Te Deum veneramur, Te Sancte Pater!

we shall return into our cave, and to our work, all the better of such a lesson, and of such a reasonable service, and dig none the worse.

Science which ends in itself, or still worse, returns upon its maker, and gets him to worship himself, is worse than none; it is only when it makes it more clear than before who is the Maker and Governor, not only of the objects, but of the subjects of itself, that knowledge is the mother of virtue. But this is an endless theme. My only aim in these desultory hints is to impress parents and teachers with the benefits of the study, the personal engagement—with their own hands and eyes, and legs and ears—in some form or another of natural history, by their children and pupils and themselves, as counteracting evil, and doing immediate and actual good. Even the immense activity in the Post-Office-stamp line of business among our youngsters has been of immense use in many ways, besides being a diversion and an interest. I myself came to the knowledge of Queensland, and a great deal more, through its blue twopenny.

If any one wishes to know how far wise and clever and patriotic men may occasionally go in the way of giving "your son" a stone for bread, and a serpent for a fish,—may get the nation's money for that which is not bread, and give their own labor for that which satisfies no one; industriously making sawdust into the shapes of bread, and chaff into the appearance of meal, and contriving, at wonderful expense of money and brains, to show what can be done in the way of feeding upon wind,—let him take a turn through certain galleries of the Kensington Museum.

"Yesterday forenoon," writes a friend, "I went to South Kensington Museum. It is really an absurd collection. A great deal of valuable material and a great deal of perfect rubbish. The analyses are even worse than I was led to suppose. There is an ANALYSIS OF A MAN. First, a man contains so much water, and there you have the amount of water in a bottle; so much albumen, and there is the albumen; so much phosphate of lime, fat, haematin, fibrine, salt, etc., etc. Then in the next case so much carbon; so much phosphorus—a bottle with sticks of phosphorus; so much potassium, and there is a bottle with potassium; calcium, etc. They have not bottles of oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, etc., but they have cubical pieces of wood on which is written 'the quantity of oxygen in the human body would occupy the space of 170 (e. g.) cubes of the size of this,' etc., etc." What earthly good can this do any one?

No wonder that the bewildered beings whom I have seen wandering through these rooms, yawned more frequently and more desperately than I ever observed even in church.

So then, cultivate observation, energy, handicraft, ingenuity, outness in boys, so as to give them a pursuit as well as a study. Look after the blade, and don't coax or crush the ear out too soon, and remember that the full corn in the ear is not due till the harvest, when the great School breaks up, and we must all dismiss and go our several ways.



VAUGHAN'S POEMS, &c.

{Hosa esti prosphile—tauta logizesthe}.—ST. PAUL.

"What do you think of Dr. Channing, Mr. Coleridge?" said a brisk young gentleman to the mighty discourser, as he sat next him at a small tea-party. "Before entering upon that question, sir," said Coleridge, opening upon his inquirer those 'noticeable gray eyes,' with a vague and placid stare, and settling himself in his seat for the night, "I must put you in possession of my views, in extenso, on the origin, progress, present condition, future likelihoods, and absolute essence of the Unitarian controversy, and especially the conclusions I have, upon the whole, come to on the great question of what may be termed the philosophy of religious difference." In like manner, before telling our readers what we think of Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, or of "V.," or of Henry Ellison, the Bornnatural, or of E. V. K., it would have been very pleasant (to ourselves) to have given, in extenso, our views de Re Poetica, its nature, its laws and office, its means and ends; and to have made known how much and how little we agreed on these points with such worthies as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter, Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Huetten and Boileau, Hurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his famous uncle, Burke and "John Buncle," Montesquieu and Sir Philip Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus and Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt and Quinctilian, or Tacitus (whichever of the two wrote the Dialogue De Oratoribus, in which there is so much of the best philosophy, criticism, and expression), Lords Bacon and Buchan and Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart and John Dryden, Charles Lamb and Professor Wilson, Vinet of Lausanne and John Foster, Lord Jeffrey and the two brothers Hare, Drs. Fuller and South, John Milton and Dr. Drake, Dante and "Edie Ochiltree," Wordsworth and John Bunyan, Plutarch and Winkelman, the Coleridges, Samuel, Sara, Hartley, Derwent, and Henry Nelson, Sir Egerton Bridges, Victor Cousin and "the Doctor," George Moir and Madame de Stael, Dr. Fracastorius and Professor Keble, Martinus Scriblerus and Sir Thomas Browne, Macaulay and the Bishop of Cloyne, Collins and Gray and Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt and John Ruskin, Shakspeare and Jackson of Exeter, Dallas and De Quincey, and the six Taylors, Jeremy, William, Isaac, Jane, John Edward, and Henry. We would have had great pleasure in quoting what these famous women and men have written on the essence and the art of poetry, and to have shown how strangely they differ, and how as strangely at times they agree. But as it is not related at what time of the evening our brisk young gentleman got his answer regarding Dr. Channing, so it likewise remains untold what our readers have lost and gained in our not fulfilling our somewhat extensive desire.

It is with poetry as with flowers or fruits, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, we would all rather have them, and smell them, and taste them, than hear about them. It is a good thing to know all about a lily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany, its archaeology, its aesthetics, even its anatomy and "organic radicals," but it is a better thing to look at itself, and "consider" it how it grows—

"White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure."

It is one thing to know what your peach is, that it is the fruit of a rosal exogen, and is of the nature of a true drupe, with its carpel solitary, and its style proceeding from the apex,—that its ovules are anatropal, and that its putamen separates sponte sua from the sacrocarp; to know, moreover, how many kinds of peaches and nectarines there are in the world, and how happy the Canadian pigs must be of an evening munching the downy odoriferous drupes under the trees, and what an aroma this must give to the resulting pork,[44]—it is another and a better thing to pluck the peach, and sink your teeth into its fragrant flesh. We remember only one exception to this rule. Who has ever yet tasted the roast pig of reality which came up to the roast pig of Charles Lamb? Who can forget "that young and tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as yet of the style, with no original speck of the amor immunditiae—the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest, and which, when prepared aright, is, of all the delicacies in the mundus edibilis, the most delicate—obsoniorum facile princeps—whose fat is not fat, but an indefinable sweetness growing up toward it—the tender blossoming of fat—fat cropped in the bud—taken in the shoot—in the first innocence, the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food—the lean not lean, but a kind of animal manna—coelestis—cibus ille angelorum—or rather shall we say, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosial result." But here, as elsewhere, the exception proves the rule, and even the perusal of "Original" Walker's delicious schemes of dinners at Lovegrove's, with flounders water-zoutched, and iced claret, would stand little chance against an invitation to a party of six to Blackwall, with "Tom Young of the Treasury" as Prime Minister.

[44] We are given to understand that peach-fed pork is a poor pork after all, and goes soon into decomposition. We are not sorry to know this.

Poetry is the expression of the beautiful—by words—the beautiful of the outer and of the inner world; whatever is delectable to the eye or the ear, the every sense of the body and of the soul—it presides over veras dulcedines rerum. It implies at once a vision and a faculty, a gift and an art. There must be the vivid conception of the beautiful, and its fit manifestation in numerous language. A thought may be poetical, and yet not poetry; it may be a sort of mother liquor, holding in solution the poetical element, but waiting and wanting its precipitation,—its concentration into the bright and compacted crystal. It is the very blossom and fragrancy and bloom of all human thoughts, passions, emotions, language; having for its immediate object—its very essence—pleasure and delectation rather than truth; but springing from truth, as the flower from its fixed and unseen root. To use the words of Puttenham in reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, poetry is a lofty, insolent (unusual) and passionate thing.

It is not philosophy, it is not science, it is not morality, it is not religion, any more than red is or ever can be blue or yellow, or than one thing can ever be another; but it feeds on, it glorifies and exalts, it impassionates them all. A poet will be the better of all the wisdom, and all the goodness, and all the science, and all the talent he can gather into himself, but qua poet he is a minister and an interpreter of {to kalon}, and of nothing else. Philosophy and poetry are not opposites, but neither are they convertibles. They are twin sisters;—in the words of Augustine:—"PHILOCALIA et PHILOSOPHIA prope similiter cognominatae sunt, et quasi gentiles inter se videri volunt et sunt. Quid est enim Philosophia? amor sapientiae. Quid Philocalia? amor pulchritudinis. Germanae igitur istae sunt prorsus, et eodem parente procreatae." Fracastorius beautifully illustrates this in his "Naugerius, sive De Poetica Dialogus." He has been dividing writers, or composers as he calls them, into historians, or those who record appearances; philosophers, who seek out causes; and poets, who perceive and express veras pulchritudines rerum, quicquid maximum et magnificum, quicquid pulcherrimum, quicquid dulcissimum; and as an example, he says, if the historian describe the ongoings of this visible universe, I am taught; if the philosopher announce the doctrine of a spiritual essence pervading and regulating all things, I admire; but if the poet take up the same theme, and sing—

"Principio caelum ac terras camposque liquentes Lucentemque globum lunae, titaniaque astra, Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet."

