumstance, this court favor, worth considering in the poet's life, as the antecedent to his manifold spirit of piety. Nothing is more noticeable than the wide, liberal culture of the old English poets; they were first, men, often skilled in affairs, with ample experience in life, and then—poets.

Herbert's education was all that care and affection could devise. "He spent," says his amiable biographer, Izaak Walton, "much of his childhood in a sweet content under the eye and care of his prudent mother, and the tuition of a chaplain or tutor to him and two of his brothers in her own family." At Cambridge he became orator to the University, gained the applause of the court by his Latin orations, and what is more, secured the friendship of such men as Bishop Andrews, Dr. Donne, and the model diplomatist of his age, Sir Henry Wotton. The completion of his studies and the failure of court expectations were followed by a passage of rural retirement—a first pause of the soul previous to the deeper conflicts of life. His solitariness was increased by sickness, a period of meditation and devotional feeling, assisted by the intimations of a keen spirit in a feeble body—and out of the furnace came forth Herbert the priest and saint. All that knowledge can inspire, all that tenderness can endear, centres about that picture of the beauty of holiness, his brief pastoral career—as we read it in his prose writings and his poems, and the pages of Walton—at the little village of Bemerton. He died at the age of thirty-nine—his gentle spirit spared the approaching conflicts of his country, which pressed so heavily upon the Church which he loved.

The poems of Herbert are now read throughout the world; no longer confined to that Church which inspired them. They are echoed at times in the pulpits of all denominations, while their practical lines are, if we remember rightly, scattered among the sage aphorisms of Poor Richard, and their wide philosophy commends itself to the genius of Emerson.

It is pleasant in these old poets to admire what has been admired by others—to read the old verses with the indorsement of genius. The name adds value to the bond. Coleridge, for instance, whose "paper," in a mercantile sense, would have been, on "change," the worst in England, has given us many of these notable "securities." They live in his still echoing "Table-Talk," and are sprinkled generously over his writings—while what record is there of the "good," the best financial names of the day? One sonnet of Herbert was an especial favorite with Coleridge. It was that heart-searching, sympathizing epitome of spiritual life, entitled

SIN.

"Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then school-masters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers.

"Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.

"Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness. The sound of Glory ringing in our ears: Without, our shame; within, our consciences: Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.

"Yet all these fences and their whole array, One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away."

These poems, it should be remembered, are private devotional heart-confessions, not written for sale, for pay or reputation; they were not printed at all during the author's life, but were brought forth by faithful friends from the sacred coffer of his dying-room, in order that posterity might know the secret of that honorable life and its cheerful end. Izaak Walton has given a beautiful setting to one stanza from the eloquent ode "Sunday." "The Sunday before his death," his biographer tells us, "he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of his instruments, took it into his hand, and said:

"'My God, my God My music shall find thee, And every string Shall have his attribute to sing.

And having tuned it, he played and sung:

"'The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King. On Sundays, heaven's door stands ope; Blessings are plentiful and rife; More plentiful than hope.'

"Thus he sung on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels and he, and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven."

As we have fallen upon this personal, biographical vein, and as the best key to a man's poetry is to know the man and what he may have encountered, we may cite the poem entitled "The Pearl." It is compact of life and experience: we see the courtier and the scholar ripening into the saint; the world not forgotten or ignored, but its best pursuits calmly weighed, fondly enumerated and left behind, as steps of the celestial ladder.

THE PEARL.

"I know the ways of learning; both the head And pipes that feed the press, and make it run; What reason hath from nature borrowed, Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun In laws and policy; what the stars conspire; What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire; Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas; The stock and surplus, cause and history: All these stand open, or I have the keys: Yet I love thee.

"I know the ways of honor, what maintains The quick returns of courtesy and wit: In vies of favor whether party gains, When glory swells the heart and mouldeth it To all expressions both of hand and eye, Which on the world a true-love knot may tie, And bear the bundle, wheresoe'er it goes: How many drams of spirits there must be To sell my life unto my friends or foes: Yet I love thee.

"I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains, The lullings and the relishes of it; The propositions of hot blood and brains; What mirth and music mean; what love and wit Have done these twenty hundred years, and more; I know the projects of unbridled store: My stuff is flesh, not grass; my senses live, And grumble oft, that they have more in me Than he that curbs them, being but one to five: Yet I love thee.

"I know all these, and have them in my hand; Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes I fly to thee, and fully understand Both the main sale, and the commodities; And at what rate and price I have thy love; With all the circumstances that may move: Yet through the labyrinths, not my grovelling wit, But thy silk-twist let down from heav'n to me, Did both conduct and teach me, how, by it, To climb to thee."

A splendid retrospect this of a short life: and with what accurate knowledge of art, science, policy, literature, of powers of body and mind. Herbert's poems are full of this sterling sense and philosophical reflection—the mintage of a master mind.

Addison's version of the twenty-third Psalm has entered into every household and penetrated every heart by its sweetness and pathos. There is equal gentleness and sincerity in Herbert's:

"The God of love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed. While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need?

"He leads me to the tender grass, Where I both feed and rest; Then to the streams that gently pass: In both I have the best.

"Or if I stray, he doth convert, And bring my mind in frame And all this not for my desert, But for his holy name.

"Yea, in death's shady, black abode Well may I walk, not fear: For thou art with me, and thy rod To guide, thy staff to bear.

"Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine, E'en in my en'mies' sight; My head with oil, my cup with wine, Runs over day and night.

"Surely thy sweet and wond'rous love Shall measure all my days: And as it never shall remove, So neither shall my praise."

We might linger long with Herbert, gathering the fruits of wisdom and piety from the abundant orchard of his poems, where many a fruit "hangs amiable;" but we must listen to his brethren.

* * * * *

Henry Vaughan was the literary offspring of George Herbert. His life, too, might have been written by good Izaak Walton, so gentle was it, full of all pleasant associations and quiet nobleness, decorated by the love of nature and letters, intimacies with poets, and with that especial touch of nature which always went to the heart of the Complete Angler, a love of fishing—for Vaughan was wont, at times, to skim the waters of his native rivers.

He was born in Wales; the old Roman name of the country conferring upon him the appellation "Silurist"—for in those days local pride and affection claimed the honor of the bard, as the poet himself first gathered strength from the home, earth and sky which concentrated rather than circumscribed his genius. His family was of good old lineage, breathing freely for generations in the upper atmosphere of life, warmed and cheered in a genial sunlight of prosperity. It could stir, too, at the call of patriotism, and send soldiers, as it did, to bite the heroic dust at Agincourt. Another time brought other duties. The poet came into the world in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the great awakening of thought and English intellect was to be followed by stirring action. He was not, indeed, to bear any great part in the senate or the field; but all noble spirits were moved by the issues of the time. To some the voice of the age brought hope and energy; to others, a not ignoble submission. It was perhaps as great a thing to suffer with the Royal Martyr, with all the burning life and traditions of England in the throbbing heart, as to rise from the ruins into the cold ether where the stern soul of Milton could wing its way in self-reliant calmness. Honor is due, as in all great struggles, to both parties. Vaughan's lot was cast with the conquered cause.

His youth was happy, as all poets' should be, and as the genius of all true poets, coupled with that period of life, will go far to make it. There must be early sunshine far the first nurture of that delicate plant: the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it. Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant title in the sweet fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the title in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Iscanus." Another fortunate circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he passed the years of youth in what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in their waters.

The brothers left for Oxford at the mature age—not a whit too late for any minds—of seventeen or eighteen. At the University there were other words than the songs of Apollo. The Great Revolution was already on the carpet, and it was to be fought out with weapons not found in the logical armory of Aristotle. The brothers were royalists, of course; and Henry, before the drama was played out, like many good men and true, tasted the inside of a prison—doubtless, like Lovelace and Wither, singing his heartfelt minstrelsy behind the wires of his cage. He was not a fighting man. Poets rarely are. More than one lyrist—as Archilochus and Horace may bear witness—has thrown away his shield on the field of battle. Vaughan wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and passionate feeling within the walls of those same Welsh hills. Nature, alone, however, is inadequate to the production of a true poet. Even Wordsworth, the most patient, absorbed of recluses, had his share of education in London and travel in foreign cities. Vaughan, too, early found his way, in visits, to the metropolis, where he heard at the Globe Tavern the last echoes of that burst of wit and knowledge which had spoken from the tongue and kindled in the eye of Shakspeare, Spenser and Raleigh. Ben Jonson was still alive, and the young poets who flocked to him, as a later age worshipped Dryden, were all "sealed of the tribe of Ben." Randolph and Cartwright were his friends.

