so say, to its centre, and there unseen, keeps guard over this transient folly, draws delicate lines which are never to be passed in the freest moments, and, like a judicious parent watching the sports of childhood, preserves a stainless innocence of soul in the very exuberance of gaiety. This combination of moral power with wit and humor, with comic conceptions and irrepressible laughter, this union of mirth and virtue, belongs to an advanced stage of the character; and we believe, that in proportion to the diffusion of an enlightened religion, this action of the mind will increase, and will overflow in compositions, which, joining innocence to sportiveness, will communicate unmixed delight. Religion is not at variance with occasional mirth. In the same character, the solemn thought and the sublime emotions of the improved Christian, may be joined with the unanxious freedom, buoyancy and gaiety of early years.

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We will add but one more illustration of our views. believe that the union of religion with genius, will favor that species of composition to which it may seem at first to be least propitious. We refer to that department of literature, which has for its object the delineation of the stronger and more terrible and guilty passions. Strange as it may appear, these gloomy and appalling features of our nature may be best comprehended and portrayed by the purest and noblest minds. The common idea is, that overwhelming emotions, the more they are experienced, can the more effectually be described. We have one strong presumption against this doctrine. Tradition leads us to believe, that Shakspeare, though he painted so faithfully and fearfully the storms of passion, was a calm and cheerful man. The passions are too much engrossed by their objects to meditate on themselves; and none are more ignorant of their growth and subtle workings than their own victims. Nothing reveals to us the secrets of our own souls like religion; and in disclosing to us, in ourselves, the tendency of passion to absorb every energy, and to spread its hues over every thought, it gives us a key to all souls; for in all, human nature is essentially one, having the same spiritual elements, and the same grand features. No man, it is believed, understands the wild and irregular motions of the mind, like him in whom a principle of divine order has begun to establish peace. knows the horror of thick darkness which gathers over the slaves of vehement passion, like him who is rising into the

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light and liberty of virtue. There is indeed a selfish shrewdness, which is thought to give a peculiar and deep insight into human nature. But the knowledge, of which it boasts, is partial, distorted, and vulgar, and wholly unfit for the purposes of literature. We value it little. We believe, that no qualification avails so much to a knowledge of human nature in all its forms, in its good and evil manifestations, as that enlightened, celestial charity, which religion alone inspires; for this establishes sympathies between us and all men, and thus makes them intelligible to us. A man, imbued with this spirit, alone contemplates vice, as it really exists, and as it ought always to be described. In the most depraved fellow beings he sees partakers of his own nature.Amidst the terrible ravages of the passions, he sees conscience, though prostrate, not destroyed, nor wholly powerless. He sees the proofs of an unextinguished moral life, in inward struggles, in occasional relentings, in sighings for lost innocence, in reviving throbs of early affections, in the sophistry by which the guilty mind would become reconciled to itself, in remorse, in anxious forebodings, in despair, perhaps in studied recklessness and cherished self-forgetfulness. These conflicts between the passions and the moral nature, are the most interesting subjects in the branch of literature to which we refer, and we believe, that to portray them with truth and power, the man of genius can find in nothing such effectual aid, as in the development of the moral and religious principles in his own breast.

We have given but a superficial view of a great subject.The connection of religion with intellect and literature is yet to be pointed out. We conclude with expressing our strong conviction that the human mind will become more various, piercing, and all-comprehending, more capable of understanding and expressing the solemn and the sportive, the terrible and the beautiful, the profound and the tender, in proportion as it shall be illumined and penetrated by the true knowledge of God. Genius, intellect, imagination, taste, and sensibility, must all be baptized into religion, or they will never know, and never make known, their real glory and immortal power.

THE HOPE OF HUMAN NATURE.

THE hope of human nature grows strong within us, we dare to say so, though we have many misgiving fears. We fear, because the current of things has so long gone against it, and still does, in so many quarters. We fear, too, because every thing is at stake. But then, we hope for the same reason, because we confide too much in the good providence of God, to believe that where every thing is at stake, all will be lost. We hope, too, because the lights of promise are kindling, one after another, in our horizon, and betoken a coming day. We hope strongly, when we contemplate the noble company of men in this country, and in England, and in France, too; a company, composed of the wealthy, the wise, and the good; a class hitherto, as a class, unknown in the world, who have stepped forth from their ordinary pursuits, and are uniting their counsels and labors to raise the human mind from ignorance and debasement; who, like Nehemiah of old, cannot be content with the splendors of Babylon, who feel a public and a pitying spirit amidst the pursuits of a too often selfish ambition and prosperity, whose 'countenances grow sad' even when they 'take up the wine' in the feastings of their palaces, and who ask leave of their magnificent offices and appointments and distinctions, to go forth, and 'build up the walls and the waste places of Jerusalem.'