"Si inquam, eandem rem, hoc pacto referat mihi, non admirabor solum, sed adamabo: et divinum nescio quid, in animum mihi immissum existimabo."

In the quotation which he gives, we at once detect the proper tools and cunning of the poet: fancy gives us liquentes campos, titania astra, lucentem globum lunae, and fantasy or imagination, in virtue of its royal and transmuting power, gives us intus alit—infusa per artus—and that magnificent idea, magno se corpore miscet—this is the divinum nescio quid—the proper work of the imagination—the master and specific faculty of the poet—that which makes him what he is, as the wings make a bird, and which, to borrow the noble words of the Book of Wisdom, "is more moving than motion,—is one only, and yet manifold, subtle, lively, clear, plain, quick, which cannot be letted, passing and going through all things by reason of her pureness; being one, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new."

The following is Fracastorius' definition of a man who not only writes verses, but is by nature a poet: "Est autem ille natura poeta, qui aptus est veris rerum pulchritudinibus capi monerique; et qui per illas loqui et scribere potest;" and he gives the lines of Virgil,—

"Aut sicuti nigrum Ilicibus crebris sacra nemus accubat umbra,"

as an instance of the poetical transformation. All that was merely actual or informative might have been given in the words sicuti nemus, but fantasy sets to work, and videte, per quas pulchritudines, nemus depinxit; addens ACCUBAT, ET NIGRUM crebris ilicibus et SACRA UMBRA! quam ob rem, recte Pontanus dicebat, finem esse poetae, apposite dicere ad admirationem, simpliciter, et per universalem bene dicendi ideam. This is what we call the beau ideal, or {kat' exochen} the ideal—what Bacon describes as "a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can be found in the nature of things, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul, and the exhibition of which doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind." It is "the wondrous and goodly paterne" of which Spenser sings in his "Hymne in honour of Beautie:"—

"What time this world's great Workmaister did cast To make al things such as we now behold, It seems that he before his eyes had plast A goodly Paterne, to whose perfect mould He fashioned them, as comely as he could, That now so faire and seemly they appeare, As nought may be amended any wheare.

"That wondrous Paterne wheresoere it bee, Whether in earth layd up in secret store, Or else in heaven, that no man may it see With sinfull eyes, for feare it to deflore, Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore— That is the thing that giveth pleasant grace To all things fair.

"For through infusion of celestial powre The duller earth it quickneth with delight, And life-full spirits privily doth powre Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight They seeme to please."

It is that "loveliness" which Mr. Ruskin calls "the signature of God on his works," the dazzling printings of His fingers, and to the unfolding of which he has devoted, with so much of the highest philosophy and eloquence, a great part of the second volume of "Modern Painters."

But we are as bad as Mr. Coleridge, and are defrauding our readers of their fruits and flowers, their peaches and lilies.

Henry Vaughan, "Silurist," as he was called, from his being born in South Wales, the country of the Silures, was sprung from one of the most ancient and noble families of the Principality. Two of his ancestors, Sir Roger Vaughan and Sir David Gam, fell at Agincourt. It is said that Shakspeare visited Scethrog, the family castle in Brecknockshire; and Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell in with the word "Puck." Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-Pooky, or Pwcca, the Goblin's valley, which belonged to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on a milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely personage, one would think, to say,—

"I go, I go; look how I go; Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow."

[45] We confess to being considerably affected when we look at this odd little fellow, as he sits there with his innocent upturned toes, and a certain forlorn dignity and meek sadness, as of "one who once had wings." What is he? and whence? Is he a surface or a substance? is he smooth and warm? is he glossy, like a blackberry? or has he on him "the raven down of darkness," like an unfledged chick of night? and if we smoothed him, would he smile? Does that large eye wink? and is it a hole through to the other side? (whatever that may be;) and is that a small crescent moon of darkness swimming in its disc? or does the eye disclose a bright light from within, where his soul sits and enjoys bright day? Is he a point of admiration whose head is too heavy, or a quaver or crotchet that has lost his neighbors, and fallen out of the scale? Is he an aspiring Tadpole in search of an idea? What have been and what will be the fortunes of this our small Nigel (Nigellus)? Think of "Elia" having him sent up from the Goblin Valley, packed in wool, and finding him lively! how he and "Mary" would doat upon him, feeding him upon some celestial, unspeakable pap, "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath." How the brother and sister would croon over him "with murmurs made to bless," calling him their "tender novice" "in the first bloom of his nigritude," their belated straggler from the "rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not deadly, their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his sins, their "poor Blot," "their innocent Blackness," their "dim Speck."

We can more easily imagine him as one of those Sprites—

"That do run By the triple Hecat's team, From the presence of the Sun, Following darkness like a dream."

Henry, our poet, was born in 1621; and had a twin-brother, Thomas. Newton, his birthplace, is now a farm-house on the banks of the Usk, the scenery of which is of great beauty. The twins entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1638. This was early in the Great Rebellion, and Charles then kept his Court at Oxford. The young Vaughans were hot Royalists; Thomas bore arms, and Henry was imprisoned. Thomas, after many perils, retired to Oxford, and devoted his life to alchemy, under the patronage of Sir Robert Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, himself addicted to these studies. He published a number of works, with such titles as "Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a Discourse of the Nature of Man, and his State after Death, grounded on his Creator's Proto-chemistry;" "Magia Adamica, with a full discovery of the true Coelum terrae, or the Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter of all things."

Henry seems to have been intimate with the famous wits of his time: "Great Ben," Cartwright, Randolph, Fletcher, &c. His first publication was in 1646:—"Poems, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished, by Henry Vaughan, Gent." After taking his degree in London as M. D., he settled at his birthplace, Newton, where he lived and died the doctor of the district. About this time he prepared for the press his little volume, "Olor Iscanus, the Swan of Usk," which was afterwards published by his brother Thomas, without the poet's consent. We are fortunate in possessing a copy of this curious volume, which is now marked in the Catalogues as "Rariss." It contains a few original poems; some of them epistles to his friends, hit off with great vigor, wit, and humor. Speaking of the change of times, and the reign of the Roundheads, he says,—

"Here's brotherly Ruffs and Beards, and a strange sight Of high monumental Hats, tane at the fight Of eighty-eight; while every Burgesse foots The mortal Pavement in eternall boots."

There is a line in one of the letters which strikes us as of great beauty:—

"Feed on the vocal silence of his eye."

And there is a very clever poem Ad Amicum Foeneratorem, in defiance of his friend's demand of repayment of a loan.

There is great beauty and delicacy of expression in these two stanzas of an epithalamium:—

"Blessings as rich and fragrant crown your heads, As the mild heaven on roses sheds, When at their cheeks (like pearls) they weare The clouds that court them in a tear.

"Fresh as the houres may all your pleasures be, And healthfull as Eternitie! Sweet as the flowre's first breath, and close As th' unseen spreadings of the Rose When she unfolds her curtained head, And makes her bosome the Sun's bed!"

The translations from Ovid, Boece, and Cassimir, are excellent.

The following lines conclude an invitation to a friend:—

"Come then! and while the slow isicle hangs At the stifle thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us Mid noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse. This portion thou wert born for. Why should we Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie? An age that thus hath fooled itself, and will, Spite of thy teeth and mine, persist so still. Let's sit then at this fire; and, while wee steal A revell in the Town, let others seal, Purchase, and cheat, and who can let them pay, Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day. Innocent spenders wee! a better use Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest!"

When about thirty years of age, he had a long and serious illness, during which his mind underwent an entire and final change on the most important of all subjects; and thenceforward he seems to have lived "soberly, righteously, and godly."

In his Preface to the "Silex Scintillans," he says, "The God of the spirits of all flesh hath granted me a further use of mine than I did look for in the body; and when I expected and had prepared for a message of death, then did he answer me with life; I hope to his glory, and my great advantage; that I may flourish not with leafe only, but with some fruit also." And he speaks of himself as one of the converts of "that blessed man, Mr. George Herbert."

Soon after, he published a little volume, called "Flores Solitudinis," partly prose and partly verse. The prose, as Mr. Lyte justly remarks, is simple and nervous, unlike his poetry, which is occasionally deformed with the conceit of his time.

The verses entitled "St. Paulinus to his wife Theresia," have much of the vigor and thoughtfulness and point of Cowper. In 1655, he published a second edition, or more correctly a re-issue, for it was not reprinted, of his Silex Scintillans, with a second part added. He seems not to have given anything after this to the public, during the next forty years of his life.

He was twice married, and died in 1695, aged 73, at Newton, on the banks of his beloved Usk, where he had spent his useful, blameless, and, we doubt not, happy life; living from day to day in the eye of Nature, and in his solitary rides and walks in that wild and beautiful country, finding full exercise for that fine sense of the beauty and wondrousness of all visible things, "the earth and every common sight," the expression of which he has so worthily embodied in his poems.

