We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argument amounts to this—that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. But here we at once ask ourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry," he says, "is invention—such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights." Here, again, there is confusion and sophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, such invention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry is of that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprising in a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelings as these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, without much—without any aid from the imagination—except in as far as the imagination will work under the power of every great emotion that does not absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even below the very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment," and "very little from novelty of expression"—to use Dr Johnson's words—for it is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet is seeking—"the strain we hear is of a higher mood;" and "few as the topics of devotion may be," (but are they few?) and "universally known," they are all commensurate—nay, far more than commensurate, with the whole power of the soul—never can they become unaffecting while it is our lot to die;—even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flow on such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, and sincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shall dare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt to be poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, and by their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels," than whom we were made but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be no more, be equalled in heaven?

We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the effect of poetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an idea more grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is only because the things themselves are imperfect—more so than suits the aspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a higher sphere—a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all awe and reverence, made the subject of song—then it is the office—the sacred office of poetry—not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soul that contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human nature glory in the "Paradise Lost?"

"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted—Infinity cannot be amplified—Perfection cannot be improved." Should not this go to prohibit all speech—all discourse—all sermons concerning the divine attributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and the attributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot, indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot be improved"—nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while the Creator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, too willing to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, may be raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel," from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into the ether.

Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural Theology? On the same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in his doctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in all animate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, or improve perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divine contemplations—by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of an insect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, and exclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" And while science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and the mercies of our God?

The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as it proceeds—the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it is founded becomes more and more glaring—the paradoxes, dealt out as confidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsive alike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of pious meditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplication to men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." What a vain attempt authoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is not invariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering—unquaking—to save it from lingering or from sudden death—is the most difficult service to which the frail spirit—frail even in its greatest strength—is called every day—every hour—of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, and often most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will," says Jeremy Taylor, "is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full of trembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; it wavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more. It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore, for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignity and excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrument and capacity of all duty and all virtue." Happy he whose faith is finally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of that faith, what hinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings, and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith has experienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many a melancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent of peace?

Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holy effusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be "confined to a few modes." "Out of the fulness of the heart the tongue speaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech, yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude—yea, the very dumb do speak—nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that has been wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and high enthusiasm.

That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not be at leisure for cadences and epithets," is in one respect true; but nobody supposes that during such moments—or hours—poetry is composed; and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mind is left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of the past, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmly contemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogether endurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry—that is, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted to clothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after a swell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or still bearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the whole being self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itself in an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentance will not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets," but cadences and epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth, if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences and epithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, and ingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly and more easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressive mood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the full possession of powers that had for a short severe season been overwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on the feelings that during their height were nearly unendurable, and then unfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at the bar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receiving his doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions to the measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, or reprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmly recall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on that hour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?

"Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy." And in that cry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers his creatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which they have learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of being forgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may follow supplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various and most affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many other words besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle with prayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak in poetry—else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacred passions.

Dr Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself." Here he had in his mind the most false notions of poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despising simplicity—whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, he truly says, is in religion most sublime—and why should not poetry be simple in its expression? Is it not always so—when the mood of mind it expresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one great emotion? But he uses—as we see—the terms "lustre" and "decoration"—as if poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious and ornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory direct and simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reason sublime.

With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that Dr Johnson, enlightened man as he was, should have concluded his argument with this absurdity—"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere." No. Simple as they are—on them have been bestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence—and here we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone—one of the highest that ever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not been desecrated by the fictions—so to call them—of John Milton; majestic as are the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornaments that the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hung around them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree of Life. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than in the Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent as are the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to our eyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a still lake or the slumbering ocean.

This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr Johnson's splendid sophistry—splendid at first sight—but on closer inspection a mere haze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artificial lustre. How far more truly, and how far more sublimely, does Milton, "that mighty orb of song," speak of his own divine gift—the gift of Poetry! "These abilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of power to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agonies of Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and reflections of men's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe—Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, through all instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear to all men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed."

It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown on the mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets, moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel more profoundly than they—to see, as it were, into a new world. The things of that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struck moods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since the revelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified by Religion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socrates and Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light," has descended over many lands into "the huts where poor men lie"—and thoughts are familiar there, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed from the lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of his pillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being, in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; and he may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, even when he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that Religion was given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublime expression—The Brotherhood of Man.

Yet it is just as true that there is as much misery and suffering in Christendom—nay, far more of them all—than troubled and tore men's hearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. But with what different feelings is it all thought of—spoken of—looked at—alleviated—repented—expiated—atoned for—now! In the olden time, such was the prostration of the "million," that it was only when seen in high places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling;—Remorse was the privilege of Kings and Princes—and the Furies shook their scourges but before the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had brought eclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line.

But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow all disastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does "with the lofty equalise the low;" and the same deep-felt community of guilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in a lower degree something of the same character—has made it far more profoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane and thoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charity more comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by those to whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed, darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life.

We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purified and elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with human nature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partaken of that purity and that elevation—and that it may now be a far holier and more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift of Apollo and the Muses. We may not circumscribe its sphere. To what cerulean heights shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into what dungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers and privileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion?

If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then it would indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be worse than worthless. They must be, not imperfect merely, but false; and not false merely, but calumnious against human nature. The agonies of passion fling men down to the dust on their knees, or smite them motionless as stone statues, sitting alone in their darkened chambers of despair. But sooner or later, all eyes, all hearts, look for comfort to God. The coldest metaphysical analyst could not avoid that, in his sage enumeration of "each particular hair" that is twisted and untwisted by him into a sort of moral tie; and surely the impassioned and philosophical poet will not, dare not, for the spirit that is within him, exclude that from his elegies, his hymns, and his songs, which, whether mournful or exulting, are inspired by the life-long, life-deep conviction, that all the greatness of the present is but for the future—that the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyre only because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens.

But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be a picture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of its very essence—how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to this spirit—how shall we limit it—measure it—and accustom it to the curb of critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are few who openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only in allusion—hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, half ashamed—and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians, without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whose scorn, even in this enlightened age, has—the more is the pity—even by men conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal than death?

