Beautiful the earth, and beautiful the trees, and beautiful the glassy lake; most beautiful and sweet. Beautiful the lily and the rose; and beautiful morn and eve, with their hymns of peace and joy. But man is otherwise: deep sunk in guilt is he, deep and deeper every hour. Pollution stains his soul; corruption defiles the inner thought. His breath the breath of sin and hate: sin unrepented of and hate, most highly prized. And the daughters of men are wanton, and their 66 eyes are flame." No hallowed altar in the heart; no sinless desire there, unholy all and past forgiveness! Beautiful the earth, and beautiful the heaven; but deformed is man, deformed and cursed. Mercy gleams in every star of night, mercy, silver-toned and blessed! But this avails not; wanton and guilty, the race seeks pleasure in the evil-throned. Blood-stained the earth; blood on the morn and blood on golden eve. No worship of the Holiest; worship of the cursed! So rolls the universe in beauty and in quietude; rolls round the mighty centre of existence; rolls in grandeur and delicious sweetness. And so rolls on the race of man, blood-spotted, wanton, and godless! Amid the shepherd-tended vales, one voice is heard hymning the praise of the Eternal. Sweet that voice arises; sweet and sweeter still. Twinkle out the stars, and that voice ascends; and again when they "sink away into the light of heaven" is it heard. Beautiful is that amid the beautiful of creation. That voice is the voice of the world's second sire, praying to his God. Then the faithful one is missioned to the pleasure-seekers and the wanton-worshippers. But they spurn him and his message, and return again to their unhallowed mirth. Vengeance is preparing; vengeance from the Lord! Beautiful is earth, and beautiful is heaven; beautiful the lapse of stream, and beautiful the low green copse; but deformed is man, deformed, deformed! On the world a spot of deep blood guiltiness; a spot for waters "of the great deep" alone to wash away. The glorious waters! waters beautiful and bright, the glancing, heaving, musical waters! even these must roll on limitless, and baptize the earth of all her wanton race; nay not baptize, but sweep them to their judgment. So the waters roll, and man is not. Again the poet lowlier knelt and prayed : Omniscient Spirit, seer of the past! Rend, rend the veil; unblasted, let me look Into the Holiest! on that dial's front, Whose hours are ages, bid the sun return, That I may read their history aloud! Disperse the mist from ocean's monstrous face, And purge my sight, that I may see beyond! So utterance, deep-burning, broke from the suppliant's lips and prevailed with God: and the Judgment of the Flood was visioned in characters of fire. Poet, this homage-hymn to thee; but the holier one to God! T. K. HERVEY. THIS author has published but little poetry' but that little is marked by much grace and beauty-a melancholy grace-a melancholy beauty: he seems to hold the same views of human life so common to young poets after their first fond and brilliant and rainbow hopes are dashed to the ground: he deems the past sweeter than the present; he talks of the sunny joys of childhood, and the sad realities of manhood. Friends that promised truth, have forsaken him-become cool-sleep in the silent tomb. The eye that once gazed with all the tenderness of parental love is dimmed, and the knee on which he sat, and the bosom on which he leaned, are quiet in the grave. Cares and anxieties cloud the present; disappointments and shattered anticipations give fear to the future. Seest thou, Oreader, yonder bee on those sweetscented and rose-tinctured flowers, golden with the morning sun? It is the emblem of childhood. We own that there is something peculiarly pleasing in retrospection, in recalling the face of friend and kin, in turning over the letters which threw sunlight on many a day, in breathing again the vital air of infancy and youth, in witnessing those scenes where we so often gambolled, in remembering our infant prayers, our mother's fondness, our father's tenderness, our little hymns, our playmates, our delicious hopes. But our maturer judgment tells us that they were not our happiest days. We had sorrow and trouble then; we had as much as we could bear. Our romantic schemes may have failed; our ardent expectations may have been disappointed; friends may have departed to "the land where all things are forgotten," and men may have treated us with unkindness and cruelty: but even these have not been able to blight the hallowed bliss of the present hour. Childhood! when we lisped fondly a mother's name, and when we gazed earnestly into her fair and beautiful countenance- childhood! when our young heart bubbled up to every new delight, and when it danced to the soft prattle of our own lips-childhood! when we clung around the neck of those we loved, and told them all our griefs and all our joys, and when we knelt in simplicity and artlessness beside the hearth at morning and at evening, and offered up our infant prayers -childhood! when the heroic