In "The Retreate," he thus expresses this passionate love of Nature—

"Happy those early dayes, when I Shin'd in my Angell-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, Celestiall thought; When yet I had not walkt above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back, at that short space, Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded Cloud or flowre My gazing soul would dwell an houre, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My Conscience with a sinfule sound, Or had the black art to dispence A sev'rall sinne to ev'ry sence, But felt through all this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse. O how I long to travell back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plaine, Where first I left my glorious traine; From whence th' Inlightned spirit sees That shady City of Palme trees."

To use the words of Lord Jeffrey as applied to Shakspeare, Vaughan seems to have had in large measure and of finest quality, "that indestructible love of flowers, and odors, and dews, and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight, which are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion which is its essence and its vivifying power."

And though what Sir Walter says of the country surgeon is too true, that he is worse fed and harder wrought than any one else in the parish, except it be his horse; still, to a man like Vaughan, to whom the love of nature and its scrutiny was a constant passion, few occupations could have furnished ampler and more exquisite manifestations of her magnificence and beauty. Many of his finest descriptions give us quite the notion of their having been composed when going his rounds on his Welsh pony among the glens and hills, and their unspeakable solitudes. Such lines as the following to a Star were probably direct from nature on some cloudless night:—

"Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below Attracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow, And winde and curle, and wink and smile, Shifting thy gate and guile."

He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature subjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure by Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.

We shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the Silex by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made very free use.

THE TIMBER.

"Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs, Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers Past o'er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings, Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.

"And still a new succession sings and flies; Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot Towards the old and still enduring skies; While the low Violet thriveth at their root.

"But thou beneath the sad and heavy Line Of death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark; Where not so much as dreams of light may shine, Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.

"And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent, Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee, Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent, Before they come, and know'st how near they be.

"Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease; But this thy strange resentment after death Means only those who broke in life thy peace."

This poem is founded upon the superstition that a tree which had been blown down by the wind gave signs of restlessness and anger before the coming of a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall. It seems to us full of the finest fantasy and expression.

THE WORLD.

"I saw Eternity the other night Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world And all her train were hurl'd."

There is a wonderful magnificence about this; and what a Bunyan-like reality is given to the vision by "the other night"!

MAN.

"Weighing the stedfastness and state Of some mean things which here below reside, Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date And Intercourse of times divide, Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs, Early as well as late, Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs:

"I would, said I, my God would give The staidness of these things to man! for these To His divine appointments ever cleave, And no new business breaks their peace; The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine, The flowres without clothes live, Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.

"Man hath still either toyes or Care; He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd, But ever restless and Irregular About this Earth doth run and ride. He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where; He says it is so far, That he hath quite forgot how to go there.

"He knocks at all doors, strays and roams: Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have, Which in the darkest nights point to their homes By some hid sense their Maker gave: Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest And passage through these looms God order'd motion, but ordain'd no rest."

There is great moral force about this; its measure and words put one in mind of the majestic lines of Shirley, beginning

"The glories of our earthly state Are shadows, not substantial things."

COCK-CROWING.

"Father of lights! what Sunnie seed, What glance of day hast thou confin'd Into this bird? To all the breed This busie Ray thou hast assign'd; Their magnetisme works all night, And dreams of Paradise and light.

"Their eyes watch for the morning-hue, Their little grain expelling night So shines and sings, as if it knew The path unto the house of light. It seems their candle, howe'er done, Was tinn'd and lighted at the sunne."

This is a conceit, but an exquisite one.

PROVIDENCE.

"Sacred and secret hand! By whose assisting, swift command The Angel shewd that holy Well, Which freed poor Hagar from her fears, And turn'd to smiles the begging tears Of yong distressed Ishmael."

There is something very beautiful and touching in the opening of this on Providence, and in the "yong distressed Ishmael."

THE DAWNING.

"Ah! what time wilt thou come? when shall that crie, The Bridegroome's Comming! fill the sky? Shall it in the Evening run When our words and works are done? Or will thy all-surprizing light Break at midnight, When either sleep, or some dark pleasure Possesseth mad man without measure? Or shall these early, fragrant hours Unlock thy bowres? And with their blush of light descry Thy locks crown'd with eternitie? Indeed, it is the only time That with thy glory doth best chime; All now are stirring, ev'ry field Full hymns doth yield; The whole Creation shakes off night, And for thy shadow looks the light."

This last line is full of grandeur and originality.

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.

"Lord, when thou didst on Sinai pitch, And shine from Paran, when a firie Law, Pronounc'd with thunder and thy threats, did thaw Thy People's hearts, when all thy weeds were rich, And Inaccessible for light, Terrour, and might;— How did poore flesh, which after thou didst weare, Then faint and fear! Thy Chosen flock, like leafs in a high wind, Whisper'd obedience, and their heads inclin'd."

The idea in the last lines, we may suppose, was suggested by what Isaiah says of the effect produced on Ahaz and the men of Judah, when they heard that Rezin, king of Syria, had joined Israel against them. "And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved by the winds."

HOLY SCRIPTURES.

"Welcome, dear book, soul's Joy and food! The feast Of Spirits; Heav'n extracted lyes in thee. Thou art life's Charter, The Dove's spotless nest Where souls are hatch'd unto Eternitie.

"In thee the hidden stone, the Manna lies; Thou art the great Elixir rare and Choice; The Key that opens to all Mysteries, The Word in Characters, God in the Voice."

This is very like Herbert, and not inferior to him.

In a poem having the odd mark of "," and which seems to have been written after the death of some dear friends, are these two stanzas, the last of which is singularly pathetic:—

"They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit lingring here! Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear.

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

Referring to Nicodemus visiting our Lord:—

THE NIGHT. (JOHN iii. 2.)

"Most blest believer he! Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes Thy long expected healing wings could see, When thou didst rise; And, what can never more be done, Did at midnight speak with the Sun!

"O who will tell me where He found thee at that dead and silent hour? What hallow'd solitary ground did bear So rare a flower; Within whose sacred leaves did lie The fulness of the Deity?

"No mercy-seat of gold, No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone, But his own living works, did my Lord hold And lodge alone; Where trees and herbs did watch and peep And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

"Dear night! this world's defeat; The stop to busie fools; care's check and curb; The day of Spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ's[46] progress and his prayer time; The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

"God's silent, searching flight: When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all His locks are wet with the clear drops of night; His still, soft call; His knocking time; the soul's dumb watch, When spirits their Fair Kindred catch.

"Were all my loud, evil days, Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent, Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice Is seldom rent; Then I in Heaven all the long year Would keep, and never wander here."

[46] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37.

At the end he has these striking words—

"There is in God, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness——"

This brings to our mind the concluding sentence of Mr. Ruskin's fifth chapter in his second volume—"The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea." Plato, if we rightly remember, says—"Truth is the body of God, light is His shadow."

DEATH.

"Though since thy first sad entrance By just Abel's blood, 'Tis now six thousand years well nigh, And still thy sovereignty holds good; Yet by none art thou understood.

"We talk and name thee with much ease, As a tryed thing, And every one can slight his lease, As if it ended in a Spring, Which shades and bowers doth rent-free bring.

"To thy dark land these heedless go, But there was One Who search'd it quite through to and fro, And then, returning like the Sun, Discover'd all that there is done.

"And since his death we throughly see All thy dark way; Thy shades but thin and narrow be, Which his first looks will quickly fray: Mists make but triumphs for the day."

THE WATER-FALL.

"With what deep murmurs, through time's silent stealth, Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth Here flowing fall, And chide and call, As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid."

THE SHOWER.

"Waters above! Eternal springs! The dew that silvers the Dove's wings! O welcome, welcome to the sad! Give dry dust drink, drink that makes glad. Many fair Evenings, many flowers Sweetened with rich and gentle showers, Have I enjoyed, and down have run Many a fine and shining Sun; But never, till this happy hour, Was blest with such an evening shower!"

What a curious felicity about the repetition of "drink" in the fourth line.

"Isaac's Marriage" is one of the best of the pieces, but is too long for insertion.

"THE RAINBOW"

has seldom been better sung:

"Still young and fine! but what is still in view We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new. How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye Thy burnisht, flaming Arch did first descry! When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot, The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot, Did with intentive looks watch every hour For thy new light, and trembled at each shower! When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair, Forms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air: Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers. Bright pledge of peace and Sunshine! the sure tye Of thy Lord's hand, the object[47] of His eye! When I behold thee, though my light be dim, Distant and low, I can in thine see Him Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne, And mindes the Covenant 'twixt All and One."

[47] Gen. ix. 16.

What a knot of the gray fathers!

"Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot!"

Our readers will see whence Campbell stole, and how he spoiled in the stealing (by omitting the word "youthful"), the well-known line in his "Rainbow"—

"How came the world's gray fathers forth To view the sacred sign."

Campbell did not disdain to take this, and no one will say much against him, though it looks ill, occurring in a poem on the rainbow; but we cannot so easily forgive him for saying that "Vaughan is one of the harshest even of the inferior order of conceit, having some few scattered thoughts that meet our eye amidst his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath."