We have spoken of what we trust we shall be accused of nothing fanciful for denominating, 'the hope of human nature;' and we wish it were possible to awaken a new feeling in the world concerning it. We aver that it is the great hope and only refuge, whether for the philanthropist or the philosopher. For philosophy, the philosophy of a moral being, must be dark, as well as philanthropy sad, but for the brightening of this hope. We will not measure our words here. We fearlessly say, that nothing on earth ought to be precious, or agitating, or delightful, or glorious, compared with the hope of raising human nature towards the virtue and nobleness and bliss, of which it is capable, and of which it has so lamentably failed. If any one should smile at our phrase, or our meaning-provided he were worth disputing with-we The cause of would say to him, 'every thing centres here. human nature is the great cause, compared with which every

thing on earth dwindles into insignificance. Every thing is suspended upon it. Every thing must rise or fall with it. Governments, institutions, laws, sceptres, dominions, are good or evil, only as they raise or depress the human soul. Freedom is but a name, wisdom is but craft, and learning is folly, if it do not help this cause. That glory of God, of which theologians say so much, must receive its chief illustration on earth, from the advancement of human nature. The mystery of providence grows dark without this prospect. The experience of ages has been wasted, if it does not come to this result; the long series of human griefs and struggles has been wasted; and toils and labors have been spent, and holy tears and precious blood have been poured out in vain, but for this. But for this, the visions of poetry are dreams; the brightest and most soothing imaginations of genius are unproductive reveries; and the word of inspiration will not accomplish that whereto it is sent; and holy prayers of faith will have gone forth into the empty air; and the rapt soul of the seer, and the watcher, and the waiting servant of God, 'rapt into future' and better 'times,' must have grown dark and desolate as the grave.'

The hope of human nature is the christian's hope. The master of christians labored, and prayed, and suffered for it. None of all the philosophers and sages, with whom he is sometimes compared, ever took human nature by the hand, stooped to it, in its lowest forms, communed with it in its deepest miseries, saw the treasure of great price beneath the despised garb of publicans and sinners; none ever approached even so far as enthusiasm towards the all-absorbing mission and aim of him, who came to save that which was lost. And nothing but his religion, we may add, will ever make men feel as they ought towards the improvement of their kind. The world, the ambitious, covetous, voluptuous, and selfish world, will idly pass it by. The infidel philosopher will scowl with misanthropic scorn, over the picture which he has drawn of human debasement. It is only christian men, who will take this holy cause home to their hearts, and ponder it, and pray over it, and so identify themselves with their race, as almost to feel that they individually rise or fall, prosper or fail, with the great cause of human nature. know such men, and revere them; men, to whom these thoughts come, often and unbidden; who wear out many a lonely vigil with these meditations; whose words of lofty

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reasoning and promise, strike upon our ears, we had almost said, like voices of inspiration and prophecy; men who live much in this great hope of human nature, who solace even their private and individual griefs with it; who bear up under the load of depressed spirits, and beguile their very sickness and pain with this cheering expectation.

Let us, if any will, be called enthusiasts on this theme. Projects of improvement, we hope, are not very extravagant things. Is not the world all alive to them? Look at our Agricultural Societies, and the zeal of men to improve soils. It is well; but we would there were a proportionable zeal to cultivate the neglected, the 'fallow ground' of human nature. And there are many that go forth, and we wish that we could go with them, to muse and moralize and kindle up glorious enthusiasm, amidst the ruins of ancient art. But we feel, that there are holier ruins all around us, the ruins of human nature, that is well compared to 'a city broken down, and without walls.' The crumbling columns and temples of the elder world, present no such ruins, at once so noble and mournful, as every man may approach in the unwalled city, in the waste temple of his own mind.

The truth is, we have not yet considered what human nature might be. We have taken our ideas of it, rather from the abuse, than from the use, of its powers. Men have not made the requisite exertion, nor in the right direction, for their development. No age has been entirely favorable to this endeavor, no state of society, no maxims of life, no system of education. Things act upon the mind in combination; and even where one part of the system of influences is brought to considerable perfection, as learning, or liberty, for instance, there are so many things bad around it, as more than half to neutralize its good effects. And thus it has happened that even the best of religions has been often perverted to evil. The aggregate of social influences, at any rate, that have borne upon the human character, has been unfriendly to its elevation. We have seen, therefore, little of what men may be. On no subject, it is to be apprehended, are duller conceptions prevailing than on this; what man might be, what he ought to be, what a noble being was designed to stand forth the lord of this lower creation. Alas! men can more easily tell you the fine and desirable points of any thing, of a noble animal, of a splendid building, of any thing, more easily than that. And how is it strange, then,