less employment of the religious man is the 'fitting up his mind and preparing it for a glorious abode ;'* and in reference to an effect seldom insisted on, 'you may depend upon it religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world: it will alone gentilize, if unmixed with cant, and I know nothing else that will, alone.'†

"I sometimes think, that in the dread Day of Award Silence will for a moment seal the lips of the redeemed, while, with sublimated glance, they survey the various pathways whereby the ardent seekers after Truth have attained their goal, and what impediments they have battled with and beaten, and dispiritings surmounted: but silence may endure but for a moment! -the amazing Love that ransomed, and righteous Judgment that adjudicates, shall awaken in Heaven's 'new possessors' a spontaneous and accordant shout, so mighty, that through the realm of GOD their rapture shall drown in its loud resonance the minstrelsy that ceases never to magnify the Most High. For, methinks, the harp and lute of those who never knew distrust of soul or sorrow of heart cannot rival the voices which triumph shall animate; the blessings of those whose high estate has shut out woe, must be overborne + Coleridge.

* Goldsmith.

by theirs to whom the transition is from anguish to bliss; the adoration of those to whom Justice has never been invisible, or dimly seen,' shall certainly be overwhelmed in their acclamations who, once, it may be, dubious, shall view the All-adorable in the refulgent sanctity of His most perfect vindication.'

"I know of no scepticism or scruples from certain apparent incongruities which meditative men have told me debar them from a devout acceptation of the creed on which our souls' hopes are founded;-that infinite Perfection, armed with a controlling power, is yet permissive of the propagation of Evil; that Purity, although it abhors and denounces, coerces not. I am not confounded by the sufferings of the virtuous, the sorrows of the good, the seeming exemption of the vile, the ostensible ease of the indifferent, the occasional perplexity of the inquiring. These are incidents contingent with, and partly constituting, the probationary process by which, through privation and discouragement, we are re-fitted for Paradise. -I have found my questionings of possibility most prone to rise, over the chronicles of God's compassion: His power and His providential bounty are properties both visible and tangible; but that THE BRIGHTNESS OF HIS GLORY should have assumed our nature, and

in it have endured rejection from those whom He came to ransom ;--that in virulence and violence He should yet have summoned no awe-struck legions. from the realms of light, to avenge the indignities their celestial Chief was enduring at the hands of men, in order that he might snatch them as brands from the burning;-that though the penalty of the prodigious enterprise was a sustenance of the Curse, under which he who bore it must yield his heart's blood, now in protracted passion through the imperceptible pore, and then in sacrificial agony through the gaping wound;-that immaculate and infinite Compassion, without demeaning the divinity, should taste of death in its most degraded form, that earth's grovelling ingrate might be exalted among the enthroned gods in sainted seats,' is an exaction upon the faith of a contemplative mind that might disturb it with incredulity, were the records less trustworthy which relate, to selfish men, the mystical vastness of the divine sympathy.

"One especial moral springs from the meditation of this marvellous oblation of Love-there can be no sympathy in heaven with the self-sufficient. From the hour of that most daring insurrection in Thine own abode, has it not been seen, that,

'Merciful Heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgable and gnarled oak

Than the soft myrtle ?'*

"I have perambulated far from the Poem, in all this; but serious thoughts flow naturally from its solemn theme, and forcibly to divert or counteract their current is ill beseeming a man who cannot be far distant from an abiding city, a place in another country, where he must rest or else be restless for ever.'t Let us however enter, for a little while, this Lost Paradise, at whose exterior we have thus lingered.

Yet, pausing for a brief moment at its entrance, is it not beyond expression interesting, to review, through the medium of truthful history and apocryphal tradition, the process by which this stupendous poetic pyramid was reared—a structure so unapproachable in the grandeur of its symmetry, that the solitary achievements of others-imposing when solitarily surveyed-appear insignificant if placed in juxtaposition with it. There exists an indestructible cluster of the habitations of Poesy, distinguished by various charms; but they shrink into shadow when viewed + Taylor.

* Measure for Measure.-Shakspeare.

by an eye which the contemplation of dimensions so vast has distended and enlarged. It is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first,' says Dr. Johnson; but stands it not unparalleled in its sublimity? From what we know of Milton's selfdependency, I fancy there was never a Poet who, conscious of having consummated a great work, of which many co-operating causes might tend to mar the reputation at the period of its completion, confided so assuredly in ultimate appreciation, as did this illustrious man. The contrast between Milton and Shakspeare in this respect, is remarkable: the latter sensitively shrinks from posthumous notoriety; and in his poems almost painfully protests against being made a candidate for the plaudits of posterity:

"O if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
Lest the wise world mock."

And again,

"O, lest your true love may seem false in this,

That you for love speak well of me untrue,

My name be buried where my body is,

And live no more to shame nor me nor you.

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth."

If thou hast ears to hear, O Shade of Shakspeare!