deed, and the noble action, and the hardy achievement blushed our cheek with rapture and high resolve, and when the summer brought the visits of kinsmen who gladdened our home with their gentle faces-childhood! when we gave all our heart to sympathise with the distressed, and cheerfully parted with our little wealth to feed the sons of want, and when our bosom gushed with affection at every kindness and every service-childhood! when the thought was written on the brow, when we broke from all restraint, and wandered down some wild lane to see how the violet and the primrose grew, and when the singing of birds, and the hum of bees, and the waving grass thrilled us with ecstasy-childhood! when we gazed on the beautiful rainbow and the beautiful heavens, and fancied them not far from earth, and looking onwards through some opening wood, imagined that we should soon reach them; and when the silvery moon shone in at our window pane, and appeared as some radiant lamp to light creation with; and when the million stars rolled over the immense expanse, breathing divinest music-childhood! when we dreamt of cloudless skies, and fadeless flowers, and fondest friends, and hallowed retreats, and eternal truth, and everlasting love, and imperishable, inextinguishable bliss. But we turn back to childhood and our poet. Dry up thy tears, love!-I fain would be gay! Time hath been o'er thee, and darkened thine eye, And lovelier all that was lovely before; Thou too art altered in all-but in heart! Lie on my bosom, and lead me along All that is left me of life's promise is here,- But childhood, with all its felicity, and dreaming loveliness, and charming sweets, was but a prelude to more delicious joy. Thought awoke, and dawned; truth beamed brightly in the horizon; nature became clothed with deeper associations; the stars became more than stars, and the flowers more than flowers; they were the language of the Divinity; their intonations, how beautiful and majestic-it was angelic music-silence and yet melody: no sounds issued from those twinkling points, and yet came sublimest strains. We gazed upon the elear heavens one evening; all was still, and yet there swelled forth such a mighty gush of song as enthralled the immortal within; with dawn came the voice of peace; nature in all its forms and changes-the wild sweep of autumnal winds, the magnificent sunset, the rushing of the storm-winter, with its leafless trees, and falling snow, and driving sleetspring, with its primrose starting up from some There is much that is touching in this: the mossy bank, and refreshing breezes, and bracing poet asks for the song of early days; he listens air, and cooling showers-summer, with its to its beautiful but now plaintive strain, the luxuriant foliage, and cloudless skies, and noon-pleasures and joys of the past are recalled, his tide heats, and balmy evenings, and revelry of bright rainbow dreams and golden visions and delights, were to us full of the softest and unclouded hopes now breathe a sadness; they most harmonious cadences: there were liquid have faded, save one, but she the sweetest and voices everywhere; they pervaded all existence. the dearest; on his brow sits a pensive calmThese broke in upon us, and imperishable af- ness, in her eye dwells a melancholy loveliness, fection and everlasting faith and indissoluble her fair form reclines on his, thoughts and union. We felt that we were in a world of memories and remembrances cross over the beauty; we knew that it was ours, its wealth, soul with dirge-like music. and treasures, and resources, and creations were our own. They interpreted Jehovah's parental care and parental regard. Thought became linked with each sparkling orb, and with each petal of the modest flower. Well might we be happy; and we were happy! We knelt in this vast temple, and prayed to become like the meek and lowly Jesus; we prayed for holiness: peace ever hovers over the bended knee and bended heart; it hovered over us. With Nature then was beautiful; it is more beautiful now: the brook, as it purled through some leafy wood, was sweet then; it is sweeter now. Associations of the past, and hallowed memories, and deep thoughts cling around every object. The sun, as it sunk so gorgeously behind the hills, was magnificent then; it is more magnificent now: the ocean, with its billowy waves, was sublime then; it is sublimer now. the growth of moral and intellectual being, the visible creation has become invested with a fairer loveliness and a deeper glory. The universe, with its myriad stars, and rolling, surging waters, and fine out-stretched landscapes, and lofty mountains, has become a symbol of something higher, and mightier, and more ethereal, The sunny anticipations of youth still play And the forms which I fondly loved are flown, To gaze on her grief, or to chide her tear! And the hour of my childhood is distant far, And the looks that I meet, and the sounds that I hear, So, I turn from a world where I never was known, There are few who have not felt the loneliness so beautifully described