creation more exquisitely beautiful, and gives a deeper tinge to its waters, and a deeper blue to its skies, and more magnificent tints to its rising and its setting suns, and envelopes every form and shape of nature in a more spirit-like loveliness, and makes every flower and every tree breathe out a more mellifluous hymn-that which renders home worthy of heaven-that from which the Eternal draws to describe his own feelings and his own emotions towards the children of this estranged orb-shall it excite our merriment?

We rejoice when the spirit of man loves; for it is then bracing itself with vigour, and clothing itself with power; it is the commencement of a diviner existence. We speak not of sickly sentimentalism; that we know not. Ah, it commands our reverence when, in the deep solitudes of our bosom, we muse over its character and hallowed bearings: its influence is genial as a sunbeam, and yet gigantic as the vast swellings of eternity; it claims the seriousness of the immortal soul. It may be, and doubtless is, the fashion among a certain class to trifle with its blessedness. Let it be so; it has taught us a holier lesson. We may be alone in our view; and yet we are not alone: the celestial hierarchy is with us, the Deity himself is with us, all heaven-the beautiful and glorious heaven-is with us. "God is love." Trifle, then, with love? It was love which made the universe, and cast therein her million stars; it was love which created man: ah! it was love that, when that being had erred and strayed far out into the wild, wintry desert of sin, brought him back again to the fold and family of God. The Omnipotent sits on the throne of love; his sovereignty is a rule of love; his presence is the perfection of love. Love

beams in every flower, and glitters in every dewdrop. The vast canopy of day whispers of love-its clouds, its showers, its rainbows all breathe out love. Even the storm, which beats so loudly against our windows, and the hurricane which lashes the ocean into fury, tell of love. Love is everywhere; it pervades all existence; it is the highest, holiest, divinest essence. But take another note of woe; it is the poet's humour, not ours:

Our sighs were numerous, and profuse our tears,
For she we lost was lovely, and we loved
Her much. Fresh in our memory, as fresh
As yesterday, is yet the day she died:

It was an April day; and blithely all

The youth of nature leaped beneath the sun,

And promised glorious manhood; and our hearts

Were glad, and round them danced the lightsome blood,

In healthy merriment, when tidings came

A child was born; and tidings came again,
That she who gave it birth was sick to death:
So swift trode sorrow on the heels of joy!
We gathered round her bed, and bent our knees
In fervent supplication to the Throne
Of mercy, and perfumed our prayers with sighs
Sincere, and penitential tears, and looks
Of self-abasement; but we sought to stay

An angel on the earth, a spirit ripe

For heaven; and Mercy, in her love, refused:

Most merciful, as oft, when seeming least!

Most gracious, when she seemed the most to frown!
The room I well remember, and the bed
On which she lay, and all the faces, too,
That crowded dark and mournfully around.
Her father there and mother, bending, stood;
And down their aged cheeks fell many drops
Of bitterness. Her husband, too, was there,
And brothers, and they wept; her sisters, too,
Did weep, and sorrow comfortless; and I,
Too, wept, though not to weeping given; and all
Within the house was dolorous and sad.
This I remember well; but better still
I do remember, and will ne'er forget,

The dying eye! That eye alone was bright,
And brighter grew, as nearer death approached:
As I have seen the gentle little flower
Look fairest in the silver beam which fell
Reflected from the thunder-cloud that soon
Came down, and o'er the desert scattered far
And wide its loveliness. She made a sign

To bring her babe: 'twas brought, and by her placed;
She looked upon its face, that neither smiled,
Nor wept, nor knew who gazed upon 't, and laid

Her hand upon its little breast, and sought
For it, with look that seemed to penetrate
The heavens, unutterable blessings, such
As God to dying parents only granted,

For infants left behind them in the world.
"God keep my child!" we heard her say, and heard
No more. The Angel of the Covenant

Was come, and faithful to his promise, stood
Prepared to walk with her through death's dark vale.
And now her eyes grew bright, and brighter still,
Too bright for ours to look upon, suffused
With many tears, and closed without a cloud.
They set, as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven.

We have, in our quotations, chosen passages of a pensive cast, because they are more in accordance with the spirit of our poet. There are but few hymns of joy in the volume. In this he is the most perfect contrast to Cowper that we have. Cowper loves the beautiful of creation: Pollok, its sullen grandeur;Cowper delights to dwell on mercy: Pollok, on vengeance; Cowper lingers over the green slopes of the heavenly paradise: Pollok, over the dreary and dismal plains of woe;-Cowper's voice is like the mellow tones of the lute: Pollok's, like the broken sounds of the muffled drum;-Cowper speaks of the clear blue sky, and singing of birds, and purling of streams, and hum of bees, and whispering of woods, and scents of

flowers: Pollok, of the lowering thunder-storm, darkening the whole hemisphere into gloom;-Cowper reminds one of the tenderness of Jesus, and the sunlight radiance of eternal love: Pollok, of the stern mandates of Mount Sinai, and the awful claims of incensed justice;-Cowper is the silver chime of peace and plenty: Pollok, the solemn knell of the dying and the lost.

HENRY ALFORD.

"Let us look at the higher regions of literature, where, if anywhere, the pure melodies of poesy and wisdom should be heard. Of natural talent there is no deficiency: one or two richly-endowed individuals even give us a superiority in this respect. But what is the song they sing? Is it a tone of the Memnon statue, breathing music as the light first touches it?-a liquid wisdom, disclosing to our sense the deep, infinite harmonies of nature and man's soul? Alas, no! It is not a matin or vesper hymn to the spirit of all beauty, but a fierce clashing of cymbals, and shouting of multitudes, as children pass through the fire to Moloch! Poetry itself has no eye for the invisible. Beauty is no longer the God it worships, but some brute image of strength, which we may well call an idol, for true strength is one and the same with beauty, and its worship also is a hymn. The meek, silent light can mould, create, and purify all nature; but the loud whirlwind, the sign and product of disunion, of weakness, passes on and is forgotten."-CARLYLE.

We need not complain of halcyon songs and soothing canzonets: it is true that the spirit of the French Revolution threw much of its energy and reckless savageness into our literature, but it extinguished the sickly semblancy and sickly sentimentalism of a former age, which was worth all the contortions that have since been exhibited in some of our finest writers. The war-cry, and the trumpet-blast, and the atheistic scoff that followed, deadened, indeed, for awhile the melody of gentler bards: but the tumult has nearly ceased; it is daily becoming fainter and fainter; its echo is all that we hear; the whirlwind has passed, and