No: Let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion. Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen, who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still more unpublishable—but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured that the beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to your eyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish, but will have everlasting life. Your books—humble and unpretending though they be—yet here and there a page not uninspired by the spirit of Truth, and Faith, and Hope, and Charity—that is, by Religion—will be held up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of the pious patriarch, sitting with his children's children round his knees—nor will any one sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers the sacred links that bind together the brotherhood of man, escape the solemn search of a soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught wisdom, and happy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknown—even perhaps by name—who although dead yet speaketh—and, without superstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household.

He who knows that he writes in the fear of God and in the love of man, will not arrest the thoughts that flow from his pen, because he knows that they may—will be—insulted and profaned by the name of cant, and he himself held up as a hypocrite. In some hands, ridicule is indeed a terrible weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius, branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridicule in the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless as a birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in her blear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might float in the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all the sportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumage during the Christmas holydays of a thousand years.

We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metrical composition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; and then we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a pious pretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is, indeed, to see "fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to express our disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among those awful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings, but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns—would-be fashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, and rings on their fingers—afterwards extending their notes into Sacred Poems for the use of the public—penny-a-liners, reporting the judgments of Providence as they would the proceedings of a police court.



SACRED POETRY.

CHAPTER II.

The distinctive character of poetry, it has been said, and credited almost universally, is to please. That they who have studied the laws of thought and passion should have suffered themselves to be deluded by an unmeaning word is mortifying enough; but it is more than mortifying—it perplexes and confounds—to think that poets themselves, and poets too of the highest order, have declared the same degrading belief of what is the scope and tendency, the end and aim of their own divine art—forsooth, to please! Pleasure is no more the end of poetry, than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion, or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction, expansion, elevation, honour, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or it is nothing. Is the end of "Paradise Lost" to please? Is the end of Dante's Divine Comedy to please? Is the end of the Psalms of David to please? Or of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that poetry has often been injured or vitiated by having been written in the spirit of this creed. It relieved poets from the burden of their duty—from the responsibility of their endowments—from the conscience that is in genius. We suspect that this doctrine has borne especially hard on all sacred poetry, disinclined poets to devoting their genius to it—and consigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much of what is great in that magnificent walk. For if the masters of the Holy Harp are to strike it but to please—if their high inspirations are to be deadened and dragged down by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim—they will either be contented to awaken a few touching tones of "those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide"—unwilling to prolong and deepen them into the diapason of praise—or they will deposit their lyre within the gloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "the soul of music sleeping on its strings."

All arguments, or rather objections to, sacred poetry, dissolve as you internally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather like imagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes ocular deceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry is mostly meant Scriptural; but there are, and always have been, conceited and callous critics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, and indeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had such criticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried in their great bards. Poetry, it is clear, embraces all we can experience; and every high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, and moral state of being becomes religious before it passes away, provided it be left free to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted to the glebe by some severe slavery of condition, which destroys the desire of ascent by the same inexorable laws that palsy the power, and reconcile the toilers to the doom of the dust. If all the states of being that poetry illustrates do thus tend, of their own accord, towards religious elevation, all high poetry must be religious; and so it is, for its whole language is breathing of a life "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations, obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or embodies, enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directly or indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of the immortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward and retribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, and he may hang up his harp.

Among the great living poets, Wordsworth is the one whose poetry is to us the most inexplicable—with all our reverence for his transcendent genius, we do not fear to say the most open to the most serious charges—on the score of its religion. From the first line of the "Lyrical Ballads" to the last of "The Excursion"—it is avowedly one system of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life, and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The human heart—the human mind—the human soul—to use his own fine words—is "the haunt and main region of his song." There are few, perhaps none of our affections—using that term in its largest sense—which have not been either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. In his poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appears to be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentable defect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of the representation? We think there is—and that it lies in his Religion.

In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion," is there any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The hopes that lie beyond the grave—and the many holy and awful feelings in which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ever part of the character of any of the persons—male or female—old or young—brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the most interesting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitely delineated—and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, had the thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth's heart during the hours of inspiration—and he often has written like a man inspired—they must have found expression in his strains; and the personages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, would have been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and their trials, Christians. But most assuredly this is not the case; the religion of this great Poet—in all his poetry published previous to "The Excursion"—is but the "Religion of the Woods."

In "The Excursion," his religion is brought forward—prominently and conspicuously—in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is it Christianity? No—it is not. There are glimpses given of some of the Christian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions, in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect without some allusion to the Christian creed. The interlocutors—eloquent as they all are—say but little on that theme; nor do they show—if we except the Priest—much interest in it—any solicitude; they may all, for anything that appears to the contrary, be deists.

Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from entering on such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance of this having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem. Nor could it have been the case with such a man—a man privileged, by the power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations of the earth, on all themes, however high and holy, which the children of men can feel and understand. Christianity, during almost all their disquisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as they kept journeying among the hills,

"On man, on nature, and on human life, Musing in Solitude!"

But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, or, perceiving it, looked upon it with a cold and indifferent regard, and passed by into the poetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering from the cloudy skies. Their talk is of "Palmyra central, in the desert," rather than of Jerusalem. On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful poetry is bestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian.

Yet there is no subject too high for Wordsworth's muse. In the preface to "The Excursion," he says daringly—we fear too daringly,—

"Urania, I shall need Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven! For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep—and aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. All strength—all terror—single or in bands, That ever was put forth in personal form, Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones; I passed them unalarm'd!"

Has the poet, who believes himself entitled to speak thus of the power and province given to him to put forth and to possess, spoken in consonance with such a strain, by avoiding, in part of the very work to which he so triumphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? Nothing could have reconciled us to a burst of such—audacity—we use the word considerately—but the exhibition of a spirit divinely imbued with the Christian faith. For what else, we ask, but the truths beheld by the Christian Faith, can be beyond those "personal forms," "beyond Jehovah," "the choirs of shouting angels," and the "empyreal thrones?"

This omission is felt the more deeply—the more sadly—from such introduction as there is of Christianity; for one of the books of "The Excursion" begins with a very long, and a very noble eulogy on the Church Establishment in England. How happened it that he who pronounced such eloquent panegyric—that they who so devoutly inclined their ear to imbibe it—should have been all contented with

"That basis laid, these principles of faith Announced,"

and yet throughout the whole course of their discussions, before and after, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity or a Christian Church in the world?