in these verses: there are times when such sadness comes to all, but to the sensitive spirit most. How often do we wander in the gloom of our own hearts! Around, and countenances may be lighted up with smiles, and the lips of beauty may warble the song of joy, and the eye of affection may beam with love, and the hand of generous daring may be ready to aid; and yet we fancy that of all this exhaustless tenderness and care there is none for us. Our poet betakes himself to the grave of his sister, and there meditates and weeps: he thinks of the past, and wishes that he was once more a child upon his mother's knee; but he feels that such desires are futile; he sighs to find them so. The moon, the clear silver moon, looks calmly down on the tomb, and on the solitary one: the stillness is in unison with his pensive thoughts; the serene night is in accordance with his melancholy emotions; he seems removed far off from the turmoil and anxiety of existence : The feeling is a nameless one Brief record of a father's love, And hints, in language yet more brief, Lost spirit!-thine was not a breast And every thought that wronged thy truth But all thy griefs, my girl, are o'er ! The Farewell is no less sweet; it is addressed by a female to her lover upon his going into the world. There is something peculiarly interesting on such an occasion: it may be that the two have grown up from childhood together, that they have reaped the same delights, tasted the same joys, witnessed the same scenes, borne the same sorrows, loved the same persons, attended the same school, sat on the same form, repeated the same tasks, conned the same page, regarded with affection the same flowers, looked on the same sunshine, rambled along the same meadows, strolled down the same wild lanes, gazed on the same stars, worshipped in the same old grey church; and now, for the first time, they are to part, to break away from each other, to tear themselves from all that they love best on earth. Until now they knew not, thought not of separation; that word, in its agony and bitterness, was sealed, and without meaning. But now the duties of life call, and they must learn that which they never learnt before: My early love, and must we part? Yet, cast one thought in years to come When love and friendship's holy joys Is dimmed-a heart as true is broken, But do not weep!-1 could not bear Yet oh, my love! I know not why No! give me but a single sigh, We feel the witching influence of the bard; we own his sway: the shadows of evening fall around us; the sun is setting in misty gloom; the rain beats against our window; the fire glimmers with its last red embers; the twilight sinks into night; the leaves are strewn upon the ground; the trees are bare; the winds sweep ever and anon through their leafless branches; melancholy thoughts pass over the soul; the past comes before us; the loveliness of earth is clouded with dimness; our mind dwells on the days long since flown; we sink into pensive reveries; our eye falls listlessly on the grate; every sound is hushed save when the autumnal gale howls. JAMES HURDIS. PERHAPS there is no other country in which villages present so many charming and quiet beauties as England; it is a land of pastoral hamlets, no less than of magnificent cities: their cottages, adorned with the clustering rose and honeysuckle, form, during the soft summer time, many a scene of picturesque sweetness; the rainbow is not more beguiling to calm repose than these flower-enshrouded homes. But beautiful as our villages undoubtedly are, we think that they may be greatly im proved by infusing a more refined taste among the people; and we shall consider a few points conducive to this, ere we proceed to speak on that subject which has led to these remarks. The most suitable person to carry villageimprovement into effect is the pastor; nor is this in the least derogatory to those higher and loftier objects to which his life is consecrate. | It is true, indeed, that he is primarily placed over his flock for spiritual ends; but is therefore the temporal and intellectual advancement to be forgotten or neglected? He will begin at home; his own house will be a pattern of neatness and beauty. The influence will be great; one little knows where to put limits to such a potent and subtle power: there are no dwellings which claim so much of our interest and love; they adorn the landscape; all the associations which hover around are pure and holy; the chapel-bell gives a strange, unutterable sweetness to an evening scene, and the loveliness of a secluded parson- | age is not without its witchery. The garden will also be continually looked after; it will be no unworthy occupation for the pastor to tend it with his own hands-it will teach him much: the earth, seed-time, and harvest are significant of revealed truth; it will give a freshness and a vigour to his frame, a healthy and cheerful tone to his mind. There is in the cultivation of a garden that wherein the taste for the beautiful may be displayed: flowers, and shrubs, and the blossoms of an orchard are everywhere a lovely sight; but lovelier nowhere than when connected with a parsonage : he will therefore avail himself of all these favourable feelings. The church will claim a large share of his regard. How many have been left to decay by the negligence of their ministers!