Under these early inspirations of youth, nature, learning, witty companionship, Vaughan published his first verses—breathing a love of his art and its pleasures of imagination, paying his tribute to his paternal books in "Englishing," the "Tenth Satyre of Juvenal," and not forgetting, of course, the lovely "Amoret." A young poet without a lady in his verse is a solecism which nature abhors. All this, however, as his biographer remarks, "though fine in the way of poetic speculation, would not do for every-day practice." Of course not; and the young "swan" turned his wary feet from the glittering stream to the solid land. The poet became a physician. It was a noble art for such a spirit to practise, and not a very rude progress from youthful poesy if he felt and thought aright. There was a sterner change in store, however, and it came to him with the monition, "Physician, heal thyself!" He was prostrated by severe bodily disease, and thenceforth his spirit was bowed to the claims of the unseen world. The "light amorist" found a higher inspiration. He turned his footsteps to the Temple and worshipped at the holy altar of Herbert. His poetry becomes religious. "Sparks from the Flint" is the title which he gives his new verses, "Silex Scintillans." After that pledge to holiness given to the world, he survived nearly half a century, dying at the mature age of seventy-three—a happy subject of contemplation in the bosom of his Welsh retirement, passing quietly down the vale of life, feeding his spirit on the early-gathered harvest of wit, learning, taste, feeling, fancy, benevolence and piety.

Of such threads was the life of our poet spun.

His verse is light, airy, flying with the lark to heaven. Hear him with "his singing robes" about him:

"I would I were some bird or star, Flutt'ring in woods, or lifted far Above this inn And road of sin! Then either star or bird should be Shining or singing still to thee."

In this song of "Peace"—

"My soul, there is a country Afar beyond the stars, Where stands a winged sentry All skillful in the wars. There, above noise and danger, Sweet peace sits crown'd with smiles, And one born in a manger Commands the beauteous files. He is thy gracious friend, And (oh, my soul awake!) Did in pure love descend, To die here for thy sake. If thou canst get but thither, There grows the flower of peace, The rose that cannot wither, Thy fortress and thy ease. Leave, then, thy foolish ranges; For none can thee secure, But one, who never changes— Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure."

Or in that kindred ode, full of "intimations of immortality received in childhood," entitled, "The Retreat:"

"Happy those early days, when I Shin'd in my angel infancy! Before I understood this place, Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walkt above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. Oh how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th' enlight'ned spirit sees That shady city of palm-trees. But, ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return."

Here is a picture of the angel-visited world of Eden, not altogether destroyed by the Fall, when

"Each day The valley or the mountain Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay In some green shade or fountain. Angels lay lieger here: each bush and cell, Each oak and highway knew them; Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well, And he was sure to view them."

Vaughan's birds and flowers gleam with light from the spirit land. This is the opening of a little piece entitled "The Bird:"

"Hither thou com'st. The busy wind all night Blew through thy lodging, where thy own warm wing Thy pillow was. Many a sullen storm, For which coarse man seems much the fitter born, Rain'd on thy bed And harmless head; And now, as fresh and cheerful as the light, Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing Unto that Providence, whose unseen arm Curb'd them, and cloth'd thee well and warm."

How softly the image of the little bird again tempers the thought of death in his ode to the memory of the departed:

"He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown."

But we must leave this fair garden of the poet's fancies. The reader will find there many a flower yet untouched.

* * * * *

Richard Crashaw was the contemporary of the early years of Vaughan; for, alas! he died young—though not till he had transcribed for the world the hopes, the aspirations, the sorrows of his troubled life. He lived but thirty-four years—the volume of his verses is not less nor more than the kindred books of the brother poets with whom we are now associating his memory. A small body of verse will hold much life; for the poet gives us a concentrated essence, an elixir, a skillful confection of humanity, which, diluted with the commonplaces of every-day thought and living, may cover whole shelves of libraries. The secret of the whole of one life may be expressed in a song or a sonnet. The little books of the world are not the least.

Crashaw, also, was a scholar. The son of a clergy-man, he was educated at the famed Charter-house and afterward at Cambridge. The Revolution, too, overtook him. He refused the oath of the covenant, was ejected from his fellowship, became a Roman Catholic, and took refuge in Paris, where he ate the bread of exile with Cowley and others, cheered by the noble sympathy—it could not be much more—of Queen Henrietta Maria. She recommended him to Rome, and the sensitive poet carried his joys and sorrows to the bosom of the church. He lived a few years, and died canon of Loretto, at the age of thirty-four.

Though the son of a zealous opponent of the Roman church, Crashaw was born with an instinct and heart for its service. There runs through all his poetry that sensuousness of feeling which seeks the repose and luxury of faith which Rome always offers to her ardent votaries. It is profitable to compare the sentiment of Crashaw with the more intellectual development of Herbert. What in the former is the paramount, constant exhibition, in the latter is accepted, and holds its place subordinate to other claims. Without a portion of it there could be no deep religious life—with it, in excess, we fear for the weakness of a partial development. There is so much gain, however, to the poet, that we have no disposition to take exception to the single string of Crashaw. The beauty of the Venus was made up from the charms of many models. So, in our libraries, as in life, we must be content with parcel-work, and take one man's wisdom and another's sentiment, looking out that we get something of each to enrich our multifarious life.

Crashaw's poetry is one musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial title, "The Delights of the Muses," opening with that exquisite composition:

"Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony,"

"Music's Duel." It is the story—a favorite one to the ears of our forefathers two centuries ago—of the nightingale and the musician contending with voice and instrument in alternate melodies, till the sweet songstress of the grove falls and dies upon the lute of her rapt rival. It is something more than a pretty tale. Ford, the dramatist, introduced it briefly in happy lines in "The Lover's Melancholy," but Crashaw's verses inspire the very sweetness and lingering pleasure of the contest. It is high noon when the "sweet lute's master" seeks retirement from the heat, "on the scene of a green plat, under protection of an oak," by the bank of the Tiber. The "light-foot lady,"

"The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,"

"entertains the music's soft report," which begins with a flying prelude, to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with "quick volumes of wild notes."

"His nimble hand's instinct then taught each string, A cap'ring cheerfulness; and made them sing To their own dance."

She

"Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note Through the sleek passage of her open throat: A clear, unwrinkled song."

The contention invites every art of expression. The highest powers of the lute are evoked in rapid succession closing with a martial strain:

"this lesson, too, She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill, And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill, The pliant series of her slippery song; Then starts she suddenly into a throng Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring vollies float, And roll themselves over her lubric throat In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast, That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest Of her delicious soul, that there does lie Bathing in streams of liquid melody, Music's best seed-plot; when in ripen'd airs A golden-headed harvest fairly rears His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath, Which there reciprocally laboreth. In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire, Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre; Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats In cream of morning Helicon; and then Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men, To woo them from their beds, still murmuring That men can sleep while they their matins sing."

What wealth of imagery and proud association of ideas—the bubbling spring, the golden, waving harvest, "ploughed by her breath"—the fane of Apollo suggesting in a word images of Greek maidens in chorus by the white temple of the God, the dew of Helicon, the soft waking of men from beneficent repose. It is all very well to talk of a bird doing all this: we admire nightingales, but Philomela never enchanted us in this way; it is the sex with which we are charmed. The poet's "light-foot lady" tells us the secret. We are subdued by the loveliest of prima-donnas.

There is more of this, and as good. The little poem is a poet's dictionary of musical expression. Its lines, less than two hundred, deserve to be committed to memory, to rise at times in the mind—the soft assuagement of cares and sorrows.

A famous poem of Crashaw is "On a Prayer-Book sent to Mrs. M.R." It breathes a divine ecstasy of the sacred ode:

"Delicious deaths, soft exhalations Of soul; dear and divine annihilations; A thousand unknown rites Of joys, and rarefied delights."

It is human passion sublimated and refined to the uses of heaven, but human passion still—the very luxury of religion—the rapture of earth-born seraphs, as he sings with venturous exultation:

"The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets, Which with a swelling bosom there she meets, Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures Of pure inebriating pleasures: Happy proof she shall discover, What joy, what bliss, How many heavens at once it is, To have a God become her lover!"

Mrs. M.R., whether maid or widow we know not—in Crashaw's day virgins were called Mistress—has another poem addressed to her—"Counsel concerning her choice." It alludes to some check or hindrance in love, and asks:

"Dear, heav'n-designed soul! Amongst the rest Of suitors that besiege your maiden breast, Why may not I My fortune try, And venture to speak one good word, Not for myself, alas! but for my dearer Lord?

* * * * *

Your first choice fails; oh, when you choose again, May it not be among the sons of men!"

This is the language of devotional rapture common to the extremes of the religious world—Methodism and Roman Catholicism. Every one has heard the ardent hymn by Newton—"The Name of Jesus," and that stirring anthem, "The Coronation of Christ"—few have read the eloquent production of the canon of Loretto, a canticle from the flaming heart of Rome, addressed "To the name above every name, the name of Jesus."