We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtful and sincere student of this great poet's works, must regard such omission—such inconsistency or contradiction—with more than the pain of regret; for there is no relief afforded to our defrauded hearts from any quarter to which we can look. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of a Christian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof—for our delight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before the heavenly splendour; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after all this solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiation into the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on the Church of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we have much fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the most ingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion.

Should the opinion boldly avowed be challenged, we shall enter into further exposition and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confine ourselves to some remarks on one of the most elaborate tales of domestic suffering in "The Excursion." In the story of Margaret, containing, we believe, more than four hundred lines—a tolerably long poem in itself—though the whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife and mother's heart, for year after year of "hope deferred, that maketh the heart sick," is described, or rather dissected, with an almost cruel anatomy—not one quivering fibre being left unexposed—all the fluctuating, and finally all the constant agitations laid bare and naked that carried her at last lingeringly to the grave—there is not—except one or two weak lines, that seem to have been afterwards purposely dropped in—one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret a Christian?—Let the answer be yes—as good a Christian as ever kneeled in the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits for the resurrection. If she was—then the picture painted of her and her agonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character of all other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as she was, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions—she surely must have turned sometimes—ay, often, and often, and often, else had she sooner left the clay—towards her Lord and Saviour. But of such "comfort let no man speak," seems to have been the principle of Mr Wordsworth; and the consequence is, that this, perhaps the most elaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one human heart, is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religious mind—that being wanting without which the entire representation is vitiated, and necessarily false to nature—to virtue—to resignation—to life—and to death. These may seem strong words—but we are ready to defend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth.

This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have been all-in-all—for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or we regard the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance—shocks far deeper feelings within us than those of taste, and throws over the whole poem to which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion of hollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion, which at the best is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Above all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over the orthodox Church-of-Englandism—for once to quote a not inexpressive barbarism of Bentham—which every now and then breaks out either in passing compliment—amounting to but a bow—or in eloquent laudation, during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaks nobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning all the land; but in none—no, not one of the houses of the humble, the hovels of the poor into which he takes us—is the religion preached in those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealing organ, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree, lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tutelary spirit of the lowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find the Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be one of the order of the High Priests of nature?

Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does not pretend to present a model of virtue?—that there are miseries which shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their suffering, to look to that source for comfort?—that this is human nature, and the description only follows it?—that when "in peace and comfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven," and that her habit in that respect was only broken up by the stroke of her calamity, causing such a derangement of her mental power as should deeply interest the sympathies?—in short, that the poet is an artist, and that the privation of all comfort from religion completes the picture of her desolation?

Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet so pathetically speak?

"Of one whose stock Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof. She was a woman of a steady mind, Tender and deep in her excess of love; Not speaking much—pleased rather with the joy Of her own thoughts. By some especial care Her temper had been framed, as if to make A Being who, by adding love to fear, Might live on earth a life of happiness. Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side The humble worth that satisfied her heart— Frugal, affectionate, sober, and withal Keenly industrious. She with pride would tell That he was often seated at his loom In summer, ere the mower was abroad Among the dewy grass—in early spring, Ere the last star had vanish'd. They who pass'd At evening, from behind the garden fence Might hear his busy spade, which he would ply After his daily work, until the light Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost In the dark hedges. So their days were spent In peace and comfort; and a pretty boy Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven."

We are prepared by that character, so amply and beautifully drawn, to pity her to the utmost demand that may be made on our pity—to judge her leniently, even if in her desertion she finally give way to inordinate and incurable grief. But we are not prepared to see her sinking from depth to depth of despair, in wilful abandonment to her anguish, without oft-repeated and long-continued passionate prayers for support or deliverance from her trouble, to the throne of mercy. Alas! it is true that in our happiness our gratitude to God is too often more selfish than we think, and that in our misery it faints or dies. So is it even with the best of us—but surely not all life long—unless the heart has been utterly crushed—the brain itself distorted in its functions, by some calamity, under which nature's self gives way, and falls into ruins like a rent house when the last prop is withdrawn.

"Nine tedious years From their first separation—nine long years She linger'd in unquiet widowhood— A wife and widow. Needs must it have been A sore heart-wasting."

It must indeed, and it is depicted by a master's hand. But even were it granted that sufferings, such as hers, might, in the course of nature, have extinguished all heavenly comfort—all reliance on God and her Saviour—the process and progress of such fatal relinquishment should have been shown, with all its struggles and all its agonies; if the religion of one so good was so unavailing, its weakness should have been exhibited and explained, that we might have known assuredly why, in the multitude of the thoughts within her, there was no solace for her sorrow, and how unpitying Heaven let her die of grief.

This tale, too, is the very first told by the Pedlar to the Poet, under circumstances of much solemnity, and with affecting note of preparation. It arises naturally from the sight of the ruined cottage near which they, by appointment, have met; the narrator puts his whole heart into it, and the listener is overcome by its pathos. No remark is made on Margaret's grief, except that

"I turn'd aside in weakness, nor had power To thank him for the tale which he had told. I stood, and leaning o'er the garden wall, Review'd that woman's sufferings; and it seem'd To comfort me, while, with a brother's love, I bless'd her in the impotence of grief. Then towards the cottage I return'd, and traced Fondly, though with an interest more mild, The sacred spirit of humanity, Which, 'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies Of nature—'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers, And silent overgrowings, still survived."

Such musings receive the Pedlar's approbation, and he says,—

"My friend! enough to sorrow you have given. The purposes of wisdom ask no more. Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read The forms of things with an unworthy eye. She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here."

As the Poet, then, was entirely satisfied with the tale, so ought to be all readers. No hint is dropped that there was anything to blame in the poor woman's nine years' passion—no regret breathed that she had sought not, by means offered to all, for that peace of mind which passeth all understanding—no question asked, how it was that she had not communed with her own afflicted heart, over the pages of that Book where it is written, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!" The narrator had indeed said, that on revisiting her during her affliction,—

"Her humble lot of books, Which in her cottage window, heretofore, Had been piled up against the corner panes In seemly order, now, with straggling leaves, Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut, As they had chanced to fall."

But he does not mention the Bible.

What follows has always seemed to us of a questionable character:—

"I well remember that those very plumes, Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er, As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd So still an image of tranquillity, So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind, That what we feel of sorrow and despair From ruin and from change, and all the griefs The passing shows of Being leave behind, Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live Where meditation was. I turn'd away, And walk'd along my road in happiness."