"Rules and Lessons" is his longest and one of his best poems; but we must send our readers to the book itself, where they will find much to make them grateful to "The Silurist" and to Mr. Pickering, who has already done such good service for the best of our elder literature.

We have said little about the deep godliness, the spiritual Christianity, with which every poem is penetrated and quickened. Those who can detect and relish this best, will not be the worse pleased at our saying little about it. Vaughan's religion is deep, lively, personal, tender, kindly, impassioned, temperate, central. His religion grows up, effloresces into the ideas and forms of poetry as naturally, as noiselessly, as beautifully as the life of the unseen seed finds its way up into the "bright consummate flower."

* * * * *

Of "IX. Poems by V.," we would say with the Quarterly, {baia men alla RHODA}. They combine rare excellences; the concentration, the finish, the gravity of a man's thought, with the tenderness, the insight, the constitutional sorrowfulness of a woman's—her purity, her passionateness, her delicate and keen sense and expression. We confess we would rather have been the author of any one of the nine poems in this little volume, than of the somewhat tremendous, absurd, raw, loud, and fuliginous "Festus," with his many thousands of lines and his amazing reputation, his bad English, bad religion, bad philosophy, and very bad jokes—his "buttered thunder" (this is his own phrase), and his poor devil of a Lucifer—we would, we repeat (having in this our subita ac saeva indignatio run ourselves a little out of breath), as much rather keep company with "V." than with Mr. Bailey, as we would prefer going to sea for pleasure, in a trim little yacht, with its free motions, its quiet, its cleanliness, to taking a state berth in some Fire-King steamer of one thousand horse-power, with his mighty and troublous throb, his smoke, his exasperated steam, his clangor, and fire and fury, his oils and smells.

Had we time, and were this the fit place, we could, we think, make something out of this comparison of the boat with its sail and its rudder, and the unseen, wayward, serviceable winds playing about it, inspiring it, and swaying its course,—and the iron steamer, with its machinery, its coarse energy, its noises and philosophy, its ungainly build and gait, its perilousness from within; and we think we could show how much of what Aristotle, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Lamb, or Edmund Burke would have called genuine poetry there is in the slender "V.," and how little in the big "Festus." We have made repeated attempts, but we cannot get through this poem. It beats us. We must want the Festus sense. Some of our best friends, with whom we generally agree on such matters, are distressed for us, and repeat long passages with great energy and apparent intelligence and satisfaction. Meanwhile, having read the six pages of public opinion at the end of the third and People's edition, we take it for granted that it is a great performance, that, to use one of the author's own words, there is a mighty "somethingness" about it—and we can entirely acquiesce in the quotation from The Sunday Times, that they "read it with astonishment, and closed it with bewilderment." It would appear from these opinions, which from their intensity, variety, and number (upwards of 50), are curious signs of the times, that Mr. Bailey has not so much improved on, as happily superseded the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes, of the Divine Comedy, of Paradise Lost and Regained, of Dr. Faustus, Hamlet, and Faust, of Don Juan, the Course of Time, St. Leon, the Jolly Beggars, and the Loves of the Angels.

He is more sublime and simple than Job—more royally witty and wise, more to the quick and the point than Solomon—more picturesque, more intense, more pathetic than Dante—more Miltonic (we have no other word) than Milton—more dreadful, more curiously blasphemous, more sonorous than Marlowe—more worldly-wise and clever, and intellectually svelt than Goethe. More passionate, more eloquent, more impudent than Byron—more orthodox, more edifying, more precocious than Pollok—more absorptive and inveterate than Godwin; and more hearty and tender, more of love and manhood all compact than Burns—more gay than Moore—more {myrianous} than Shakspeare.

It may be so. We have made repeated and resolute incursions in various directions into his torrid zone, but have always come out greatly scorched and stunned and affronted. Never before did we come across such an amount of energetic and tremendous words, going "sounding on their dim and perilous way," like a cataract at midnight—not flowing like a stream, nor leaping like a clear waterfall, but always among breakers—roaring and tearing and tempesting with a sort of transcendental din; and then what power of energizing and speaking, and philosophizing and preaching, and laughing and joking and love-making, in vacuo! As far as we can judge, and as far as we can keep our senses in such a region, it seems to us not a poem at all, hardly even poetical—but rather the materials for a poem, made up of science, religion, and love, the (very raw) materials of a structure—as if the bricks and mortar, and lath and plaster, and furniture, and fire and fuel and meat and drink, and inhabitants male and female, of a house were all mixed "through other" in one enormous imbroglio. It is a sort of fire-mist, out of which poetry, like a star, might by curdling, condensation, crystallization, have been developed, after much purging, refining, and cooling, much time and pains. Mr. Bailey is, we believe, still a young man full of energy—full, we doubt not, of great and good aims; let him read over a passage, we dare say he knows it well, in the second book of Milton on Church Government, he will there, among many other things worthy of his regard, find that "the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within," which is the haunt and main region of his song, may be "painted out and described" with "a solid and treatable smoothness." If he paint out and describe after this manner, he may yet more than make up for this sin of his youth; and let him take our word for it and fling away nine tenths of his adjectives, and in the words of Old Shirley—

"Compose his poem clean without 'em. A row of stately SUBSTANTIVES would march Like Switzers, and bear all the fields before 'em; Carry their weight; show fair, like Deeds enroll'd; Not Writs, that are first made and after filed. Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse;— You know, sir, what Blank signifies;—when the sense, First framed, is tied with adjectives like points, Hang 't, 'tis pedantic vulgar poetry. Let children, when they versify, stick here And there, these piddling words for want of matter. Poets write masculine numbers."

Here are some of "V.'s" Roses—

THE GRAVE.

"I stood within the grave's o'ershadowing vault; Gloomy and damp it stretch'd its vast domain; Shades were its boundary; for my strain'd eye sought For other limit to its width in vain.

"Faint from the entrance came a daylight ray, And distant sound of living men and things; This, in th' encountering darkness pass'd away, That, took the tone in which a mourner sings.

"I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp, Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp, I bore it through the regions of the tomb.

"Around me stretch'd the slumbers of the dead, Whereof the silence ached upon my ear; More and more noiseless did I make my tread, And yet its echoes chill'd my heart with fear.

"The former men of every age and place, From all their wand'rings gather'd, round me lay; The dust of wither'd Empires did I trace, And stood 'mid Generations pass'd away.

"I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire, Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath; Whole armies whom a day beheld expire, Swept by ten thousands to the arms of Death.

"I saw the old world's white and wave-swept bones A giant heap of creatures that had been; Far and confused the broken skeletons Lay strewn beyond mine eye's remotest ken.

"Death's various shrines—the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp— Were scatter'd round, confused, amid the dead; Symbols and Types were mould'ring in the damp, Their shapes were waning and their meaning fled.

"Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or woe, Were character'd on tablets Time had swept; And deep were half their letters hid below The thick small dust of those they once had wept.

"No hand was here to wipe the dust away, No reader of the writing traced beneath; No spirit sitting by its form of clay; No sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death.

"One place alone had ceased to hold its prey; A form had press'd it and was there no more; The garments of the Grave beside it lay, Where once they wrapp'd him on the rocky floor.

"He only with returning footsteps broke Th' eternal calm wherewith the Tomb was bound; Among the sleeping Dead alone He woke, And bless'd with outstretch'd hands the host around.

"Well is it that such blessing hovers here, To soothe each sad survivor of the throng, Who haunt the portals of the solemn sphere, And pour their woe the loaded air along.

"They to the verge have follow'd what they love, And on th' insuperable threshold stand; With cherish'd names its speechless calm reprove, And stretch in the abyss their ungrasp'd hand.

"But vainly there they seek their soul's relief, And of th' obdurate Grave its prey implore; Till Death himself shall medicine their grief, Closing their eyes by those they wept before.

"All that have died, the Earth's whole race, repose Where Death collects his Treasures, heap on heap; O'er each one's busy day, the nightshades close; Its Actors, Sufferers, Schools, Kings, Armies—sleep."

The lines in italics are of the highest quality, both in thought and word; the allusion to Him who by dying abolished death, seems to us wonderfully fine—sudden, simple,—it brings to our mind the lines already quoted from Vaughan:—

"But there was One Who search'd it quite through to and fro, And then returning like the Sun, Discover'd all that there is done."

What a rich line this is!

"And pour their woe the loaded air along."

"The insuperable threshold!"

Do our readers remember the dying Corinne's words? Je mourrais seule—au reste, ce moment se passe de secours; nos amis ne peuvent nous suivre que jusqu'au seuil de la vie. La, commencent des pensees dont le trouble et la profondeur ne sauraient se confier.

We have only space for one more—verses entitled "Heart's-Ease."

HEART'S-EASE.

"Oh, Heart's-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower? How shall I draw thee thence?—so much I need The healing aid of thine enshrined power To veil the past—and bid the time good speed!

"I gather it—it withers on my breast; The heart's-ease dies when it is laid on mine; Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess'd, Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.

"Take from me things gone by—oh! change the past— Renew the lost—restore me the decay'd,— Bring back the days whose tide has ebb'd so fast— Give form again to the fantastic shade!