"Pow'rs of my soul, be proud! And speak loud To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name; And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim New smiles to nature.

* * * * *

Sweet name, in thy each syllable A thousand blest Arabias dwell; A thousand hills of frankincense, Mountains of myrrh, and beds of spices, And ten thousand paradises, The soul that tastes thee takes from thence, How many unknown worlds there are Of comforts, which thou hast in keeping! How many thousand mercies there In Pity's soft lap lie asleeping!"

Crashaw's invitations to holiness breathe the very gallantry of piety. He addresses "the noblest and best of ladies, the Countess of Denbigh," who had been his patroness in exile, "persuading her to resolution in religion."

"What heaven-entreated heart is this Stands trembling at the gate of bliss.

* * * * *

What magic bolts, what mystic bars Maintain the will in these strange wars! What fatal, what fantastic bands Keep the free heart from its own hands! So, when the year takes cold, we see Poor waters their own prisoners be;

Fetter'd and lock'd up fast, they lie In a sad self-captivity; Th' astonish'd nymphs their floods' strange fate deplore, To see themselves their own severer shore.

* * * * *

Disband dull fears; give Faith the day; To save your life, kill your delay; It is Love's siege, and sure to be Your triumph, though his victory."

His poem, "The Weeper," shoots the prismatic hues of the rainbow athwart the veil of fast-falling tears:

"Hail sister springs, Parents of silver-footed rills! Ever bubbling things! Thawing crystal! snowy hills! Still spending, never spent; I mean Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.

* * * * *

"Every morn from hence, A brisk cherub something sips, Whose soft influence Adds sweetness to his sweetest lips; Then to his music, and his song Tastes of this breakfast all day long.

"Not in the evening's eyes, When they red with weeping are For the sun that dies, Sits sorrow with a face so fair. Nowhere but here did ever meet Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.

"When Sorrow would be seen In her brightest majesty, For she is a queen, Then is she drest by none but thee. Then, and only then, she wears Her richest pearls, I mean thy tears.

"The dew no more will weep, The primrose's pale cheek to deck; The dew no more will sleep, Nuzzled in the lily's neck. Much rather would it tremble here, And leave them both to be thy tear."

These are some of Crashaw's "Steps to the Temple"—verily he walked thither on velvet.

"Wishes to his supposed Mistress," is more than a pretty enumeration of the good qualities of woman as they rise in the heart of a noble, gallant lover:

"Whoe'er she be, That not impossible she, That shall command my heart and me:

"Where'er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye, In shady leaves of destiny:

"Till that ripe birth Of studied fate, stand forth, And teach her fair steps to our earth:

"Till that divine Idea take a shrine Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

"Meet you her, my wishes, Bespeak her to my blisses, And be ye call'd my absent kisses."

We are not reprinting Crashaw, and must forbear further quotation. It is enough if we have presented to the reader a lily or a rose from his pages, and have given a clue to that treasure-house—

"A box where sweets compacted lie."

A generation nurtured in poetic susceptibility by the genius of Keats and Tennyson, should not forget the early muse of Crashaw. His verse is the very soul of tenderness and imaginative luxury: less intellectual, less severe in the formation of a broad, manly character than Herbert; catching up the brighter inspirations of Vaughan, and excelling him in richness—it has a warm, graceful garb of its own. It is tinged with the glowing hues of Spenser's fancy; baptized in the fountains of sacred love, it draws an earthly inspiration from the beautiful in nature and life, as in the devout paintings of the great Italian masters, we find the models of their angels and seraphs on earth.



MISERERE DOMINE.

BY WILLIAM H. BURLEIGH.

Thou who look'st with pitying eye From Thy radiant home on high, On the spirit tempest-tost, Wretched, weary, wandering, lost— Ever ready help to give, And entreating, "Look and live!" By that love, exceeding thought, Which from Heaven the Saviour brought, By that mercy which could dare Death to save us from despair, Lowly bending at Thy feet, We adore, implore, entreat, Lifting heart and voice to Thee— Miserere Domine!

With the vain and giddy throng, FATHER! we have wandered long; Eager from Thy paths to stray, Chosen the forbidden way; Heedless of the light within, Hurried on from sin to sin, And with scoffers madly trod On the mercy of our God! Now to where Thine altars burn, FATHER! sorrowing we return. Though forgotten, Thou hast not To be merciful forgot; Hear us! for we cry to Thee— Miserere Domine!

From the burden of our grief Who, but Thou, can give relief? Who can pour Salvation's light On the darkness of our night? Bowed our load of sin beneath, Who can snatch our souls from death? Vain the help of man!—in dust Vainly do we put our trust! Smitten by Thy chastening rod, Hear us, save us, SON OF GOD! From the perils of our path, From the terrors of thy wrath, Save us, when we look to thee— Miserere Domine!

Where the pastures greenly grow, Where the waters gently flow, And beneath the sheltering ROCK With the shepherd rests the flock. Oh, let us be gathered there Richly of Thy love to share; With the people of Thy choice Live and labor and rejoice, Till the toils of life are done, Till the fight is fought and won, And the crown, with heavenly glow, Sparkles on the victor's brow! Hear the prayer we lift to Thee— Miserere Domine!



THE

KINGDOMS OF NATURE PRAISING GOD:

A SHORT ESSAY ON THE 148TH PSALM.

BY REV. C.A. BARTOL.

Surrounded as we are with the art and handicraft of man—almost everything we see bearing the mark of his finger, the house and the street, the market and exchange, every instrument and utensil—it is well, occasionally, to look forth from this little world of custom and convenience we ourselves have constructed, into that which bears the impress of the Almighty's hand—is still as it was left from His forming strength, and brings us into immediate communion with His Infinite mind. Let us, at least, listen to the notes of David's lyre on the creative Majesty.

After an invocation to the heavenly host, the Psalmist calls first on the forms of inanimate and inorganic existence. These things, of which he enumerates a few, praise the power of God. The crags and headlands, jarred and worn by the billows they breast; the granite peaks, bald and grey, under light and tempest, with the silent host of rocky boulders, swept, we know not by what convulsions, from their native seat, stand up as the first rank in the choir of the Maker's worship; and infidelity and atheism are hushed and abashed by their lofty praise.

Organized, but still unconscious existence takes the next station in this universal chorus. The solemn grove lifting its green top into the heavens, beside that motionless army of ancient stones, adds a sweeter note than they can give to the great harmony. It is a note, speaking not alone of the Creator's power, but of His wisdom too. Here is life and growth. Here are adaptations and stages of progress. From the minutest germination, from the slenderest stem, from the smallest trembling leaf to the hugest trunks and the highest overshadowing branches, this vegetable organization, verdant, pale, crimson, in changeable colors, runs; stopping short only with Alpine summits or polar posts, swiftly and softly clothing again the rents and gashes in the ground made by the stroke of labor or the wheels of war—blooming into the golden and ruddy harvest on the stalk and the bough, even overpassing the salt shore, to line the dismal and unvisited caves of the deep with peculiar varieties of growth; and forth into our hands from the foaming brine delicate and strangely beautiful leaves and slight ramifications of matchless tints and proportions.

But the Psalmist summons a third order of beings to contribute its melodious share to this hallelujah; and that is the living and conscious, though irrational tribes. This sings not of power and wisdom alone, but more complex and rich in adoration, sings of goodness also. God has not made the world for a dead spectacle and mere picture for His own eye. How full and crowded with life, and happy life, His creation is! Go forth from inclosing city walls, and, in the summer noontide, stop in solitude and apparent silence and listen; and soon the sounds of this joyous life shall come to your ear: the chirp of the insects—the rustle of wings—the crackling of the leaves, as the blithesome airy creatures pass—the short, thick warble of the bird by your side, or its varied tune, clearer than viol or organ, from the thicket beyond—while, from time to time, the deep low of cattle reverberates from afar. Or if you are where the still and speechless creatures inhabit, open your eye to gaze and examine, and it shall be filled with the visible, as the ear with the vocal signs of living enjoyment. Walking at the edge of the ebbing tide, you tread on life at every step—shelly tribe on tribe of fish pressing together, while in the clear water, other tribes noiselessly swim and glide away. Every vital motion speaks of pleasure, whether in that restless current below, or in the air above, as the feathered songster passes, darting up and down his element, delight gushing from his throat at every buoyant spring—silence and sound, with double demonstration, declaring to the Creator's praise the great and limitless boon of life.

But there is one accent more, that of love, without which the hymn is not complete; and there is another human order of Being to speak that accent. Man includes in himself all the preceding orders of Being, with all the notes of their praise: the material clod, for is he not made of dust; the plant, for he has an outward growth and circulation—the animal, for he has instinct and feeling; while reason and conscience and spiritual affection he has peculiarly and alone; so that Power, Wisdom, Goodness and Love, all concentrated in him, complete the ground of his praise.