These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in face of them, to deny the power of the beauty and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow of us mortal beings, who live for awhile on her breast. Assuredly there is sorrow that may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here spoken of—for poor Margaret, many years dead—was of that kind. But does not the heart of a man beat painfully, as if violence were offered to its most sacred memories, to hear from the lips of wisdom, that "sorrow and despair from ruin and from change, and all the griefs" that we can suffer here below, appear an idle dream among plumes, and weeds, and spear-grass, and mists, and rain-drops? "Where meditation is!" What meditation? Turn thou, O child of a day! to the New Testament, and therein thou mayest find comfort. It matters not whether a spring-bank be thy seat by Rydal Mere, "while heaven and earth do make one imagery," or thou sittest in the shadow of death, beside a tomb.

We said, that for the present we should confine our remarks on this subject to the story of Margaret; but they are, more or less, applicable to almost all the stories in "The Excursion." In many of the eloquent disquisitions and harangues of the Three Friends, they carry along with them the sympathies of all mankind; and the wisest may be enlightened by their wisdom. But what we complain of is, that neither in joy nor grief, happiness nor misery, is religion the dominant principle of thought and feeling in the character of any one human being with whom we are made acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single one, man or woman, are we made to feel the beauty of holiness—the power and the glory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought before us whom we pity, respect, admire, love. The great poet is high-souled and tender-hearted—his song is pure as the morning, bright as day, solemn as night. But his inspiration is not drawn from the Book of God, but from the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails to sustain his genius when venturing into the depths of tribulation and anguish. Therefore imperfect are his most truthful delineations of sins and sorrows; and not in his philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found alleviation or cure of the maladies that kill the soul. Therefore never will "The Excursion" become a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and conditions of a Christian People, like "The Task" or the "Night Thoughts." Their religion is that of revelation—it acknowledges no other source but the word of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay, these poets appeal; and though they may sometimes, or often, misinterpret its judgment, that is an evil incident to finite intelligence; and the very consciousness that it is so, inspires a perpetual humility that is itself a virtue found to accompany only a Christian's Faith.

We have elsewhere vindicated the choice of a person of low degree as Chief of "The Excursion," and exult to think that a great poet should have delivered his highest doctrines through the lips of a Scottish Pedlar.

"Early had he learn'd To reverence the volume that displays The mystery of life that cannot die."

Throughout the poem he shows that he does reverence it, and that his whole being has been purified and elevated by its spirit. But fond as he is of preaching, and excellent in the art or gift, a Christian Preacher he is not—at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by his parentage and nurture with all most hallowed round the poor man's hearth, and guarded by his noble nature from all offence to the sanctities there enshrined; yet the truth must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not the Word as the servant of the Lord, as the follower of Him Crucified. There is very much in his announcements to his equals wide of the mark set up in the New Testament. We seem to hear rather of a divine power and harmony in the universe than of the Living God. The spirit of Christianity as connected with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Human-God, the link between heaven and earth, between helplessness and omnipotence, ought to be everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a Christian Poet—wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love for his goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness. Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of that spirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, falling not from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming its conceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own power than humbled in the comparison of its personal inferiority; and in enunciating them in verse, more rejoices in the consciousness of the power of its own genius than in the contemplation of Him from whom cometh every good and perfect gift—it has not attained Piety, and its worship is not an acceptable service. For it is self-worship—worship of the creature's own conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness, in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command the praise and adoration of his fellow-mortals. Those lofty speculations, alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment of waterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude the hold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment and impatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escaping from the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of a Book forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support to his steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him to everlasting life.

Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little of the light of revelation, and they all speak of the theological doctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressions as these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem often to have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are which human reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it is impossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely to itself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or in express, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; and we have never had other experience of the human mind than as exerting its powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In these circumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions which regard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfy itself in such great inquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer of truth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is able to deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it in their belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, it has means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing one from the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would be impossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which has been poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertain what self-left reason could find out. Yet this much we are able to do in the speculations of our philosophy: We can inquire, in this light, what are the grounds of evidence which nature and reason themselves offer for belief in the same truths. A like remark must be extended to the morality which we seem now to inculcate from the authority of human reason. We no longer possess any such independent morality. The spirit of a higher, purer, moral law than man could discover, has been breathed over the world, and we have grown up in the air and the light of a system so congenial to the highest feelings of our human nature, that the wisest spirits amongst us have sometimes been tempted to forget that its origin is divine.

Had "The Excursion" been written in the poet's later life, it had not been so liable to such objections as these; for much of his poetry composed since that era is imbued with a religious spirit, answering the soul's desire of the devoutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets are sacred Poetry indeed. How comprehensive the sympathy of a truly pious heart! How religion reconciles different forms, and modes, and signs, and symbols of worship, provided only they are all imbued with the spirit of faith! This is the toleration Christianity sanctions—for it is inspired by its own universal love. No sectarian feeling here, that would exclude or debar from the holiest chamber in the poet's bosom one sincere worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. Christian brethren! By that mysterious bond our natures are brought into more endearing communion—now more than ever brethren, because of the blood that was shed for us all from His blessed side! Even of that most awful mystery in some prayer-like strains the Poet tremblingly speaks, in many a strain, at once so affecting and so elevating—breathing so divinely of Christian charity to all whose trust is in the Cross! Who shall say what form of worship is most acceptable to the Almighty? All are holy in which the soul seeks to approach him—holy

"The chapel lurking among trees, Where a few villagers on bended knees Find solace which a busy world disdains;"

we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the image of some old abbey,—

"Once ye were holy, ye are holy still!"

And what heart partakes not the awe of his

"Beneath that branching roof Self-poised and scoop'd into ten thousand cells Where light and shade repose, where music dwells Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die"?

Read the first of these sonnets with the last—and then once more the strains that come between—and you will be made to feel how various and how vast beneath the sky are the regions set apart by the soul for prayer and worship; and that all places become consecrated—the high and the humble—the mean and the magnificent—in which Faith and Piety have sought to hold communion with Heaven.