"My hope, that never grew to certainty,— My youth, that perish'd in its vain desire,— My fond ambition, crush'd ere it could be Aught save a self-consuming, wasted fire:

"Bring these anew, and set me once again In the delusion of Life's Infancy— I was not happy, but I knew not then That happy I was never doom'd to be.

"Till these things are, and powers divine descend— Love, kindness, joy, and hope, to gild my day, In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend, Thy Spirit, Heart's-Ease, is too far away!"

We would fain have given two poems entitled "Bessy" and "Youth and Age." Everything in this little volume is select and good. Sensibility and sense in right measure and proportion and keeping, and in pure, strong classical language; no intemperance of thought or phrase. Why does not "V." write more?

We do not very well know how to introduce our friend Mr. Ellison, "The Bornnatural," who addresses his "Madmoments to the Light-headed of Society at large." We feel as a father, a mother, or other near of kin would at introducing an ungainly gifted and much loved son or kinsman, who had the knack of putting his worst foot foremost, and making himself imprimis ridiculous.

There is something wrong in all awkwardness, a want of nature somewhere, and we feel affronted even still, after we have taken the Bornnatural[48] to our heart, and admire and love him, at his absurd gratuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight one farrago of oddities and offences—coarse foreign paper—bad printing—italics broad-cast over every page—the words run into each other in a way we are glad to say is as yet quite original, making such extraordinary monsters of words as these—beingsriddle—sunbeammotes—gooddeed—midjune— summerair—selffavor—seraphechoes—puredeedprompter—barkskeel, &c. Now we like Anglo-Saxon and the polygamous German,[49] but we like better the well of English undefiled—a well, by the by, much oftener spoken of than drawn from; but to fashion such words as these words are, is as monstrous as for a painter to compose an animal not out of the elements, but out of the entire bodies of several, of an ass, for instance, a cock and a crocodile, so as to produce an outrageous individual, with whom even a duck-billed Platypus would think twice before he fraternized—ornithorynchous and paradoxical though he be, poor fellow.

[48] In his Preface he explains the title Bornnatural, as meaning "one who inherits the natural sentiments and tastes to which he was born, still artunsullied and customfree."

[49] ex. gr.—Konstantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifergeselle. Here is a word as long as the sea-serpent—but, like it, having a head and tail, being what lawyers call unum quid—not an up and down series of infatuated phocae, as Professor Owen somewhat insolently asserts. Here is what the Bornnatural would have made of it—

A Constantinopolitanbagpiperoutofhisapprenticeship.

And yet our Bornnatural's two thick and closely small-printed volumes are as full of poetry as is an "impassioned grape" of its noble liquor.

He is a true poet. But he has not the art of singling his thoughts, an art as useful in composition as in husbandry, as necessary for young fancies as young turnips. Those who have seen our turnip fields in early summer, with the hoers at their work, will understand our reference. If any one wishes to read these really remarkable volumes, we would advise them to begin with "Season Changes" and "Emma, a Tale." We give two Odes on Psyche, which are as nearly perfect as anything out of Milton or Tennyson.

The story is the well-known one of Psyche and Cupid, told at such length, and with so much beauty and pathos and picturesqueness by Apuleius, in his "Golden Ass." Psyche is the human soul—a beautiful young woman. Cupid is spiritual, heavenly love—a comely youth. They are married, and live in perfect happiness, but by a strange decree of fate, he comes and goes unseen, tarrying only for the night; and he has told her, that if she looks on him with her bodily eye, if she tries to break through the darkness in which they dwell, then he must leave her, and forever. Her two sisters—Anger and Desire, tempt Psyche. She yields to their evil counsel, and thus it fares with her:—

ODE TO PSYCHE.

"1. Let not a sigh be breathed, or he is flown! With tiptoe stealth she glides, and throbbing breast, Towards the bed, like one who dares not own Her purpose, and half shrinks, yet cannot rest From her rash Essay: in one trembling hand She bears a lamp, which sparkles on a sword; In the dim light she seems a wandering dream Of loveliness: 'tis Psyche and her Lord, Her yet unseen, who slumbers like a beam Of moonlight, vanishing as soon as scann'd!

"2. One Moment, and all bliss hath fled her heart, Like windstole odours from the rosebud's cell, Or as the earthdashed dewdrop which no art Can e'er replace: alas! we learn fullwell How beautiful the Past when it is o'er, But with scal'd eyes we hurry to the brink, Blind as the waterfall: oh, stay thy feet, Thou rash one, be content to know no more Of bliss than thy heart teaches thee, nor think The sensual eye can grasp a form more sweet—

"3. Than that which for itself the soul should chuse For higher adoration; but in vain! Onward she moves, and as the lamp's faint hues Flicker around, her charmed eyeballs strain, For there he lies in undreamt loveliness! Softly she steals towards him, and bends o'er His slumberlidded eyes, as a lily droops Faint o'er a folded rose: one caress She would but dares not take, and as she stood, An oildrop from the lamp fell burning sore!

"4. Thereat sleepfray'd, dreamlike the God takes Wing And soars to his own skies, while Psyche strives To clasp his foot, and fain thereon would cling, But falls insensate;

* * * * *

Psyche! thou shouldst have taken that high gift Of Love as it was meant, that mystery Did ask thy faith, the Gods do test our worth, And ere they grant high boons our heart would sift!

"5. Hadst thou no divine Vision of thine own? Didst thou not see the Object of thy Love Clothed with a Beauty to dull clay unknown? And could not that bright Image, far above The Reach of sere Decay, content thy Thought? Which with its glory would have wrapp'd thee round, To the Gravesbrink, untouched by Age or Pain! Alas! we mar what Fancy's Womb has brought Forth of most beautiful, and to the Bound Of Sense reduce the Helen of the Brain!"

What a picture! Psyche, pale with love and fear, bending in the uncertain light, over her lord, with the rich flush of health and sleep and manhood on his cheek, "as a lily droops faint o'er a folded rose!" We remember nothing anywhere finer than this.

ODE TO PSYCHE.

"1. Why stand'st thou thus at Gaze In the faint Tapersrays, With strained Eyeballs fixed upon that Bed? Has he then flown away, Lost, like a Star in Day, Or like a Pearl in Depths unfathomed? Alas! thou hast done very ill, Thus with thine Eyes the Vision of thy Soul to kill!

"2. Thought'st thou that earthly Light Could then assist thy Sight, Or that the Limits of Reality Could grasp Things fairer than Imagination's Span, Who communes with the Angels of the Sky, Thou graspest at the Rainbow, and Wouldst make it as the Zone with which thy Waist is spanned.

"3. And what find'st thou in his Stead? Only the empty Bed!

* * * * *

Thou sought'st the Earthly and therefore The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar!

"4. For the bright World of Pure and boundless Love What hast thou found? alas! a narrow room! Put out that Light, Restore thy Soul its Sight, For better 'tis to dwell in outward Gloom, Than thus, by the vile Body's eye, To rob the Soul of its Infinity!

"5. Love, Love has Wings, and he Soon out of Sight will flee, Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye, But the Soul's Vision true Can track him, yea, up to The Presence and the Throne of the Most High: For thence he is, and tho' he dwell below, To the Soul only he his genuine Form will show!"

Mr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he wrote this. That, with so much command of expression and of measure, he should run waste and formless and even void, as he does in other parts of his volumes, is very mysterious and very distressing.

* * * * *

How we became possessed of the poetical Epistle from "E. V. K. to his Friend in Town," is more easily asked than answered. We avow ourselves in the matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon's maxim—"La propriete c'est le vol." We merely say, in our defence, that it is a shame in "E. V. K.," be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin, or keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as he that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and well-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have genius and judgment to begin with—a part of the poetical stock in trade with which many of our living writers are not largely furnished. The Epistle is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the off-hand of a master, both as to material and workmanship. He is of the good old manly, classical school. His thoughts have settled and cleared themselves before forming into the mould of verse. They are in the style of Stewart Rose's vers de societe, but have more of the graphic force and deep feeling and fine humor of Crabbe and Cowper in their substance, with a something of their own which is to us quite as delightful. But our readers may judge. After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain faithless town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus describes his residence:—

"Though its charms be few, The place will please you, and may profit too;— My house, upon the hillside built, looks down On a neat harbor and a lively town. Apart, 'mid screen of trees, it stands, just where We see the popular bustle, but not share. Full in our front is spread a varied scene— A royal ruin, gray, or clothed with green, Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees, Back'd by green fields, which mount by due degrees Into brown uplands, stretching high away To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray. Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay, Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar, And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar."

Then follows a long passage of great eloquence, truth, and wit, directed against the feverish, affected, unwholesome life in town, before which he fears

"Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew, Surrounded by blue women and pale men,"

has fallen a victim; and then concludes with these lines, which it would not be easy to match for everything that constitutes good poetry. As he writes he chides himself for suspecting his friend; and at that moment (it seems to have been written on Christmas day) he hears the song of a thrush, and forthwith he "bursts into a song," as full-voiced, as native, as sweet and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered friend.