Yet, as we look out upon this mighty sum of things in the external universe, the level earth stretching off to some ascending ridge in the horizon's blue distance—the boundless deep spread afar, till, at the misty edge of vision it bends, in mingling threefold circles, to embrace the globe, the impenetrable below and the infinite above him, how slight and insignificant a creature he seems! like a fly that clings to the ceiling, or a mote that swims in the sunbeam, one of the mere mites of nature, easily lost by the way or a frail figure ready to be crushed by any stroke of the ponderous machinery mid which he moves. When he reflects on his condition—his brief date, his speedy doom—how inconsiderable his existence appears! Or when he regards himself as not a compound of matter merely, but as a living soul, how easy it seems, as his contemplation runs out absorbed into the wondrous glory of the world, for all the vital energy which is for a moment insulated in his frame, when his frame dissolves, to pass into the general substance from which it came, the thinking creature ending as it began! But a voice from heaven cries to him and says, "Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he hath known my name; with long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."

This love of God makes the society of all human affection. "God made the country, and man made the town," is an oft quoted line; and not seldom it is implied that the open or thinly-peopled landscape is somehow a better and holier place for the soul than the thronged city. But let it not be forgotten that man himself is God's work and His highest work on earth. Would we sing our psalm now or hereafter with the sweetest relish, we must go forth from any little circle we may have drawn around us, of private ease and personal comfort, in friendly intercourse to hear the cry of the unfortunate, the sighing of the prisoner, the sob of the mourner, the groan of the sick, the appeal of the injured and oppressed. By our aid, consolation and succor, we must gather their voices into the chorus, before, with perfect satisfaction, we can mingle in it our own.

Upon a Sabbath day, I walked amid all those charms and fascinations, in which nature can bind us as in a spell. I passed through green aisles of woods, that were ever-shadowed and made fragrant with every various vegetable growth of this temperate northern clime; while the morning beam of the sun in heaven fell brightly aslant the leaves and branches; and the birds, that my lonely step startled from their perch or nest, flew from glen to glen, making with their song, save the murmur of the breeze in the boughs, the only sound I could hear. At length, the high-arched avenues of this immense forest-cathedral let me out upon the broad, open shore, where I saw and heard wave after wave break on the rocks, with shifting splendor and that mellow thundering music which so saddens while it delights. Solitude, verily, was stretched out asleep in the sun upon the length of sandy beach and beetling promontory; and I sat and gazed now over the boundless waters, now into the devouring abysses opened by the bending crests of the billows, and anon into the gloomy depths of the forest or the serene and measureless openings of the sky. What grandeur in every line transcendent! Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing ruin to the small remnant of human life still spared from the generations in ages past, already swallowed up! Peering around in this pensive mood, in which the joy of being mixed with the uneasy doubt of its tenure, my eye fell at last on the spire of a little church, rising like a pencil of light to heaven, out of the fathomless waste. And there my soul alighted and found rest. Like some sea mark to the voyager, that slender shaft, reared by the social religion of the world, stood to tell me where in the universe I was; the common Christian consciousness reinforced my own, and dark queries and agitating uncertainties subsided from my spirit, as the deluge from the dove that Noah sent out to pluck the green branch of promise. From the illimitable reaches of the huge, but dimly responding creation around, the slight, frail temple for God's praise drew me to its welcome and peaceful embrace. As I approached it, the tolling of the bell struck on my ear in a touch of gladder tidings than I had received from all the melody of the great wind-harp of the trees, with all the soft accord of the tossing billows. Stroke after stroke, distinctly falling, seemed to bring to me the echoes of a million holy telegraphic towers all over the surface of the globe; and when I came to stand under the eaves of the small sanctuary, the measured turning, in the belfry, of the wheel, by revolutions such as I had seen long years ago in my childhood, filled my eyes with gracious tokens, that were not drawn from me by the sublime circling of the sun and moon, then moving east and west in their spheres. The final tone of praise in the great ascription to God is, in its fullness, supplied by a revelation greater than blessed the times of David. A new and sweeter string is strung upon the lyre his royal fingers so nobly swept, and the voice of thanksgiving is more highly raised for an "unspeakable gift." The kingdoms of nature are the chords on the harp we may sound to the Creator of all. There has been of late much discussion as to the place nature should hold among religious influences and appeals, some super-eminently exalting her, and others putting her in contrast and almost opposition with all spirit, beauty and truth. This is no place, nor has the present writer inclination, here, to take part in the grand debate, infinitely interesting as it is, on either side. He would only catch, or repeat and prolong the strain of an old and sacred ode—he would contribute a meditation. He would run the matchless ancient verse into a few particulars of fresh and modern illustration, content if he can make no melody of his own, to recall for some, perhaps not enough heeding it, the Hebrew music that has lingered so long on the ear of the world.



TRANSLATIONS.

BY THE REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS

I.

TO GOD'S CARE I COMMIT MYSELF!

(FROM THE GERMAN OF ARNDT.)

Again is hushed the busy day, And all to sleep is gone away; The deer hath sought his mossy bed, The bird hath hid his little head. And man to his still chamber goes To rest from all his cares and woes.

Yet steps he first before his door, To look into the night once more, With love-thanks and love-greeting, there, For rest his spirit to prepare, To see the high stars shine abroad And drink once more the breath of God.

Mild Father of the world, whose love Keeps watch o'er all things from above, To Thee my stammering prayer would rise; Bend down from yonder starry skies; And from Thy sparkling, sun-strewed way, Oh teach thy feeble child to pray!

All day Thou hadst me in Thy sight; So guard me, Father, through this night; And by thy dear benignity From Satan's malice shelter me; For what of evil may befall The body, is the least of all.

Oh send from realms of purity The dearest angel in to me, As a peace-herald let him come, And watchman, to my house and home, That all desires and thoughts of mine, Around thy heaven may climb and twine.

Then day shall part exultingly, Then night a word of love shall be, Then morn an angel-smile shall wear Whose brightness no base thing can bear, And we, earth's children, walk abroad, Children of light and sons of God.

And when the last red evening-glow Shall greet these failing eyes below, When yearns my soul to wing its way To the high track of endless day, Then all the shining ones shall come To bear me to the spirit's home.

II.

THE UNKNOWN.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF AUERSPERG.)

Through the city's narrow gateway Forth an aged beggar fares, None is there to give him escort, And no farewell word he bears.

Heaven's grey cloud to no one whispers Of God's message in its fold; Earth's grey rock to no one whispers That it hides the shaft of gold.

And the naked tree in winter Tells not straightway to the eye That it once so greenly glistened, Bloomed and bore so bounteously.

None would dream that yon old beggar, Tottering, bending toward the ground, Once was clothed in royal purple, And his silver locks gold-crowned!

Foul conspirators discrowned him, Tore the radiant purple off, Placing in his hands, for sceptre, Yonder wormy pilgrim-staff.

Thus, for years, now, has he wandered, All ungreeted and unknown, Through so many a foreign country, Bowed and broken and alone.

Weary unto death, he lays him 'Neath a tree, in evening's beam, Music in the twigs and blossoms Sings him to an endless dream.

Men that to and fro pass by him, Speak in softened tones of grief; Who may be the poor old beggar, That has found this sad relief?

But mild Nature, soft-eyed Nature, Knows the aged sleeper there, Obsequies of solemn splendor, Meet for king, will she prepare.

From the tree fall wreaths of blossoms, Floating down to crown his head, And a sceptre's golden lustre Sunset on his staff hath shed.

For a canopy above him Rustling twigs a green arch throw, And he wears a royal purple In the evening's mantling glow.



RECOLLECTIONS OF NEANDER,

THE CHURCH HISTORIAN.

BY THE REV. ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D.

In the spring of 1848, during the progress of the European revolutions, which promised so much and performed so little, I spent several weeks in Berlin, the capital of Prussia, and saw much, both in public and in private, of "the father of modern church history," whose name I had long revered, and whose image now is one of the choicest treasures of memory. Of all the Christian scholars I have ever known, he stands in my thoughts without a rival; a child in simplicity, a sage in learning, and in broad, catholic and fervent piety, a noble saint. In common with hundreds of my countrymen, I owe him a debt of gratitude, of which this humble tribute to his memory will be but a faint acknowledgment.

Of Neander's outward history there is but little to be reported; his life was the retired and uneventful one of a peculiarly intense and abstracted student. It is hardly a figure of speech, but almost exactly the literal truth to say that he was born, and lived, and died, beneath the shadow of the Universities. He was not, indeed, quite so much of a recluse as his fellow-countryman Kant, the renowned Koenigsberg philosopher, who, though he reached the age of eighty, and had a reputation which filled all Europe, was never more than thirty-two miles away from the spot where his mother rocked him in his cradle. But considering the ampler means at his command, and the greatly increased facilities for travelling, Neander's neglect of locomotion is nearly as much to be wondered at as Kant's; I doubt if he was ever beyond the boundaries of Germany.