But they who duly worship God in temples made with hands, meet every hour of their lives "Devotional Excitements" as they walk among His works; and in the later poetry of Wordsworth these abound—age having solemnised the whole frame of his being, that was always alive to religious emotions—but more than ever now, as around his paths in the evening of life longer fall the mysterious shadows. More fervid lines have seldom flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, than some awakened by the sounds and sights of a happy day in May—to him—though no church-bell was heard—a Sabbath. His occasional poems are often felt by us to be linked together by the finest affinities, which perhaps are but affinities between the feelings they inspire. Thus we turn from those lines to some on a subject seemingly very different, from a feeling of such fine affinities—which haply are but those subsisting between all things and thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in them how the Poet, as he gazes on a Family that holds not the Christian Faith, embraces them in the folds of Christian Love—and how religion as well as nature sanctifies the tenderness that is yearning at his heart towards them—"a Jewish Family"—who, though outcasts by Heaven's decree, are not by Heaven, still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth.

How exquisite the stanzas composed in one of the Catholic Chapels in Switzerland,—

"Doom'd as we are our native dust To wet with many a bitter shower, It ill befits us to disdain The Altar, to deride the Fane, Where patient sufferers bend, in trust To win a happier hour.

I love, where spreads the village lawn, Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze; Hail to the firm unmoving Cross, Aloft, where pines their branches toss! And to the Chapel far withdrawn, That lurks by lonely ways!

Where'er we roam—along the brink Of Rhine—or by the sweeping Po, Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide, Whate'er we look on, at our side Be Charity—to bid us think And feel, if we would know."

How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, most touching in their simple pathos—such as a Hymn for the boatmen as they approach the Rapids—Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damsels floating homeward on the lake of Brientz—the Italian Itinerant and the Swiss Goat-herd—and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives of Italian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as if by magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace the peculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Such gentle visions disappear, and we sit by the side of the Poet as he gazes from his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the Church of San Salvador, which was almost destroyed by lightning a few years ago, while the altar and the image of the patron saint were untouched, and devoutly listen while he exclaims,—

"Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times, Let all remind the soul of heaven; Our slack devotion needs them all; And faith, so oft of sense the thrall, While she, by aid of Nature, climbs, May hope to be forgiven."

We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse of the Sun, 1820," one of the finest lyrical effusions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, and imagery, within the whole compass of poetry. If the beautiful be indeed essentially different from the sublime, we here feel that they may be made to coalesce so as to be in their united agencies one divine power. We called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transitions. Though not an ode, it is ode-like in its invocations; and it might be set and sung to music if Handel were yet alive, and St Cecilia to come down for an hour from heaven. How solemn the opening strain! and from the momentary vision of Science on her speculative Tower, how gently glides Imagination down, to take her place by the Poet's side, in his bark afloat beneath Italian skies—suddenly bedimmed, lake, land, and all, with a something between day and night. In a moment we are conscious of Eclipse. Our slight surprise is lost in the sense of a strange beauty—solemn not sad—settling on the face of nature and the abodes of men. In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, we have a vision of the Lake, with all its noblest banks, and bays, and bowers, and mountains—when in an instant we are wafted away from a scene that might well have satisfied our imagination and our heart—if high emotions were not uncontrollable and omnipotent—wafted away by Fancy with the speed of Fire—lakes, groves, cliffs, mountains, all forgotten—and alight amid an aerial host of figures, human and divine, on a spire that seeks the sky. How still those imaged sanctities and purities, all white as snows of Apennine, stand in the heavenly region, circle above circle, and crowned as with a zone of stars! They are imbued with life. In their animation the figures of angels and saints, insensate stones no more, seem to feel the Eclipse that shadows them, and look awful in the portentous light. In his inspiration he transcends the grandeur even of that moment's vision—and beholds in the visages of that aerial host those of the sons of heaven darkening with celestial sorrow at the Fall of Man—when

"Throngs of celestial visages, Darkening like water in the breeze, A holy sadness shared."

Never since the day on which the wondrous edifice, in its consummate glory, first saluted the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneeling saint a thought so sad and so sublime—a thought beyond the reaches of the soul of him whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adornments so far from earth, that the silent company seem sometimes, as light and shadow moves among them, to be in ascension to heaven. But the Sun begins again to look like the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyful light from that awful trance, delights to behold

"Town and Tower, The Vineyard and the Olive Bower, Their lustre re-assume;"

and "breathes there a man with soul so dead," that it burns not within him as he hears the heart of the husband and the father breathe forth its love and its fear, remembering on a sudden the far distant whom it has never forgotten—a love and a fear that saddens, but disturbs not, for the vision he saw had inspired him with a trust in the tender mercies of God? Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who may some time or other be a traveller over the wide world, the sacred stanzas that bring the Poem to a close—and it will not fail to comfort thee when sitting all alone by the well in the wilderness, or walking along the strange streets of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnight afloat on far-off seas.

"O ye, who guard and grace my Home While in far-distant lands we roam, Was such a vision given to you? Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes, Did sullen mist hide lake and skies And mountains from your view?

"I ask in vain—and know far less, If sickness, sorrow, or distress Have spared my Dwelling to this hour; Sad blindness! but ordained to prove Our faith in Heaven's unfailing love, And all-controlling power."

Let us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James Montgomery is truly a religious poet. His popularity, which is great, has, by some scribes sitting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been attributed chiefly to the power of sectarianism. He is, we believe, a sectary; and, if all sects were animated by the spirit that breathes throughout his poetry, we should have no fears for the safety and stability of the Established Church; for in that self-same spirit was she built, and by that self-same spirit were her foundations dug in a rock. Many are the lights—solemn and awful all—in which the eyes of us mortal creatures may see the Christian dispensation. Friends, looking down from the top of a high mountain on a city-sprinkled plain, have each his own vision of imagination—each his own sinking or swelling of heart. They urge no inquisition into the peculiar affections of each other's secret breasts—all assured, from what each knows of his brother, that every eye there may see God—that every tongue that has the gift of lofty utterance may sing His praises aloud—that the lips that remain silent may be mute in adoration—and that all the distinctions of habits, customs, professions, modes of life, even natural constitution and form of character, if not lost, may be blended together in mild amalgamation under the common atmosphere of emotion, even as the towers, domes, and temples, are all softly or brightly interfused with the huts, cots, and homesteads—the whole scene below harmonious because inhabited by beings created by the same God—in his own image—and destined for the same immortality.