-and while he repairs and adorns the building, he will not forget its burial-ground. The church-yard is hallowed by the most solemn memories; it possesses a charm peculiarly its own; it will be his constant care; the slopes will be kept neatly cropped by a few sheep; their calm, quiet beauty, and the music of their tinkling bell, and their gentle looks, will throw a grace over the spot; other animals, on no account, should be turned in; they are repugnant to our sweetest associations; a few yews and limes might be judiciously planted; they harmonize with the holy enclosure; flowers will enrich with their perfumes and enliven with their summer loveliness; let these be reared, and open their blossoms to the luxuriant day, and shed their thousand scents on the balmy breeze. Who does not love these quiet spots? how sweet to wander among the tombs; a pensive peace steals over the soul. The venerable church, the sheep, the trees, the flowers, the new-shorn grass, the gravel-walks, the memorials of the dead, and above a clear blue skyoh, how exquisite is it there to muse on man's hopes and man's faith!-and the villagers may often repair hither, and seek to recal those they once loved, and the whole array of the past may unfold itself before them, and then may come the dying chamber and the dying bed, the last whisper of tenderness, the fading eye, the feebler grasp, the serene departure, the silence of the king of terrors, and all around will be in accordance with their feelings and desires, and there will be anticipations winging themselves to the region of the blessed and the region of the happy. Now we cannot conceive a better employment than the beautifying such a place; it is intimately connected with all that man holds dear, and it is interwoven with his highest aspirations after a purer and a better world. There are one or two customs, however, of our forefathers, which we should love to see revived: they may be simple, but this very simplicity is their charm; they seem the breathing of a rural population, and the expression of a rustic people; they seem heart-services, warm with the spirit's gratitude. The decorating the graves with flowers, and the strewing of their fair blossoms in the path of the bride, we pass by, not because they are without grace, but because our limits will not allow us to add much more to this part of our paper; but there is another, and we conceive a fairer custom, which, if carried out, might be useful in building up the soul in her intercourse with the Creator; and that is, the offering of the hawthorn, and violet, and daisy as the first fruits of the year. The rite is truly a hallowed one; it is an act of acknowledgment-a token of our connexion with the Eternal; it is the homage of a grateful bosom—the hymn of a thankful heart; it speaks of the welcome and joy of a people-the goodness and care of a God; and how lovely a temple thus decked with beauty, and thus perfumed with sweetness, and worshippers thus rendering their anthem for a Father's untiring love and a Father's unwearying blessing!-what a freshness would the sanctuary breathe!—what purity!—what peace! The adorning our churches with evergreens at Christmas is too well conformed with, to need any comments here; and surely these things are not too insignificant to be woven into the heaven-spun woof of our religion: they will tend to refine the mind, they will soothe and soften the heart, and prepare it for the reception of those solemn truths which are symbolized by these customs; and if the love of Jesus is known and felt, there will be a richer and deeper beauty in the flowers, and the earth, and sky. The children of the villagers are under the immediate care of the pastor; and we deem the custom of Legh Richmond, of taking them at times into the church-yard, and there giving his scriptural instruction, as beautiful as it was soul-elevating. The place is well calculated to yield the finest impressions; and how exquisite such a scene!-the shepherd of Christ, surrounded by his flock, and telling them of holiest things, is a lovely sight anywhere, but how much lovelier when amid the placid stillness of the past, and the scent of violets and roses, and the fretted heavens above! The man of God, the little ones, the grassy graves, the light green turf, the sun-cinctured flowers, the dark yews, the soft balmy air, the cooling breeze, the old ivied church, combine to form a scene of tranquil sweetness which must steal and wind itself for ever around the heart. And we believe that those hallowed and divine truths which throw their summer-radiance over our beautiful creation, and those thrilling associations, and calm memories, would | glow with a more than ever brightening loveliness here, amid the stillness and the hush