He was born January 16th, 1789, in Goettingen, a city of some eleven thousand inhabitants in the kingdom of Hanover, the seat of a famous University, which, though now less prominent than formerly, has numbered amongst its professors such men as Blumenbach, Eichhorn, and Michaelis. His parents were of Jewish blood and the Jewish religion, and he inherited from them, in a strong degree, both the peculiar physiognomy and the distinguishing faith of that despised but most remarkable race. Nor was he a Jew only outwardly; from the beginning he was marked as an Israelite indeed, a true Nathanael soul.

At an early period in his life, his father having suffered reverses and been reduced to poverty, he removed with his parents to Hamburg, a commercial city on the Elbe, and one of the four free municipalities of Germany. In the Hamburg gymnasium, corresponding in rank with our American academies, though prescribing a wider range of studies, he received his first public instruction. It is related of him, that he used frequently to steal into one of the book-stores, and for hours together sit buried in some rare and erudite volume. And here the original bent of his genius was early developed; subtlety, profoundness, and intense subjectivity of thought were noticed as the distinguishing characteristics of his mind. In a letter from Neumann to Chamisso, bearing date February 11th, 1806, when, of course, he was only seventeen years old, it is said of him: "Plato is his idol, and his perpetual watchword. He pores over that author night and day; and there are probably few who receive him so completely into the sanctuary of the soul. It is surprising to see how all this has been accomplished without any influence from abroad. It proceeds simply from his own reflection and his innate love of study. He has learned to look with indifference upon the outward world." Such was the beginning of his illustrious career. He was thoroughly a Platonist. And it happened to him, as to so many of the early fathers of the church before him; he was led from Plato to Christ. The honored walks of the Academy were exchanged for the manger and the cross; and so he passed from Judaism to philosophy, and from philosophy to faith. "Pray and labor," writes he in one of his letters, "let that be the bass-note, or rather praying merely; for what else should a human, or even a superhuman do than pray?" This was the dawning of the light. Of his progress in the Christian experience, we have no means as yet of tracing the steps. We only know, in general, from what he started, and to what he came.

In the April of 1806, he joined the University at Halle, where he came under the influence of Schleiermacher, whose learned and thrilling voice was the first to sound the return of infidel Germany to the truth as it is in Jesus. Schleiermacher was then thirty-eight years old, in the first bloom and vigor of his faculties, and made, of necessity, a very profound and durable impression upon the young and ardent Hebrew Platonist, who was already, in obedience to his own impulses, seeking the way of life.

He had been in Halle about six months, when the city was captured by the French under Bernadotte. The University was immediately suspended by Napoleon, and the students ordered to disperse. Neander fled, with one of his friends, to Goettingen, the place of his birth, where, joining the University, he came under the instruction of Gesenius, afterward the great Hebrew lexicographer, then but twenty years of age, and just commencing his distinguished career. The manner of their introduction to each other is a curious bit of literary history worth preserving. Gesenius was returning to Goettingen from his native place, Nordhausen, which was then in flames, having been set fire to by the French. The soldiers of the broken Prussian army were hurrying to their homes. In the general flight and confusion, Gesenius saw two young men on their way from Halle to Goettingen, one of whom had broken down, unable to go any further, and was entirely out of money. He procured a carriage for the unknown young student and conveyed him to Goettingen. That young student was Neander; and this little adventure led to a friendship which lasted for life, the gulf which subsequently yawned between them, in respect to matters of faith, abating nothing of their mutual respect and kindliness. "At first it was painful to me," said Neander, writing from Goettingen, "to be thrown into this place of icy coldness for the heart. But now I find it was well, and thank God for it. In no other way could I have made such progress. From every human mediator, and even every agreeable association, must one be torn away, in order that he may place his sole reliance on the only Mediator."

In 1809 he returned to Hamburg to become a pastor. But the city had a small fund to support one of its theologians as a lecturer at Heidelberg. This was wisely appropriated to Neander, who promised more as a scholar than as a preacher. Accordingly, in 1811, we find him established at Heidelberg as a teacher in the University, he having previously, on his public profession of Christianity, assumed the name of Neander deriving it from the Greek, [Greek: nheos haner], "a new man," to signify the entire change which had come over him. The family name was Mendel. The year following he was appointed Professor Extraordinary, which, in plain English, means a professor without a regular salary from government, and shortly issued his work on "The Emperor Julian and his Time," the first of those monographs which awakened the admiration of his learned countrymen, and paved the way for the great undertaking of his life, "A General History of the Christian Religion and Church."

In 1813, when but twenty-four years of age, he was called to a professorship in the then recently established University of Berlin, and signalized his removal thither by a work on "St. Bernard and his Age." Five years later, he published a work on Gnosticism, and in 1821, his "Life of Chrysostom;" besides some treatises of minor note, which we need not pause to enumerate. At length, in 1825, when of course he was thirty-six years old, the first volume of his General History of the Church appeared. And to say that this work put him directly at the very head of Christendom as the expounder of its inward life, is saying only what we all know to be true. After that, he turned aside occasionally in obedience to other calls of duty, at one time to write a history of the Apostolic Age, and at another the Life of Christ, but always returning to his General History, as the one great task appointed him of God to do. As I parted with him in the spring of 1848, my heart drawn out toward him with an admiring tenderness and reverence, such as I had never experienced toward any other living scholar, I could not forbear assuring him, that many prayers would go up for him in America as well as in Europe, that he might be spared to complete his work. "I hope it," he replied, "but that must be as God wills." But this wish of his heart was denied him. He died in Berlin on Sunday, July 14th, 1850, in the midst of his unfinished labors. He had published what brings us down to the year 1294, and was then at work upon the centuries which lie between that and the Reformation. The posthumous volume, edited by Schneider, still falls short, by nearly a hundred years, of that important epoch. Had he been spared to proceed thus far, we had been the better reconciled to his dying; although his countrymen were anxious to have him turn his peculiar powers upon the Reformation itself, and the world-wide movements which have grown out of it. But this was not to be. He died, leaving no one to take his mantle; died, too, somewhat prematurely, for he was only sixty-one years old.

Of his personal appearance, which was altogether unique, descriptions have frequently been given. He was small of stature, his height not exceeding five feet and four or five inches. He had studied so hard, exercised so little, eaten so sparingly and suffered so much from imperfect health, that his muscles seemed entirely relaxed and flabby. His hand, when he gave it in salutation or in parting, was like that of a sick child. But his hair remained as black as a raven. His brows were shaggy and overhanging, and his black eyes, when ever and anon the drooping lids were lifted away from them, shot forth a very deep and searching light. As one sat over against him, watching his words, he might easily imagine himself gazing through those glowing orbs back into the ages. His study, up two flights of stairs, overlooking one of the public squares of the city, was a place to be remembered. Its furniture was a plain round table, a standing-desk, an old sofa and two or three chairs. High up on the walls between the book-shelves and the ceiling, nearly all round the room, hung engraved portraits of distinguished men; and he showed his noble catholicity of spirit, in having the great men of his native land all there, without regard to their peculiar schools and sentiments. His library contained about 4,000 volumes. They filled the room; table, chairs and sofa were loaded with them; they lay in stacks upon the floor; and, in some cases, were piled, two or three tiers deep, into the shelves against the walls. To anybody else the library would have been a chaos; but he could lay his hand at once upon any book he wished for. It was in this room, thus crammed with books, that he used to entertain the little parties he invited to sup with him. The repast was always frugal; the conversation, on his part, such as might have gone into print. A man-servant brought in the refreshments on a tray; or, sometimes, one of his pupils officiated. His only sister, who kept house for him during the greater part of his life, never made her appearance at these exclusively masculine entertainments. He himself rarely paid any attention to the progress of the meal, but seemed to be as much a visitor as any of his guests. The little he needed was soon dispatched, and his thoughts were again afloat, sounding along from theme to theme.

He never married, and, at the time I speak of, was almost alone in the world. Neither father, nor mother, nor any other near relative remained to him, save his sister, Johanna, whose care of him had need to be almost maternal. Well-nigh every day in the year these two might be seen walking out together to take the air. They went always arm in arm, a beautiful embodiment of the tenderest affection. Hardly the king himself attracted more attention in the street. Scarcely a person he met failed to raise his hat and salute the venerable scholar with the heartiest good will. As he was both short-sighted and suffering from diseased vision, he had to depend upon his sister to know who bowed to him; and it was amusing to see his returning salutation bestowed, in almost every instance, a little too late. Many anecdotes were afloat in Berlin, and indeed all over Germany, going to illustrate his habits of abstraction and absent-mindedness, some of which no doubt were true, and all of which were likely enough to have been so.