It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, in an invidious sense, any of Montgomery's fame to any such cause. No doubt many persons read his poetry on account of its religion, who, but for that, would not have read it; and no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. But so, too, do many persons read Wordsworth's poetry on account of its religion—the religion of the woods—who, but for that, would not have read it; and so, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. So is it with the common-manners-painting poetry of Crabbe—the dark-passion-painting poetry of Byron—the high-romance-painting poetry of Scott—and so on with Moore, Coleridge, Southey, and the rest. But it is to the mens divinior, however displayed, that they owe all their fame. Had Montgomery not been a true poet, all the Religious Magazines in the world could not have saved his name from forgetfulness and oblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholy Poppy—melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness; but as it is, he is like the Rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, planted on the banks of "that river whose streams make glad the city of the Lord."

Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conceived in the spirit of a most exclusive sectarianism, may not be of a very high order, and powerfully impressive on minds whose religious tenets are most irreconcilable and hostile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being unduly concentrated, are not thereby necessarily enfeebled—on the contrary, often strengthened; and there is a grand austerity which the imagination more than admires—which the conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, the conviction from which that austerity grows, is in itself right; for it is a feeling—a conviction of the perfect righteousness of God—the utter worthlessness of self-left man—the awful sanctity of duty—and the dreadfulness of the judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe till the seals have been broken, and the Archangel has blown his trumpet. A religion planted in such convictions as these, may become dark and disordered in its future growth within the spirit; and the tree, though of good seed and in a strong soil, may come to be laden with bitter fruit, and the very droppings of its leaves may be pernicious to all who rest within its shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast than the trunk of a dead faith; and such food, unwholesome though it be, is not so miserable as famine to a hungry soul.

Grant, then, that there may be in Mr Montgomery's poetry certain sentiments, which, in want of a better word, we call Sectarian. They are not necessarily false, although not perfectly reconcilable to our own creed, which, we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, we may be made much the better and the wiser men by meditating upon them; for while they may, perhaps (and we are merely making a supposition), be too strongly felt by him, they may be too feebly felt by us—they may, perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of his poetry than of his faith—and if, in some degree, offensive in the composition of a poem, far less so, or not at all, in that of a life.

All his shorter poems are stamped with the character of the man. Most of them are breathings of his own devout spirit, either delighted or awed by a sense of the Divine goodness and mercy towards itself, or tremblingly alive—not in mere sensibility to human virtues and joys, crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs to the diseased and depraved—but in solemn, moral, and religious thought, to all of good or evil befalling his brethren of mankind. "A sparrow cannot fall to the ground"—a flower of the field cannot wither immediately before his eyes—without awakening in his heart such thoughts as we may believe God intended should be awakened even by such sights as these; for the fall of a sparrow is a Scriptural illustration of His providence, and His hand framed the lily, whose array is more royal than was that of Solomon in all his glory. Herein he resembles Wordsworth—less profound certainly—less lofty; for in its highest moods the genius of Wordsworth walks by itself—unapproachable—on the earth it beautifies. But Montgomery's poetical piety is far more prevalent over his whole character; it belongs more essentially and permanently to the man. Perhaps, although we shall not say so, it may be more simple, natural, and true. More accordant it certainly is, with the sympathies of ordinary minds. The piety of his poetry is far more Christian than that of Wordsworth. It is in all his feelings, all his thoughts, all his imagery; and at the close of most of his beautiful compositions, which are so often avowals, confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, we feel, not the moral, but the religion of his song. He "improves" all the "occasions" of this life, because he has an "eye that broods on its own heart;" and that heart is impressed by all lights and shadows, like a river or lake whose waters are pure—pure in their sources and in their course. He is, manifestly, a man of the kindliest home-affections; and these, though it is to be hoped the commonest of all, preserved to him in unabated glow and freshness by innocence and piety, often give vent to themselves in little hymns and ode-like strains, of which the rich and even novel imagery shows how close is the connection between a pure heart and a fine fancy, and that the flowers of poetry may be brought from afar, nor yet be felt to be exotics—to intertwine with the very simplest domestic feelings and thoughts—so simple, so perfectly human, that there is a touch of surprise on seeing them capable of such adornment, and more than a touch of pleasure on feeling how much that adornment becomes them—brightening without changing, and adding admiration to delight—wonder to love.

Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an egotist as Wordsworth; and thence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances of external nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length, that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either in the garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to produce a strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease and freedom—they shall be cold and stiff—and both passion and imagination shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain or the man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves or admires—themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows—who is himself still the centre of the enchanted circle—who, in the delusion of a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die, all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with him—who not only sees

"Poetic visions swarm on every bough,"

but the history of all his own most secret emotions written on the very rocks—who gathers up the many beautiful things that in the prodigality of nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and the more dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are now appropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymy so further brighten them that the thousands of eyes that formerly passed them by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their rare and transcendent beauty—he is the "prevailing Poet!" Montgomery neither seeks nor shuns those dark thoughts that will come and go, night and day, unbidden, forbidden, across the minds of all men—fortified although the main entrances may be; but when they do invade his secret, solitary hours, he turns even such visitants to a happy account, and questions them, ghost-like as they are, concerning both the future and the past. Melancholy as often his views are, we should not suppose him a man of other than a cheerful mind; for whenever the theme allows or demands it, he is not averse to a sober glee, a composed gaiety that, although we cannot say it ever so far sparkles out as to deserve to be called absolutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his lighter-toned compositions, which it is peculiarly pleasant now and then to feel in the writings of a man whose genius is naturally, and from the course of life, not gloomy indeed, but pensive, and less disposed to indulge itself in smiles than in tears.



SACRED POETRY.

CHAPTER III.

People nowadays will write, because they see so many writing; the impulse comes upon them from without, not from within; loud voices from streets and squares of cities call on them to join the throng, but the still small voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute; and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, or linnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at the worst an oratorio of ganders and bubbleys?