"But, hark that sound! the mavis! can it be? Once more! It is. High perched on yon bare tree, He starts the wondering winter with his trill; Or by that sweet sun westering o'er the hill Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth Due to the holy season of Christ's birth.— And hark! as his clear fluting fills the air, Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear From other emulous birds, the brakes among; Fain would they also burst into a song; But winter warns, and muffling up their throats, They liquid—for the spring—preserve their notes. O sweet preluding! having heard that strain, How dare I lift my dissonant voice again? Let me be still, let me enjoy the time, Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme."

This author must not be allowed to "muffle up his throat," and keep his notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse of the mavis. He must give us more of his own "clear fluting." Let him, with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as Cowper did, upon the restless, noisy world he has left, seeing the popular bustle, not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses as these what his understanding and his affections think and feel and his imagination informs, and we shall have something in verse not unlike the letters from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be immortalized over the cherished bins of our wine-fanciers, where repose their

"Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape."

What is good makes us think of what is better, as well, and it is to be hoped more, than of what is worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as that of a large and deep nature; there is no knowledge so good, so strengthening as that of a great mind, which is forever filling itself afresh. "Out of the eater comes forth meat; out of the strong comes forth sweetness." Here is one of such "dulcedines verae"—the sweetness of a strong man:—

"Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glow'd the firmament With living saphirs; Hesperus that led The starry host rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."

Were we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and be thankful—giving ourselves up to its gentleness, informing ourselves with its quietness and beauty,—we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the quietness of its language, the "sober livery" in which its thoughts are clad. In the first thirty-eight words, twenty-nine are monosyllables. Then there is the gradual way in which the crowning fantasy is introduced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not wholly unexpected; it "sweetly creeps" into our "study of imagination;" it lives and moves, but it is a moving that is "delicate;" it flows in upon us incredibili lenitate. "Evening" is a matter of fact, and its stillness too—a time of the day; and "twilight" is little more. We feel the first touch of spiritual life in "her sober livery," and bolder and deeper in "all things clad." Still we are not deep, the real is not yet transfigured and transformed, and we are brought back into it after being told that "Silence accompanied," by the explanatory "for," and the bit of sweet natural history of the beasts and birds. The mind dilates and is moved, its eye detained over the picture; and then comes that rich, "thick warbled note"—"all but the wakeful nightingale;" this fills and informs the ear, making it also "of apprehension more quick," and we are prepared now for the great idea coming "into the eye and prospect of our soul"—SILENCE WAS PLEASED! There is nothing in all poetry above this. Still evening and twilight gray are now Beings, coming on, and walking over the earth like queens, "with Silence,"

"Admiration's speaking'st tongue,"

as their pleased companion. All is "calm and free," and "full of life," it is a "Holy Time." What a picture!—what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect!—what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art!—what modesty and submission! what self-possession!—what plainness, what selectness of speech! "As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and equal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law. As the independence, so must be the seeing and the service, and the submission to the Supreme Will. As the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the intercommunion with Nature."—Coleridge's Posthumous Tract "The Idea of Life."

* * * * *

Since writing the above, our friend "E. V. K." has shown himself curiously unaffected by "that last infirmity of noble minds,"—his "clear spirit" heeds all too little its urgent "spur." The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the stealing:—

AN ARGUMENT IN RHYME.

I.

"Things that now are beget the things to be, As they themselves were gotten by things past; Thou art a sire, who yesterday but wast A child like him now prattling on thy knee; And he in turn ere long shall offspring see. Effects at first, seem causes at the last, Yet only seem; when off their veil is cast, All speak alike of mightier energy, Received and pass'd along. The life that flows Through space and time, bursts in a loftier source. What's spaced and timed is bounded, therefore shows A power beyond, a timeless, spaceless force, Templed in that infinitude, before Whose light-veil'd porch men wonder and adore.

II.

"Wonder! but—for we cannot comprehend, Dare not to doubt. Man, know thyself! and know That, being what thou art, it must be so. We creatures are, and it were to transcend The limits of our being, and ascend Above the Infinite, if we could show All that He is and how things from Him flow. Things and their laws by Man are grasp'd and kenn'd, But creatures must no more; and Nature's must Is Reason's choice; for could we all reveal Of God and acts creative, doubt were just. Were these conceivable, they were not real. Here, ignorance man's sphere of being suits, 'Tis knowledge self, or of her richest fruits.

III.

"Then rest here, brother! and within the veil Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail. Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond, And gains a rest in being unbeyond, Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail; Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find. Not far but near, about us, yea within, Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind Dwell in the Presence, to themselves akin; And lo! thou sick and health-imploring soul, He stands beside thee—touch, and thou art whole."



DR. CHALMERS.

"Fervet immensusque ruit."—HOR.

"His memory long will live alone In all our hearts, as mournful light That broods above the fallen sun, And dwells in heaven half the night."

TENNYSON.

"He was not one man, he was a thousand men."—SYDNEY SMITH.

When, towards the close of some long summer day, we come suddenly, and, as we think, before his time, upon the broad sun, "sinking down in his tranquillity" into the unclouded west, we cannot keep our eyes from the great spectacle,—and when he is gone the shadow of him haunts our sight: we see everywhere,—upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant mountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet,—that dim, strange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves, we still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark place, the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set,—and were we to sit down, as we have often done, and try to record by pencil or by pen, our impression of that supreme hour, still would IT be there. We must have patience with our eye, it will not let the impression go,—that spot on which the radiant disk was impressed, is insensible to all other outward things, for a time: its best relief is, to let the eye wander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself on the mild shadowy distance.

So it is when a great and good and beloved man departs, sets—it may be suddenly—and to us who know not the times and the seasons, too soon. We gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he is gone, never to rise again on our sight, we see his image wherever we go, and in whatsoever we are engaged, and if we try to record by words our wonder, our sorrow, and our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the "idea of his life" is forever coming into our "study of imagination "—into all our thoughts, and we can do little else than let our mind, in a wise passiveness, hush itself to rest. The sun returns—he knows his rising—

"To-morrow he repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;"

but man lieth down, and riseth not again till the heavens are no more. Never again will he whose "Meditations" are now before us, lift up the light of his countenance upon us.

We need not say we look upon him, as a great man, as a good man, as a beloved man,—quis desiderio sit pudor tam cari capitis? We cannot now go very curiously to work, to scrutinize the composition of his character,—we cannot take that large, free, genial nature to pieces, and weigh this and measure that, and sum up and pronounce; we are too near as yet to him, and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be so handled. "His death," to use the pathetic words of Hartley Coleridge, "is a recent sorrow; his image still lives in eyes that weep for him." The prevailing feeling is,—He is gone—"abiit ad plures—he has gone over to the majority, he has joined the famous nations of the dead."

It is no small loss to the world, when one of its master spirits—one of its great lights—a king among the nations—leaves it. A sun is extinguished; a great attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For though it be a common, it is also a natural thought, to compare a great man to the sun; it is in many respects significant. Like the sun, he rules his day, and he is "for a sign and for seasons, and for days and for years;" he enlightens, quickens, attracts, and leads after him his host—his generation.

To pursue our image. When the sun sets to us, he rises elsewhere—he goes on rejoicing, like a strong man, running his race. So does a great man: when he leaves us and our concerns—he rises elsewhere; and we may reasonably suppose that one who has in this world played a great part in its greatest histories—who has through a long life been preeminent for promoting the good of men and the glory of God—will be looked upon with keen interest, when he joins the company of the immortals. They must have heard of his fame; they may in their ways have seen and helped him already.

Every one must have trembled when reading that passage in Isaiah, in which Hell is described as moved to meet Lucifer at his coming: there is not in human language anything more sublime in conception, more exquisite in expression; it has on it the light of the terrible crystal. But may we not reverse the scene? May we not imagine, when a great and good man—a son of the morning—enters on his rest, that Heaven would move itself to meet him at his coming? That it would stir up its dead, even all the chief ones of the earth, and that the kings of the nations would arise each one from his throne to welcome their brother? that those who saw him would "narrowly consider him," and say, "is this he who moved nations, enlightened and bettered his fellows, and whom the great Taskmaster welcomes with 'Well done!'"

We cannot help following him, whose loss we now mourn, into that region, and figuring to ourselves his great, childlike spirit, when that unspeakable scene bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward, instant sense, he is conscious of God—of the immediate presence of the All-seeing Unseen; when he beholds "His honorable, true, and only Son," face to face, enshrined in "that glorious form, that light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty," that brightness of His glory, that express image of His person; when he is admitted into the goodly fellowship of the apostles—the glorious company of the prophets—the noble army of martyrs—the general assembly of just men—and beholds with his loving eyes the myriads of "little ones," outnumbering their elders as the dust of stars with which the galaxy is filled exceeds in multitude the hosts of heaven.