An exact description of his manners in the lecture-room would, by any one who never saw him, be thought a caricature. He entered the room with his eyes upon the floor, as if feeling his way; a student stood ready to take his hat and overcoat and hang them up in their places; while he went directly to his stand—a high pine desk; threw his left elbow upon it; dropped his head so low that his eyes could not be seen; tilted the desk over on its front legs, so that you expected every moment to see it pitching forward into the lecture-room, with the lecturer after it; and, seizing a quill, always provided for the purpose, began at once to speak, and to twist and twirl and tear in pieces the quill. Sometimes, in the heat of his discourse, he would suddenly jerk up his head, whirl entirely round with his face to the wall and his back to the audience, and then as suddenly whirl back again, his words all the while pouring along in a perfect torrent of involved and fervent thought. Add to this a constant writhing and swinging of his legs, with a frequent slight spitting, produced by a chronic weakness of the salivary glands, and you have a picture of the outward man known in Berlin as John William Augustus Neander; to be known in history as one of the most learned, revered and beloved teachers of our century.

While it is indispensable to our full and lively appreciation of Neander that these little things be known of him, no one will be so foolish as to let such accidents and eccentricities of the outward life divert his attention from the grand and rarely equalled manhood which lay behind and beneath them. To give anything like a just estimate of this manhood would be no easy task, however. His native endowments, the attainments he had made in the learning pertaining to his department, and the part he was called to play in the regeneration of German science and German faith, were all remarkable. From the first glimpse we catch of him, when, at 17 years of age, he had given his head and heart to Plato, he strikes us as no ordinary character; and our wonder deepens at every step, till at last we behold him sinking exhausted amidst his labors, and all Christendom gathered in sorrow around his grave.

His native instincts, tastes and sympathies were all singularly pure and generous. His family attachments were strong. In the latest periods of his life, when she had long been dead, the name of his mother could not be mentioned by him without a visible gush of deep and tender emotion. The loss of his favorite sister, some years before his own departure, almost shattered him. For days he drooped and mourned amongst his books, and could do no work. Only the thought that God had taken her to Himself, and that He doeth all things well, finally availed to quiet him. So of all his friends; he never forgot and was never false to them. But his special care was bestowed upon the young men of the University, who had gathered about him, in the spirit of a most enthusiastic discipleship, out of all Germany, and indeed out of nearly all Christendom. To the last he continued to be a young man himself, as fresh, impulsive and eager, and with as entire a freedom from all appearance of assumption and authority, as though his pupils and he were merely peers. There was at once a warmth, a blandness and a child-like simplicity of manners, which made him the idol of every heart. And he carried the same amenity of temper into all the theological controversies of his life. He never stooped to ungracious personalities, and never seemed to be in pursuit of victory at the expense of truth and fairness. The result was that he was never assailed with personalities in return. Through all the bitterest contentions which raged around him, he was uniformly treated with respect and deference. Not that men were ignorant of his opinions, or thought him neutral, but because he was felt to be an Israelite indeed, in whom there was no guile. He committed himself to no clique, and allowed no clique to be committed to him.

In his personal habits he was temperate and frugal in the extreme; though not for the sake of accumulation. His income from his books and lectures must have been considerable; but he gave it nearly all away. Hundreds of indigent students could testify to his generosity, while amongst the poor of the city, there were many pensioners upon his bounty.

In regard to his intellectual gifts and powers, their peculiar cast has already been intimated. The dominant feature of his genius was its deeply subjective and spiritual character. The accidents of a subject never detained him for a moment from his search after the essential and the abiding. Outward circumstances were of little interest to him. And in this direction lay the main defect of his mind; it was too exclusively Platonic, subjective and spiritual. Had his profound Germanic intuitiveness of vision been tempered with a little more of our homely Anglo-Saxon common sense, the combination would have been well-nigh perfect.

What has just been said of his intellectual peculiarities will help us to understand also his religious life. It was preeminently an inward life; a fire in the very marrow of his being. As it was his own solitary and independent reflection which first turned his feet toward Nazareth and Calvary, so was it by deep and steady communion with his own heart that he advanced in sanctity. The natural and unchanging atmosphere of his life was that of faith and prayer. His religious experience was rooted in peculiarly deep and pungent views of sin. Not that he had gross outward offences to be ashamed of; but he felt the law of evil working within him, disturbing his peace; and he longed for the serenity of a child of God. Thus did he learn his need of Christ. His pupils relate with much interest how, on the evening of one of his birth-day festivals, when they were gathered at his house, he spoke to them of his own spiritual infirmities, and with trembling voice confessed himself a poor sinner seeking forgiveness through atoning blood. Theologically, he was comparatively indifferent in regard to minor points; but he clung with the tenacity of a martyr's faith to the great essentials of the Gospel. His religious life was therefore at once very fervent and very catholic. Loving Christ with all the ardor of a passion, he loved with a generous latitude of heart all those of every name in whom he discerned Christ's image. The motto adopted by him as best describing his own aim and method, was that of St. Augustine: "Pectus est quod facit theologum." It is the heart which makes the theologian. It was a Divine Form, for which he was ever seeking, while he walked about amongst men, as he walked up and down the centuries of our Christian faith, murmuring to himself: "It is the Lord."

As a writer of church history, his first great claim to gratitude is on account of the living pulse of faith and love which beats through all his pages. He traces the golden thread of Christian life through the darkest centuries. He does much to save the church of God from reproach, and God's own gracious promise from contempt, by showing how much there has been of Christian grace and truth under the worst forms and in the worst ages. He has thus made his History what he said it should be, "a speaking proof of the Divine power of Christianity, a school of Christian experience, and a voice of edification and warning sounding through all ages for all who are willing to believe." Of the original sources of history, particularly for the earlier centuries, his knowledge was profound, and his use of them masterly. How thorough and how fair he is, can be fully appreciated only by those who explore for themselves the fountains from which he drew his materials. His chief defect is in the matter of form. He had but little dramatic power. He gives us the inward life, but not the outward stir and shock of history. Nor is he remarkable for analytical sharpness in his delineation of the growth of Christian doctrine. It is in the sphere of experience and life that he succeeds the best. His own doctrinal views were not, at all points, quite up to our English and American standards of orthodoxy. But these points were of minor importance. All that is cardinal was precious to him. With peculiar fidelity did he cling to the Head, which is Christ, and was full of that faith which conquers the world and saves the soul.

His last days, as described by his friends and pupils, were in marked keeping with his whole career. On Monday, the 8th of July, at 11 o'clock, he lectured at the University. But he had been for some time back much feebler than usual, the weather was sultry and debilitating, and his system was out of tune. His voice failed him two or three times in the course of the lecture, and it was only by a desperate struggle that he got to the end; his strength barely sufficing to bring him home. The impression upon his class was such, that one of the students, turning to his neighbor, said: "This is the last lecture of our Neander." Immediately after dinner, which he scarcely tasted, his reader came. He dictated on his Church History three hours in succession, repressing by force of will the rising groans, his debility all the while increasing. At 5 o'clock the symptoms of a dangerous illness appeared; but he would not abandon his work. His sister, who came to expostulate with him and warn him against further effort, was sent impatiently away. "Let me alone," he said; "every laborer, I hope, may work if he wishes; wilt thou not grant me this?" At seven he was compelled to pause. His reader gone, his first thought was to call back his much loved sister, and say to her: "Be not anxious, dear Jenny, it is passing away; I know my constitution." But his physicians were agreed in the opinion that the very worst was to be feared. They succeeded, however, in subduing the symptoms of the disease, which was a violent cholera, and began to hope. The next morning, having hardly got breath from this first furious attack, he inquired with touching sadness, "shall I not be able to lecture to-day?" When answered in the negative, he distinctly demanded that the suspension should be only for that one day. In the afternoon of Tuesday, he called out vehemently for his reader, desired him to go on with Ritter's Palestine, with which he had been occupied, and impatiently blamed the anxiety of his friends who had dismissed his assistant too hastily. He then, according to his daily custom, had another of his pupils read to him the newspaper. He followed the reading with lively attention, making his remarks now of agreement and now of dissent, till at length he fell asleep, and so ended the day's work. Later in the afternoon, while racked with pain, it occurred to him that his sister might think of foregoing sleep on his account, which he begged her not to do. Wednesday he had the newspaper read to him, and made his comments, as usual. Thursday night brought with it a convulsive hiccough. Friday, his spirit was clear, peaceful and full of love. But Friday night extinguished the last hopes of his friends. The pains he endured were excruciating. With an indescribably affecting and deeply tender voice, before which no eye remained tearless, he exclaimed, "Would to God I could sleep." Saturday he was clamorous for the servant to bring him his clothes, that he might dress and go about his work. His sister came: "Think, dear August, what thou hast said to me when I have rebelled against the directions of the physician, 'It comes from God, therefore must we acquiesce in it.'" "That is true," answered quickly the softened voice, "it all comes from God, and we must thank him for it." During the day he asked to be taken into the study. The sweet sunlight, streaming on his nearly blinded eyes, refreshed and gladdened him. After this, a bath of wine and strengthening herbs was administered, which seemed to do him good. Finding himself amongst his books again, he rose upon the cushions which supported him, and, to the astonishment of all, began a lecture upon the New Testament, and announced for the coming term a course of lectures upon the Gospel of John. At half-past nine, having inquired the hour, he fell asleep. When he awoke, it was Sunday. There came back a gush of bodily strength, the last leaping of the light before it flickered in the socket. Taking up the thread of his history where he had dropped it two days before, he began to dictate for some one to write. The passage was about the mystics of the 14th and 15th centuries. The concluding sentence was: "So it was in general; the further development is to follow." Then turning to his sister, he said: "I am tired; let us make ready to go home;" as though they were somewhere on a long and wearisome journey. And then rallying his last energies in one parting word of tenderness to her who was bending over him with a breaking heart, he murmured, "Good night," and died.