of nature; and what illustrations in every bush, and tree, and cloud, and grave-in sunshine and in shade-in the deep quietude of heaven's blue, and in the gentle breathing of its wind! There is one other thing we would notice, and that is, the formation of a small library for each cottage; some ten or a dozen volumes would do : such would, we believe, be far more beneficial than were the whole gathered into one large public mass; this may do very well in towns and cities, but where there are few houses, it is better for each to have an allotted share, from some funds which might, without very great difficulty, be raised;-a book is always read with a sweeter feeling of pleasure and profit when it is our own. Let the works be well chosen, and they would not fail, under God's blessing, of producing favourable results, and in spreading a more delightful loveliness over the fairest hamlet. The love for the beautiful and true is of higher value than we imagine; it is nought save the aspiration after man's purest image and the world's loveliest condition; and it is the loss of this regard which renders humanity so low and earth-born; and therefore any approach to this ever-blessed state, and any encouragement of this ever-divine principle, is the loftiest exercise of the soul and the sublimest play of the spirit. James Hurdis, a name now nearly passed into oblivion, though deserving a much better fate, was the friend and admirer of Cowper. In his poems there is enough to be found, though ill-conceived and carelessly executed, to give him a place among these papers; indeed, many of his lines we should feel sorry to see blotted from the book of remembrance; they grace and adorn the beautiful of home and creation. He has none of the everlasting energy of the higher bard; the divinity of poetry stirred not his bosom with its irresistless power, as it stirred the breast of our own Milton; his imagination revelled not in such imperial scenes -his heart glowed not with the eternal burning of inextinguishable thought: but the gentle breathing of the lyre was his; he touched the chords of heavenly softness; he was master of much delicious sweetness; the mild sighing of the evening zephyr and the ripple of the brook he loved, rather than the bellowings of the midnight storm, and the boiling, and surging, and lashing of the ocean. In his most popular production, the Village Curate, he has with much beauty described the life of a country clergyman, and although it is wanting in the vigour and enthusiasm which constitute the great poet, still there is much to recommend it to our notice. About his poetry there is more of beauty than grandeur-more of gentle music than the glorious outbreak of all divinest harmonies. His sketches are of green fields, and wild flowers, and April showers, and nuttings, and clear rills, and grassy dells, and soft, sweet twilights, and golden sunsets; with the great, ponderous, gigantic eternity he has nothing to do; he is satisfied with the loveliness of this lower creation; he enters not into that vast, immense, infinite expanse of being which stretches everywhere around us; he is not a "prophet poet," but a "poetic artist;" he is no seeker into the divine; his attachment to nature is a friendship, not a passion; its deep, magnificent, massive, inextinguishable, ever-rolling, ever-pealing music he heard not; he caught only the delicious melodies of woods, and streams, and birds; we are pleased, but not spell-bound ; he would not have understood Schiller's expression-" Keep true to the dream of thy youth." There is a degree of chaste beauty about this: In yonder mansion, reared by rustic hands, And hide the naked staff that trained him up Nature boasts not a sweeter scene than a quiet hamlet; there is a calmness and a quietude about it which subdue the throbbing desires and the angry passions of the soul; gaze on it at noon-day--the sun is in the zenith; the heavens are expansive as immensity; a few light clouds float in the summer radiance; every valley is lighted up; the cottages, the parsonage, the church, the long plantation, the different clumps of trees, the silver waters, the mill, the boy fishing at the brook, the bridge, the dusty road winding up the hill, the silence-all influence the feelings; a repose, soft and dreamlike, overhangs the picture; the birds have retired to the shade, the leaves stir not, the breeze has passed away; there is a profound serenity. Hurdis felt, with all the thrilling emotions of a poet, the tinklings of the beautiful villagebells; and who can listen without thinking of the future and the past ?-thoughts of the other world cross us; they come with the deep rush of glorious sounds; the eternal essence of poetry deepens within us; the music of immortality rolls on the ear; but soon it mingles with the pensive melody of bygone hours; then come the sunny, rapturous hours of childhood; heaven's bright radiance is on them; once again we act the scenes of life. Years roll on: we have become a member of the university; we move among a new order |