What a change! death the gate of life—a second birth, in the twinkling of an eye: this moment, weak, fearful, in the amazement of death; the next, strong, joyful,—at rest,—all things new! To adopt his own words: all his life, up to the last, "knocking at a door not yet opened, with an earnest indefinite longing,—his very soul breaking for the longing,—drinking of water, and thirsting again"—and then—suddenly and at once-a door opened into heaven, and the Master heard saying, "Come in, and come up hither!" drinking of the river of life, clear as crystal, of which if a man drink he will never thirst,—being filled with all the fulness of God!

* * * * *

Dr. Chalmers was a ruler among men: this we know historically; this every man who came within his range felt at once. He was like Agamemnon, a native {anax andron}, and with all his homeliness of feature and deportment, and his perfect simplicity of expression, there was about him "that divinity that doth hedge a king." You felt a power, in him, and going from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. He was in this respect a solar man, he drew after him his own firmament of planets. They, like all free agents, had their centrifugal forces acting ever towards an independent, solitary course, but the centripetal also was there, and they moved with and around their imperial sun,—gracefully or not, willingly or not, as the case might be, but there was no breaking loose: they again, in their own spheres of power, might have their attendant moons, but all were bound to the great massive luminary in the midst.

There is to us a continual mystery in this power of one man over another. We find it acting everywhere, with the simplicity, the ceaselessness, the energy of gravitation; and we may be permitted to speak of this influence as obeying similar conditions; it is proportioned to bulk—for we hold to the notion of a bigness in souls as well as bodies—one soul differing from another in quantity and momentum as well as in quality and force, and its intensity increases by nearness. There is much in what Jonathan Edwards says of one spiritual essence having more being than another, and in Dr. Chalmers's question, "Is he a man of wecht?"

But when we meet a solar man, of ample nature—soul, body, and spirit; when we find him from his earliest years moving among his fellows like a king, moving them whether they will or not—this feeling of mystery is deepened; and though we would not, like some men (who should know better), worship the creature and convert a hero into a god, we do feel more than in other cases the truth, that it is the inspiration of the Almighty which has given to that man understanding, and that all power, all energy, all light, come to him, from the First and the Last—the Living One. God comes to be regarded by us, in this instance, as he ought always to be, "the final centre of repose"—the source of all being, of all life—the Terminus ad quem and the Terminus a quo. And assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of gravitation reigns supreme—making it indeed a kosmos—majestic, orderly, comely in its going—ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic comets, than the gentle, punctual moons—so certainly, and to us moral creatures to a degree transcendantly more important, does the whole intelligent universe move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights.

It would be well if the world would, among the many other uses they make of its great men, make more of this,—that they are manifestors of God—revealers of His will—vessels of His omnipotence—and are among the very chiefest of His ways and works.

As we have before said, there is a perpetual wonder in this power of one man over his fellows, especially when we meet with it in a great man. You see its operations constantly in history, and through it the Great Ruler has worked out many of His greatest and strangest acts. But however we may understand the accessory conditions by which the one man rules the many, and controls, and fashions them to his purposes, and transforms them into his likeness—multiplying as it were himself—there remains at the bottom of it all a mystery—a reaction between body and soul that we cannot explain. Generally, however, we find accompanying its manifestation, a capacious understanding—a strong will—an emotional nature quick, powerful, urgent, undeniable, in perpetual communication with the energetic will and the large resolute intellect—and a strong, hearty, capable body; a countenance and person expressive of this combination—the mind finding its way at once and in full force to the face, to the gesture, to every act of the body. He must have what is called a "presence;" not that he must be great in size, beautiful, or strong; but he must be expressive and impressive—his outward man must communicate to the beholder at once and without fail, something of indwelling power, and he must be and act as one. You may in your mind analyze him into his several parts; but practically he acts in everything with his whole soul and his whole self; whatsoever his hand finds to do, he does it with his might. Luther, Moses, David, Mahomet, Cromwell—all verified these conditions.

And so did Dr. Chalmers. There was something about his whole air and manner, that disposed you at the very first to make way where he went—he held you before you were aware. That this depended fully as much upon the activity and the quantity—if we may so express ourselves—of his affections, upon that combined action of mind and body which we call temperament, and upon a straightforward, urgent will, as upon what is called the pure intellect, will be generally allowed; but with all this, he could not have been and done, what he was and did, had he not had an understanding, in vigor and in capacity, worthy of its great and ardent companions. It was large, and free, mobile, and intense, rather than penetrative, judicial, clear, or fine,—so that in one sense he was more a man to make others act than think; but his own actings had always their origin in some fixed, central, inevitable proposition, as he would call it, and he began his onset with stating plainly, and with lucid calmness, what he held to be a great seminal truth; from this he passed at once, not into exposition, but into illustration and enforcement—into, if we may make a word, overwhelming insistance. Something was to be done, rather than explained.

There was no separating his thoughts and expressions from his person, and looks, and voice. How perfectly we can at this moment recall him! Thundering, flaming, lightening in the pulpit; teaching, indoctrinating, drawing after him his students in his lecture-room; sitting among other public men, the most unconscious, the most king-like of them all, with that broad leonine countenance, that beaming, liberal smile; or on the way out to his home, in his old-fashioned great-coat, with his throat muffled up, his big walking-stick moved outwards in an arc, its point fixed, its head circumferential, a sort of companion, and playmate, with which doubtless, he demolished legions of imaginary foes, errors, and stupidities in men and things, in Church and State. His great look, large chest, large head, his amplitude every way; his broad, simple, childlike, inturned feet; his short, hurried impatient step; his erect, royal air; his look of general good-will; his kindling up into a warm but vague benignity when one he did not recognize spoke to him; the addition, for it was not a change, of keen specialty to his hearty recognition; the twinkle of his eyes; the immediately saying something very personal to set all to rights, and then the sending you off with some thought, some feeling, some remembrance, making your heart burn within you; his voice indescribable: his eye—that most peculiar feature—not vacant, but asleep—innocent, mild, and large; and his soul, its great inhabitant, not always at his window; but then, when he did awake, how close to you was that burning vehement soul! how it penetrated and overcame you! how mild, and affectionate, and genial its expression at his own fireside!

Of his portraits worth mentioning, there are Watson Gordon's, Duncan's—the Calotypes of Mr. Hill—Kenneth M'Leay's miniatures—the Daguerreotype, and Steell's bust. These are all good, and all give bits of him, some nearly the whole, but not one of them that {ti thermon}, that fiery particle—that inspired look—that "diviner mind"—the poco piu, or little more. Watson Gordon's is too much of the mere clergyman—is a pleasant likeness, and has the shape of his mouth, and the setting of his feet very good. Duncan's is a work of genius, and is the giant looking up, awakening, but not awakened—it is a very fine picture. Mr. Hill's Calotypes we like better than all the rest; because what in them is true, is absolutely so, and they have some delicate renderings which are all but beyond the power of any human artist; for though man's art is mighty, nature's is mightier. The one of the Doctor sitting with his grandson "Tommy" is to us the best; we have the true grandeur of his form—his bulk. M'Leay's is admirable-spirited—and has that look of shrewdness and vivacity and immediateness which he had when he was observing and speaking keenly; it is, moreover, a fine, manly bit of art. M'Leay is the Raeburn of miniature painters—he does a great deal with little. The Daguerreotype is, in its own way, excellent; it gives the externality of the man to perfection, but it is Dr. Chalmers at a stand-still—his mind and feelings "pulled up" for the second that it was taken. Steell's is a noble bust—has a stern heroic expression and pathetic beauty about it, and from wanting color and shadow and the eyes, it relies upon a certain simplicity and grandeur;—in this it completely succeeds—the mouth is handled with extraordinary subtlety and sweetness, and the hair hangs over that huge brow like a glorious cloud. We think this head of Dr. Chalmers the artist's greatest bust.

In reference to the assertion we have made as to bulk forming one primary element of a powerful mind, Dr. Chalmers used to say, when a man of activity and public mark was mentioned, "Has he wecht? he has promptitude—has he power? he has power—has he promptitude? and, moreover, has he a discerning spirit?"

These are great practical, universal truths. How few even of our greatest men have had all these three faculties large—fine, sound, and in "perfect diapason." Your men of promptitude, without power or judgment, are common and are useful. But they are apt to run wild, to get needlessly brisk, unpleasantly incessant. A weasel is good or bad as the case may be,—good against vermin—bad to meddle with;—but inspired weasels, weasels on a mission, are terrible indeed, mischievous and fell, and swiftness making up for want of momentum by inveteracy; "fierce as wild bulls, untamable as flies." Of such men we have nowadays too many. Men are too much in the way of supposing that doing is being; that theology and excogitation, and fierce dogmatic assertion of what they consider truth, is godliness; that obedience is merely an occasional great act, and not a series of acts, issuing from a state, like the stream of water from its well.

"Action is transitory—a step—a blow, The motion of a muscle—this way or that; 'Tis done—and in the after vacancy, We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed. Suffering" (obedience, or being as opposed to doing)— "Suffering is permanent,—— And has the nature of infinity."