Thus he died with his harness on, not aware, probably, that he was so near his end; else he might have uttered some dying testimony, which would have passed into the literature of the church to be the comfort of other saints in their mortal agony. But, on his own account, no such dying testimony was required. For thirty-seven years he had stood his ground gallantly in Berlin, witnessing for Christ in the face of a learned skepticism, and he could well afford to pass directly, without an interlude, from the toils and conflicts of earth to the joys and triumphs of the redeemed in heaven.

His labors had been prodigious. He usually lectured not less than fifteen times a week, published twenty-five volumes, and left behind him several other volumes nearly ready for the press. His health was never firm. A rheumatic disease lurked in his system from the time of his illness at Goettingen. Three years before he died, this disease settled in his eyes, and made him nearly blind. But against all impediments, he struggled on, fighting the good fight of faith, patient and resolute, till suddenly his course was finished, and he took his crown.



POEMS.

BY JULIA WARD HOWE.

I.

THE BEE'S SONG

Do not tie my wings, Says the honey-bee; Do not bind my wings, Leave them glad and free. If I fly abroad, If I keep afar, Humming all the day, Where wild blossoms are, 'Tis to bring you sweets, Rich as summer joy, Clear—as gold and glass; The divinest toy That the god's have left, Is the pretty hive, Where a maiden reigns, And the busy thrive.

If you bar my way, Your delight is gone, No more honey-gems; From the heather borne; No more tiny thefts, From your neighbor's rose, Who were glad to guess Where its sweetness goes.

Let the man of arts Ply his plane and glass; Let the vapors rise, Let the liquor pass; Let the dusky slave Till the southern fields; Not the task of both Such a treasure yields; Honey, Pan ordained, Food for gods and men, Only in my way Shall you store again.

Leave me to my will While the bright days glow, While the sleepy flowers Quicken as I go. When the pretty ones Look to me no more, Dead, beneath your feet, Crushed and dabbled o'er; In my narrow cell I will fold my wing; Sink in dark and chill, A forgotten thing.

Can you read the song Of the suppliant bee? 'Tis a poet's soul, Asking liberty.

II.

LIMITATIONS OF BENEVOLENCE.

"The beggar boy is none of mine," The reverend doctor strangely said; "I do not walk the streets to pour Chance benedictions on his head.

"And heaven I thank who made me so. That toying with my own dear child, I think not on his shivering limbs, His manners vagabond and wild."

Good friend, unsay that graceless word! I am a mother crowned with joy, And yet I feel a bosom pang To pass the little starveling boy.

His aching flesh, his fevered eyes His piteous stomach, craving meat; His features, nipt of tenderness, And most, his little frozen feet.

Oft, by my fireside's ruddy glow, I think, how in some noisome den, Bred up with curses and with blows, He lives unblest of gods or men.

I cannot snatch him from his fate, The tribute of my doubting mind Drops, torch-like, in the abyss of ill, That skirts the ways of humankind.

But, as my heart's desire would leap To help him, recognized of none, I thank the God who left him this, For many a precious right foregone.

My mother, whom I scarcely knew, Bequeathed this bond of love to me; The heart parental thrills for all The children of humanity.



EARTH'S WITNESS.

BY ALICE B. HAVEN.

That Poet wrongs his soul, whose dreary cry Calls "winds" and "waves," and "burning stars of night" To bring our darkness nature's clearer light On that just sentence, "Thou shalt surely die;" To track the spirit as it leaves its clay To bring back surety of its future home, Or echo of the voice that calleth "come," To prove that it is borne to perfect day. Say rather, "winds," who heard the Master speak, And "waves," who by His voice transfixed were stayed, And stars that lighted Christ's deep shade— Your confirmation of our trust we seek. Ye know how shadowy Death's dreary prison, Because ye witnessed Christ our life, up risen.

THE WILLOWS, 1858.



THE NEW ENGLAND THANKSGIVING.

BY THE REV. HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D.

When cellar and barn and storehouse were filled with food for the coming winter, our pious New England forefathers used their first common leisure to make public and joyful acknowledgment of their blessings to the God of sunshine and of rain; to Him, who clothes the valleys with corn, and the hills with flocks. Almost universally, they placed the meeting-houses, where these thanks were rendered, on the hill-top commanding the widest view of the fields from which their prosperity sprung, and nearest to the sky, whence their blessings came. Their modest homes were sheltered from the winds by the barns that held their wealth and overshadowed their low dwellings. The earth was precious in their eyes, as the source of their living. They could spare no fertile or sheltered spot, even for the burial-ground, but economically laid it out in the sand, or on the bleak hill-side; while they threw away no fencing on the house of God, but jealously preserved that costly distinction for their arable lands and orchards. They were farmers; and it was no unmeaning thing for them to keep the harvest feast. They had prayed in drought, with all faith and fervor, for the blessing of rain; in seed-time, for the favoring sunshine and soft showers; and in harvest, that blight and frost might spare their corn; and when in the late autumn, all their prayers had been heard, and their hands and homes were crowned with plenty, their thanksgiving anthem was an incense of the heart, and their honored pastors knew not how to pour out a flood of gratitude too copious for the thankful people's "Amen." A full hour's prayer wearied not their patient knees; and the sermon, with its sixteenthly, finally, and to conclude (before the improvement, itself a modern sermon in length), did not outmeasure the people's honest sense of their grounds of thankfulness to God.

The landscape appropriate to thanksgiving is not furnished by brick walls and stone pavements. It is a rural festival. The smoke from scattered cottages should be slowly curling its way through frosty air. As we look forth from the low porch of the homestead, the ground lightly covered with snow, stretches off to a not distant horizon, broken irregularly with hills, clothed in spots with evergreens, but oftener with bare woods. The distant and infrequent sleigh-bells, with the smart crack of the rifle from the shooting match in the hollow, strike percussively upon the ear. Vast piles of fuel, part neatly corded, part lying in huge logs, with heaps of brush, barricade the brown, paintless farmhouses. Swine, hanging by the ham-strings in the neighboring shed; the barn-yard speckled with the ruffled poultry, some sedate with recent bereavement, others cackling with a dim sense of temporary reprieve; the rough-coated steer butting in the fold, where the timid sheep huddle together in the corner; little boys on a single skate improving the newly frozen horse-pond—these furnish the foreground of the picture during the earlier hours of the morning. Later in the day, without, the sound of church bells, the farmers' pungs, or the double sleighs, with incredible numbers stowed in their strawed bottoms, drive up to the meeting-house door. An occasional wagon from the hills, from which the snow has blown, with the crunching, whistling sound of wheels upon snow, sets the teeth of the crowd in the porch on edge, as it grinds its way to the stone steps to deposit its load. Great white coats, with seven or eight capes apiece, dismount, and muffs and moccasins—each a whole bearskin—follow. Long stoves, with live coals got at the neighboring houses, occasionally join the procession. Few come afoot; for our pious ancestors seemed to think it as much a part of their religion to fill the family horse-shed as the family pew; and in good weather would send a mile to pasture for the horses to drive a half mile to meeting. But, meeting out, the parson's prayer and sermon said, the choir's ambitious anthem lustily sung, the politics of the prayer, and the politics of the sermon, both summarily criticised, approved, condemned, partly with looks and winks, and partly with loud words in the porch, there is now a little space for kind inquiries after the absent, the sick, and the poor; a few solitary spinsters, and one old soldier, lame and indigent, are seized on and carried off to homes, where certain blessed Mothers in Israel, are wont to keep a vacant chair for a poor soul that might feel desolate if left alone on this sociable day. Some full-handed visits are paid on the way home to scattered and rickety houses; but by one o'clock, all the people are beneath their own roofs, never so attractive as on this glorious day. The married children from the neighboring towns have come home, and the old house is full.