At this particular juncture or crisis, the disease would fain assume the symptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious—all smitten with sanctity—Christian all over—and crossing and jostling on the Course of Time—as they think, on the high road to Heaven and Immortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites. Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shops, and, crowned with foolscap, repeat to Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggrel to the Deity! They bandy about the Bible as if it were an Album. They forget that the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well as a set of verses to be damned; they look forward to the First of the Month with more fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and beseech a critic to be merciful upon them with far more earnestness than they ever beseeched their Maker. They pray through the press—vainly striving to give some publicity to what must be private for evermore; and are seen wiping away, at tea-parties, the tears of contrition and repentance for capital crimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily, that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it is felt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowls with their own unsaleable sheets. They are frequently so singed; yet singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed; and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still gasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe with their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner, and are no more seen among bipeds.

Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spirit of imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two—who for the present must be nameless—have shown feeling; and would they but obey their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own free feet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings, they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditable reputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song. For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine. The study of THE BOOK must have been begun in the simplicity of childhood, when it was felt to be indeed divine—and carried on through all those silent intervals in which the soul of manhood is restored, during the din of life, to the purity and peace of its early being. The Bible must be to such a poet even as the sky—with its sun, moon, and stars—its boundless blue with all its cloud-mysteries—its peace deeper than the grave, because of realms beyond the grave—its tumult louder than that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He who begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himself to it—night and day—and with a humble and a contrite heart as well as an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what he understands, or to understand what he feels—thoughts and feelings breathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery, between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly venture on the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thought of doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem irreverent; it would convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, and the world.

They alone, therefore, to whom God has given genius as well as faith, zeal, and benevolence—will, of their own accord, fix their Pindus either on Lebanon or Calvary—and of these but few. The genius must be high—the faith sure—and human love must coalesce with divine, that the strain may have power to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they are in matter, and with all their apprehensions and conceptions blended with material imagery, and the things of this moving earth and this restless life.

So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen his subject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. His work, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependent on creeds, but out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestly moulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry will outlive every other; for the time will come when Christian Poetry will be deeper and higher far than any that has ever yet been known among men. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto have been either religious or superstitious; and as "the day-spring from on High that has visited us" spreads wider and wider over the earth, "the soul of the world, dreaming of things to come," shall assuredly see more glorified visions than have yet been submitted to her ken. That poetry has so seldom satisfied the utmost longings and aspirations of human nature, can only have been because Poetry has so seldom dealt in its power with the only mysteries worth knowing—the greater mysteries of religion, into which the Christian is initiated only through faith, an angel sent from heaven to spirits struggling by supplications and sacrifices to escape from sin and death.

These, and many other thoughts and feelings concerning the "Vision and the Faculty divine," when employed on divine subjects, have arisen within us, on reading—which we have often done with delight—"The Christian Year," so full of Christian poetry of the purest character. Mr Keble is a poet whom Cowper himself would have loved—for in him piety inspires genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialised by religion. We peruse his book in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that which is breathed upon us by some calm day in spring, when all imagery is serene and still—cheerful in the main—yet with a touch and a tinge of melancholy, which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once more endearing and more profound. We should no more think of criticising such poetry than of criticising the clear blue skies—the soft green earth—the "liquid lapse" of an unpolluted stream, that

"Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every flower It overtaketh on its pilgrimage."

All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, we partake of the universal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom it emanated. Indeed, we do not remember any poetry nearly so beautiful as this, which reminds one so seldom of the poet's art. We read it without ever thinking of the place which its author may hold among poets, just as we behold a "lily of the field" without comparing it with other flowers, but satisfied with its own pure and simple loveliness; or each separate poem may be likened, in its unostentatious—unambitious—unconscious beauty—to

"A violet by a mossy stone, Half hidden to the eye."

Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair earth, the violet is indeed the most delightful in itself—form, fragrance, and colour—nor less in the humility of its birthplace, and its haunts in the "sunshiny shade." Therefore, 'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that may be said to blossom on Mount Sion.

The most imaginative poetry inspired by Nature, and dedicated to her praise, is never perfectly and consummately beautiful till it ascends into the religious; but then religion breathes from, and around, and about it, only at last when the poet has been brought, by the leading of his own aroused spirit, to the utmost pitch of his inspiration. He begins, and continues long, unblamed in mere emotions of beauty; and he often pauses unblamed, and brings his strain to a close, without having forsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feelings which belong alone to this earth. But poetry like that of the "Christian Year" springs at once, visibly and audibly, from religion as its fount. If it, indeed, issue from one of the many springs religion opens in the human heart, no fear of its ever being dried up. Small indeed may seem the silver line, when first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! But how soon it begins to sing with a clear loud voice in the solitude! Bank and brae—tree, shrub, and flower—grow greener at each successive waterfall—the rains no more disturb that limpid element than the dews—and never does it lose some reflection of the heavens.

In a few modest words, Mr Keble states the aim and object of his volume. He says truly, that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to possess in her authorised formularies an ample and secure provision, both for a sound rule of faith and a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publication will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended and exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has been attained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in a thousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deaf yet to lovely sights and sounds—and a true poet is as certain of recognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we have no prayer-book printed on paper—perhaps it would be better if we had; but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr Keble, is compiled and composed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotland than in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is felt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said, no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, and which in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inward observances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling here; and therefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart, will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration—for the Christian creed is "wide and general as the casing air," and felt as profoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms is heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities of England, where so often

"Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."

Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about—to show off upon—as if the writing and the reading of it were to be reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy—for it implies much voluntary self-degradation—is mere popularity. Against all such low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry is praise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from some unseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer or wanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holier solemnity in the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed got by heart; and memory is then tenacious to the death, for her hold on what she loves is strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, when even hope itself is dead—if, indeed, hope ever dies—the trust is committed to despair. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless thoughts; they become very thoughts themselves, and are what they represent. How are many of the simply, rudely, but fervently and beautifully rhymed Psalms of David, very part and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of the Scottish peasant's being!

"The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want. He makes me down to lie In pastures green: he leadeth me The quiet waters by."

These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful shepherd on the braes every stream that glides through the solitary places—they have often given colours to the greensward beyond the brightness of all herbage and of all flowers. Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes us mortal creatures feel the union that subsists between the Book of Nature and the Book of Life!

Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathers and mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring. Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest and wisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories; the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smoky day; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallow up the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as a separate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy, and forlorn! But he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees far into the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying—"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that Poetry throws back upon the New Testament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortal brother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of Man. On a dead insensible flower—a lily—a rose—a violet—a daisy, poetry may pour out all its divinest power—just as the sun itself sometimes seems to look with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once made transparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all its leaves—and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves be dead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall change death into sleep—till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shall seem a bed of bright and celestial repose. From poetry, in words or marble—both alike still and serene as water upon grass—we turn to the New Testament, and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We look down into the depths of that text—and we then turn again to Keble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon the uninspired page! Yet not uninspired—if that name may be given to strains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise, "whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets." Revelation has shown us that "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy of that Being for whom Godhead died!

They who read the lines on the "Holy Innocents" in a mood of mind worthy of them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "The Epiphany." They are separated in the volume by some kindred and congenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy the still region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seem to occupy the entire sky.

How far better than skilfully—how inspiredly does this Christian poet touch upon each successive holy theme—winging his way through the stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving one place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding and unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attempted the theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on such a subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger. Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few words—"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."

The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to a strain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism." How soon the infant spirit is touched with love—another name for religion—none may dare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling and thought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration—so strong it often is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of natural processes going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often been seen in the simplicity of childhood—creatures but five or six years old—soon perhaps about to disappear—astonishing, and saddening, and subliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by a holy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into a mysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink of death and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine unfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influences should not be rare—nor are they rare—in truly Christian households. Almost as soon as the heart is moved by filial affection, that affection grows reverent even to earthly parents—and, ere long, becomes piety towards the name of God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must not be too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No—let religion—a myriad-meaning word—be whispered and breathed round about them, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens their ears, while enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yet multitudinous world.

Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read with tears by many a grateful heart—on the "Churching of Women." What would become of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen the piety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holy and divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify the affections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before a father's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the father yearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving after childbirth!

"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." What is all the poetry that genius ever breathed over all the flowers of this earth to that one divine sentence! It has inspired our Christian poet—and here is his heartfelt homily.

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

"Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies, Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew, What more than magic in you lies To fill the heart's fond view? In childhood's sports companions gay, In sorrow, on Life's downward way, How soothing! in our last decay Memorials prompt and true.

Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, As pure, as fragrant, and as fair, As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours Of happy wanderers there. Fall'n all beside—the world of life, How is it stain'd with fear and strife! In Reason's world what storms are rife, What passions rage and glare!

But cheerful and unchanged the while Your first and perfect form ye show, The same that won Eve's matron smile In the world's opening glow The stars of Heaven a course are taught Too high above our human thought;— Ye may be found if ye are sought, And as we gaze we know.

Ye dwell beside our paths and homes, Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow, And guilty man, where'er he roams, Your innocent mirth may borrow. The birds of air before us fleet, They cannot brook our shame to meet— But we may taste your solace sweet, And come again to-morrow.

Ye fearless in your nests abide— Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise, Your silent lessons undescried By all but lowly eyes; For ye could draw th' admiring gaze Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys: Your order wild, your fragrant maze, He taught us how to prize.

Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour, As when he paused and own'd you good; His blessing on earth's primal bower, Yet felt it all renew'd. What care ye now, if winter's storm Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form? Christ's blessing at your heart is warm, Ye fear no vexing mood.

Alas! of thousand bosoms kind, That daily court you and caress, How few the happy secret find Of your calm loveliness! 'Live for to-day! to-morrow's light To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight. Go, sleep like closing flowers at night, And Heaven thy morn will bless.'"

Such poetry as this must have a fine influence on all the best human affections. Sacred are such songs to sorrow—and sorrow is either a frequent visitor, or a domesticated inmate, in every household. Religion may thus be made to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours, into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not the mother unhappy who closes the eyes of her dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in the house, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed among other flowers, now all drooping for its sake—nor yet call the father unhappy who lays his sweet son below the earth, and returns to the home where his voice is to be heard never more. That affliction brings forth feelings unknown before in his heart; calming all turbulent thoughts by the settled peace of the grave. Then every page of the Bible is beautiful—and beautiful every verse of poetry that thence draws its inspiration. Thus in the pale and almost ghost-like countenance of decay, our hearts are not touched by the remembrance alone of beauty which is departed, and by the near extinction of loveliness which we behold fading before our eyes—but a beauty, fairer and deeper far, lies around the hollow eye and the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air of the untroubled spirit that has heard resigned the voice that calls it away from the dim shades of mortality. Well may that beauty be said to be religious; for in it speaks the soul, conscious, in the undreaded dissolution of its earthly frame, of a being destined to everlasting bliss. With every deep emotion arising from our contemplation of such beauty as this—religious beauty beaming in the human countenance, whether in joy or sadness, health or decay—there is profoundly interfused a sense of the soul's spirituality, which silently sheds over the emotion something celestial and divine, rendering it not only different in degree, but altogether distinct in kind, from all the feelings that things merely perishable can inspire—so that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feeling of beauty is but a vivid recognition of its own deathless being and ethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintly known to the human heart in those ages of the world when all other feelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in the most pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over the beauty intensely worshipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever over its now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the living lustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone a beauty in his latest smile, which spoke not alone of a brief scene closed, but of an endless scene unfolding; while its cessation, instead of leaving him in utter darkness, seemed to be accompanied with a burst of light.

Much of our most fashionable Modern Poetry is at once ludicrously and lamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthful creatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins of shameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and by persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to that vulgar altitude—the gallows. The darker—the stronger passions, forsooth! And what hast thou to do—my dove-eyed Margaret, with the darker and stronger passions? Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still, serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and the weaker passions thine—brighter indeed—yet say not weaker, for they are strong as death;—Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, and Sorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears—be these all thy own—and sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imagination be spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescence—a Lunar Rainbow.

There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christian Year"—such perfect sincerity, and consequently such simplicity—that though the production of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot doubt that it will some day or other find its way into many of the dwellings of humble life. Such descent, if descent it be, must be of all receptions the most delightful to the heart of a Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more widely over the land, why fear that it will deaden religion? Let us believe that it will rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time true poetry, such as this, of a character somewhat higher than probably can be yet felt, understood, and appreciated by the people, will come to be easy and familiar, and blended with all the other benign influences breathed over their common existence by books. Meanwhile the "Christian Year" will be finding its way into many houses where the inmates read from the love of reading—not for mere amusement only, but for instruction and a deeper delight; and we shall be happy if our recommendation causes its pages to be illumined by the gleams of a few more peaceful hearths, and to be rehearsed by a few more happy voices in the "parlour twilight."