Dr. Chalmers was a man of genius—he had his own way of thinking, and saying, and doing, and looking everything. Men have vexed themselves in vain to define what genius is; like every ultimate term we may describe it by giving its effects, we can hardly succeed in reaching its essence. Fortunately, though we know not what are its elements, we know it when we meet it; and in him, in every movement of his mind, in every gesture, we had its unmistakable tokens. Two of the ordinary accompaniments of genius—Enthusiasm and Simplicity—he had in rare measure.

He was an enthusiast in its true and good sense; he was "entheat," as if full of God, as the old poets called it. It was this ardor, this superabounding life, this immediateness of thought and action, idea and emotion, setting the whole man a-going at once—that gave a power and a charm to everything he did. To adopt the old division of the Hebrew Doctors, as given by Nathanael Culverwel, in his "Light of Nature:" In man we have—1st, {pneuma zoopoioun}, the sensitive soul, that which lies nearest the body—the very blossom and flower of life; 2d, {ton noun}, animam rationis, sparkling and glittering with intellectuals, crowned with light; and 3d, {ton thymon}, impetum animi, motum mentis, the vigor and energy of the soul—its temper—the mover of the other two—the first being, as they said, resident in hepate—the second in cerebro—the third in corde, where it presides over the issues of life, commands the circulation, and animates and sets the blood a-moving. The first and second are informative, explicative, they "take in and do"—the other "gives out." Now in Dr. Chalmers, the great ingredient was the {ho thymos} as indicating vis animae et vitae,—and in close fellowship with it, and ready for its service, was a large, capacious {ho nous}, and an energetic, sensuous, rapid {to pneuma}. Hence his energy, his contagious enthusiasm—this it was which gave the peculiar character to his religion, to his politics, to his personnel; everything he did was done heartily—if he desired heavenly blessings he "panted" for them—"his soul broke for the longing." To give again the words of the spiritual and subtle Culverwel, "Religion (and indeed everything else) was no matter of indifferency to him. It was {thermon ti pragma}, a certain fiery thing, as Aristotle calls love; it required and it got the very flower and vigor of the spirit—the strength and sinews of the soul—the prime and top of the affections—this is that grace, that panting grace—we know the name of it and that's all—'tis called zeal—a flaming edge of the affection—the ruddy complexion of the soul." Closely connected with this temperament, and with a certain keen sensation of truth, rather than a perception of it, if we may so express ourselves, an intense consciousness of objective reality,—was his simple animating faith. He had faith in God—faith in human nature—faith, if we may say so, in his own instincts—in his ideas of men and things—in himself; and the result was, that unhesitating bearing up and steering right onward—"never bating one jot of heart or hope" so characteristic of him. He had "the substance of things hoped for." He had "the evidence of things not seen."

By his simplicity we do not mean the simplicity of the head—of that he had none; he was eminently shrewd and knowing—more so than many thought; but we refer to that quality of the heart and of the life, expressed by the words, "in simplicity a child." In his own words, from his Daily Readings,—

"When a child is filled with any strong emotion by a surprising event or intelligence, it runs to discharge it on others, impatient of their sympathy; and it marks, I fancy, the simplicity and greater naturalness of this period (Jacob's), that the grown-up men and women ran to meet each other, giving way to their first impulses—even as children do."

His emotions were as lively as a child's, and he ran to discharge them. There was in all his ways a certain beautiful unconsciousness of self—an outgoing of the whole nature that we see in children, who are by learned men said to be long ignorant of the EGO—blessed in many respects in their ignorance! This same Ego, as it now exists, being perhaps part of "the fruit of that forbidden tree;" that mere knowledge of good as well as of evil, which our great mother bought for us at such a price. In this meaning of the word, Dr. Chalmers, considering the size of his understanding—his personal eminence—his dealings with the world—his large sympathies—his scientific knowledge of mind and matter—his relish for the practical details, and for the spirit of public business—was quite singular for his simplicity; and taking this view of it, there was much that was plain and natural in his manner of thinking and acting, which otherwise was obscure, and liable to be misunderstood. We cannot better explain what we mean than by giving a passage from Fenelon, which D'Alembert, in his Eloge, quotes as characteristic of that "sweet-souled" prelate. We give the passage entire, as it seems to us to contain a very beautiful, and by no means commonplace truth:—

"Fenelon," says D'Alembert, "a caracterise lui-meme en peu de mots cette simplicite qui se rendoit si cher a tous les coeurs, 'La simplicite est la droiture d'une ame qui s'interdit tout retour sur elle et sur ses actions—cette vertu est differente de la sincerite, et la surpasse. On voit beaucoup de gens qui sont sinceres sans etre simples—Ils ne veulent passer que pour ce qu'ils sont, mais ils craignent sans cesse de passer pour ce qu'ils ne sont pas. L'homme simple n'affecte ni la vertu, ni la verite meme; il n'est jamais occupe de lui, il semble d'avoir perdu ce moi dont on est si jaloux.'"

What delicacy and justness of expression! how true and clear! how little we see nowadays, among grown-up men, of this straightness of the soul—of this losing or never finding "ce moi!" There is more than is perhaps generally thought in this. Man in a state of perfection, would no sooner think of asking himself—am I right? am I appearing to be what inwardly I am? than the eye asks itself—do I see? or a child says to itself—do I love my mother? We have lost this instinctive sense; we have set one portion of ourselves aside to watch the rest; we must keep up appearances and our consistency; we must respect—that is, look back upon—ourselves, and be respected, if possible; we must, by hook or by crook, be respectable.

Dr. Chalmers would have made a sorry Balaam; he was made of different stuff, and for other purposes. Your "respectable" men are ever doing their best to keep their status, to maintain their position. He never troubled himself about his status; indeed, we would say status was not the word for him. He had a sedes on which he sat, and from which he spoke; he had an imperium, to and fro which he roamed as he listed; but a status was as little in his way as in that of a Mauritanian lion. Your merely "sincere" men are always thinking of what they said yesterday, and what they may say to-morrow, at the very moment when they should be putting their whole self into to-day. Full of his idea, possessed by it, moved altogether by its power,—believing, he spoke, and without stint or fear, often apparently contradicting his former self—careless about everything, but speaking fully his mind. One other reason for his apparent inconsistencies was, if one may so express it, the spaciousness of his nature. He had room in that capacious head, and affection in that great, hospitable heart, for relishing and taking in the whole range of human thought and feeling. He was several men in one. Multitudinous but not multiplex, in him odd and apparently incongruous notions dwelt peaceably together. The lion lay down with the lamb. Voluntaryism and an endowment—both were best.

He was childlike in his simplicity; though in understanding a man, he was himself in many things a child. Coleridge says, every man should include all his former selves in his present, as a tree has its former years' growths inside its last; so Dr. Chalmers bore along with him his childhood, his youth, his early and full manhood into his mature old age. This gave himself, we doubt not, infinite delight—multiplied his joys, strengthened and sweetened his whole nature, and kept his heart young and tender; it enabled him to sympathize, to have a fellow-feeling with all, of whatever age. Those who best knew him, who were most habitually with him, know how beautifully this point of his character shone out in daily, hourly life. We well remember long ago loving him before we had seen him—from our having been told, that being out one Saturday at a friend's house near the Pentlands, he collected all the children and small people—the other bairns, as he called them—and with no one else of his own growth, took the lead to the nearest hill-top,—how he made each take the biggest and roundest stone he could find, and carry,—how he panted up the hill himself with one of enormous size,—how he kept up their hearts, and made them shout with glee, with the light of his countenance, and with all his pleasant and strange ways and words,—how having got the breathless little men and women to the top of the hill, he, hot and scant of breath—looked round on the world and upon them with his broad benignant smile like the {anerithmon kymaton gelasma}—the unnumbered laughter of the sea,—how he set off his own huge "fellow,"—how he watched him setting out on his race, slowly, stupidly, vaguely at first, almost as if he might die before he began to live, then suddenly giving a spring and off like a shot—bounding, tearing, {autis epeita pedonde kylindeto laas anaides}, vires acquirens eundo; how the great and good man was totus in illo; how he spoke to, upbraided him, cheered him, gloried in him, all but prayed for him,—how he joked philosophy to his wondering and ecstatic crew, when he (the stone) disappeared among some brackens—telling them they had the evidence of their senses that he was in, they might even know he was there by his effects, by the moving brackens, himself unseen; how plain it became that he had gone in, when he actually came out!—how he ran up the opposite side a bit, and then fell back, and lazily expired at the bottom,—how to their astonishment, but not displeasure—for he "set them off so well," and "was so funny"—he took from each his cherished stone, and set it off himself! showing them how they all ran alike, yet differently; how he went on, "making," as he said, "an induction of particulars," till he came to the Benjamin of the flock, a wee wee man, who had brought up a stone bigger than his own big head; then how he let him, unicus omnium, set off his own, and how wonderfully IT ran! what miraculous leaps! what escapes from impossible places! and how it ran up the other side farther than any, and by some felicity remained there.