The great event of the day is at hand. It is dinner-time. The table of unnatural length, narrower at one end, where it has been eked out for the occasion, groans with the choicest gifts of the year. There is but one course, but that possesses infinite variety and reckless profusion. For one day, at least, the doctrine of an apostle is in full honor. "For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving." The long grace sanctifies the feast with the word of God and with prayer. The elders and males are distributed to front the substantial of the board—the round of a-la-mode, the brown crisp pig with an apple in his mouth, the great turkey who has frightened the little red-cloaked girls and saucy pugs for months past, the chicken-pie with infinite crimping and stars and knobs, decorating its snowy face. The mothers and daughters are placed over against the puddings and pies, which have exercised their ambition for weeks—vying with rival housekeepers in the number and variety of sorts—and which, after the faint impression made on them to-day, shall be found for a month, filling the shelves of spare-closets and lending a delicious though slightly musty odor to the best wardrobe of the family. Children of all ages—to the toddling darling, the last babe of the youngest daughter—fill up the interstices, while the few books in the house are barely sufficient to bring the little ones in their low chairs to an effective level with the table. Incredible stowage having been effected, the sleepy after-dinner hours are somewhat heavily passed; but with the lamps and the tea-board, sociability revives. The evening passes among the old people, with chequers and back-gammon. Puss-in-the-corner, the game of forfeits—blind-man's-buff entertain the young folks. Apples, nuts and cider come in at nine o'clock, and perhaps a mug of flip—but it is rather for form's sake than for appetite. At ten o'clock the fire is raked up, and the household is a-bed. Excepting some bad-dreams, Thanksgiving day is over.



SONG OF THE ARCHANGELS

(FROM GOETHE'S FAUST.)

BY GEORGE P. MARSH.

RAPHAEL.

E'en as at first, in rival song Of brother orbs, still chimes the SUN, And his appointed path along Rolls with harmonious thundertone; With strength the sight doth Angels fill, Though none can solve its law divine; Creation's wonders glorious still, As erst they shone, eternal shine.

GABRIEL.

The gorgeous EARTH doth whirl for aye In swift, sublime, mysterious flight, And alternates elysian day With deep, chaotic, shuddering night; With swelling billows foams the sea. Chafing the cliff's deep-rooted base, While sea and cliff both hurrying flee In swift, eternal, circling race.

MICHAEL.

And howling TEMPESTS scour amain From sea to land, from land to sea, And, raging, weave around a chain Of deepest, wildest energy; The scathing bolt with flashing glare Precedes the pealing thunder's way; And yet Thine Angels, LORD, revere The gentle movement of Thy day.

TRIO.

With strength the sight doth Angels fill, For power to fathom THEE hath none. The works of Thy supernal will Still glorious shine, as erst they shone.



A NIGHT AND DAY AT VALPARAISO.

BY ROBERT TOMES.

As night came on, the steamer doubled the rocky cape, and, steaming with all its engine force, stood right for Valparaiso. Her speed soon slackened, and she began to feel her way cautiously, going ahead, backing, turning, and coming to a full stop. "Let go the anchor," was now the word, followed by a hoarse rumble of the chains and a noisy burst of steam. A fleet of shadowy ships and small craft surrounded us, and ahead glimmered the lights of the city, which, irregularly scattered about the dark hill-sides, appeared in the night like so many stars dimly twinkling through a broken rain cloud. With the quick instinct of the presence of a stranger, the dogs became at once conscious of our arrival, and began a noisy welcome of barks and yelps, which continued throughout the night. The port officials in tarnished gilt came alongside the steamer, had their talk with the captain and pushed off again. Two or three gusty-looking sea-captains boarded us, gave their rough grasps of welcome, drank off their stiff supplies of grog, and pulled back to their ships. Some few of the more impatient of our comrades turned out from the bottom of their trunks their "best," and went ashore in glossy coats and shining boots. Most of us, however, awaited the coming of the morning.

I was up on deck at the earliest dawn of day. The steamer was at anchor close before the city, and I looked with no admiring eyes upon its flimsy white-washed houses and wooden spires, scattered about the base and sides of the cindery, earth-quaky hills upon which it is built. There was hardly a blade of grass or tree to be seen anywhere, except where the thriving European and American residents had perched themselves on one of the acclivities. The dwarfed trees here, moreover, all in a row before the little painted bird-cage-looking houses, appeared to have no more life of growth and color in them than so many painted semblances in a toy village. Familiar looking shanties, of the tumble-down sort, built of pine wood and shingles, crowded the ground by the water side, and indeed the low land seemed better suited to their staggering aspect than the steep acclivities. Painted signs with English names and English words, stared familiarly from every building. The universal "John Smith" there conspicuously posted his name and his "Bakery." Mine host of the "Hole in the Wall" invited the thirsty in good round Saxon to drink of his "Best Beer on Tap," or his "Bottled Porter," as "you pays your money and take your choice."

The steamer was enlivened from the earliest hour by the native fishermen, who, with their fleet of canoes, had sought the shades of our dark hull, to protect them from the hot sun, which seemed to be fairly simmering the waters of the bay. They were making most miraculous draughts of fishes. I watched one little fellow. He was hardly a dozen years of age, but he plied his trade with such skill and enterprise, that he nearly filled his canoe during the half hour I was watching him. It was terrible to see with what intense energy and cruelty the little yellow devil, with bared arms blooded to the shoulders, pounced upon his prey. With a quick jerk he pulled his fish in, then clutching it with one hand and thrusting the fingers of the other with the prompt ferocity of a young tiger into the panting gills, he tore off with a single wrench the head, and threw the body, yet quivering with life, among the lifeless heap of his victims lying at the bottom of his boat. The sea gulls, hovering about shrieking shrilly and pouncing upon the heads and entrails as they were thrown into the water, fighting over them and gulping them down with hungry voracity, seemed to heighten this picture of the "Gentle art of angling."

The return of the steward and chaplain with a boat load of "marketing" was a welcome surprise. The parson, whose unquestionable taste in the aesthetics of eating had been wisely secured by the steward, dilated with great gusto upon the juicy beefsteaks, the freshness of the fish, and the richness of the fruit. When, at breakfast, we enjoyed as salt-sea voyagers only could, the stores of fresh meat, fresh eggs, fresh butter, fresh milk, juicy grapes, white and purple, with the morning's bloom still upon them, the peaches, the apples, the pears, the tumas (prickly pear fruit), the melons, musk and water, we acknowledged his reverence's judgment, and gratefully thanked him for his services.

On landing to take a look at the town, I made my way through a throng of boatmen, of picturesque native fruitsellers and loitering sailors, to the chief business street, which ran along the shore. The stores, which were mainly under the proprietorship of the foreign merchants, had a rich, thriving look, being crammed full of miscellaneous goods, while the sidewalks were heaped with bales and boxes. Odd-looking carts moved slowly along with their drivers in picturesque costume lying in full length upon their loads, smoking their cigarettes, and looking wondrously lazy and happy. Stately Chilians from the interior, dressed in genuine Fra Diavolo style, rode by on their prancing horses, all glistening and jingling with silver. There were abundant loungers about, in the cool shade of every corner and projecting roof. The listless men with the universal poncho—an oblong mantle of variegated cotton or woollen, through a hole in the centre of which the head is thrust, allowing the garment to hang in folds about the person—looked as if they had been roused suddenly from their beds, and not finding their coats at hand, had walked out with their coverlets over their shoulders. The women, too, in their loose dresses and with shawls thrown carelessly over their heads, had a very bed-chamber look. They were mostly pretty brunettes, with large, slumbering black eyes, which, however, were sufficiently awake to ogle effectively.

Having a letter of introduction to present, I entered the counting-house of the merchant whose acquaintance I sought. I found him boxed off at the further end of his long, heaped-up warehouse. He had closed his ledger, lighted his cigar, and had just filled his glass from a bottle of wine which stood on the window-sill, when I entered. I was not surprised, under such provocation to good fellowship, to receive a warm welcome. My mercantile friend was in the best possible humor, for times, he said, were very good. Every one at Valparaiso was making his fortune. It was the epoch of the gold excitement. Large fortunes had already been made. The contents of the shops and warehouses had, as soon as the gold discovery became known, been emptied into every vessel in the harbor, and sent to San Francisco. The lucky speculators had gained five or six hundred per cent. profit for their ventures of preserved and dried fruits, champagne, other wines and liquors, Madeira nuts and the most paltry stuff imaginable. In five months some of the Valparaiso merchants had cleared five hundred thousand dollars. The excitement was still unabated. Shippers were still loading and dispatching their goods daily for San Francisco. Many were going there themselves, and hardly a clerk could be kept at Valparaiso at any salary, however large.