can measure the loss, which the world would sustain, if the sublimest work of Milton were to be struck from the number of living books? Yet the world would be the gainer, if Don Juan were as if it had never been written. The one poet cherishes loftiness of purpose, and tends to elevate his reader to a kindred magnanimity; while the other exposes, it may be with inimitable skill and graphic power, the vices and weaknesses of man, and so tends to degrade the mind to the level which he establishes for the race. But we go to poetry as a relief and a support. We need no books to ring changes to us on man's selfishness; and if at times, in a moment of despondency or disappointment, when the confused judgment cannot rightly estimate the progress of good amidst the jar of human passions, and the collision of human interests, we forget the dignity of our nature, and revile it, the poet should reinstate it in our favour, and make us forget our disgust with the world.

While on this subject, we cannot forbear to remark on that tendency to moralize, which many mistake in themselves for wise observation. True, to the eye of a contemplative man, books may be found in the running brooks, and sermons in stones; but it is the mark of an inferior mind to be constantly repeating the common-places of morality one, who does it often, is sure to be esteemed by his neighbours as a tedious proser; and to have this strain of puny thinking put into verse, and set before us as sublime, is really intolerable. In that which is to produce a grand effect, every thing must be proportionably grand. The historians of nature tell us, that gold is diffused throughout creation, may be extracted from the stones we tread upon, and enters into the composition of the plants on which we feed. But it is a very slow and troublesome process to extract it from most stones and plants; and, after all, it is obtained in so small quantities, that it is not worth the trouble it costs. And it may be so with the elements of poetry. They exist every where; the dreams of the drunkard may sometimes have a gleam of bright fancy; a mother, setting out in pursuit of an idiot boy, who has run away on an ass, may have very proper thoughts, and weep as sincerely as Andromache herself; and the reformation of a knave like Peter Bell may be psychologically as re

markable as the downfall of Macbeth, the scepticism of Hamlet, the madness of Lear. But still it is not the thing we want. To the observer of the human mind, the mere collector of facts, one man's experience may offer nearly as much as another's; but cannot, in the same degree, promote the purposes of the poet. At a ball in any village in the country, there are probably the self-same passions at work, as were ever called into action on similar occasions. The beauty and pride of a country town, dancing to an imperfect band, may afford illustrations of all the moral phenomena of vanity, admiration and love, the hours whirled away very agreeably in lively dances, and blushes excited by the praise of loveliness. But all this is a common, every day sort of business; and hardly any one would think of weaving it into poetry. But when the imagination is wrought up by the expectation of an approaching battle; when the capital of Belgium has gathered its own beauty and the chivalry of England; when the blow, that is to decide the destiny of empires, is suspended for a season, while youth and pleasure revel in careless gayety, till they are recalled from the charm that creeps over the senses by a peal, which is the death-larum of thousands, we find the scenes of the ball room contributing to heighten the power and the splendour of poetry. If we hear of a blind boy, who goes to sea in a shell, we should think the story would make a very curious and proper paragraph for the miscellaneous department of a newspaper, provided the fact be well authenticated; but what is there of poetry about it ?* If we were to meet a little girl, who had lost her pet lamb, it would be proper to be extremely sorry; and the matter is a fit one for proportionate sympathy. But these are trivial things; they hardly claim much attention in life; they are of no general interest for the exercise of the imagination. poet must exalt and satisfy the mind; must fill us with glorious aspirations and lofty thoughts; must lead us out

The

*Trifling as this incident might appear, if related in the common and desultory manner of a newspaper paragraph, it has yet been wrought, by the genius of Wordsworth, into one of the most beautiful and natural pieces of poetry which it has been our lot to meet with,-ED.

through the high heaven of invention, and call up before us the master passions of man's mind in all their majesty ;not show us the inside of a baby-house, nor furnish us with a comment on the catalogue of a toy-shop.

The Consequences of Atheism.-CHANNING.

FEW men suspect, perhaps no man comprehends, the extent of the support given by religion to every virtue. No man, perhaps, is aware how much our moral and social sentiments are fed from this fountain; how powerless conscience would become without the belief of a God; how palsied would be human benevolence, were there not the sense of a higher benevolence to quicken and sustain it; how suddenly the whole social fabric would quake, and with what a fearful crash it would sink into hopeless ruins, were the ideas of a Supreme Being, of accountableness, and of a future life, to be utterly erased from every mind. Once let men thoroughly believe, that they are the work and sport of chance; that no Superior Intelligence concerns itself with human affairs; that all their improvements perish forever at death; that the weak have no guardian, and the injured no avenger; that there is no recompense for sacrifices to uprightness and the public good; that an oath is unheard in heaven; that secret crimes have no witness but the perpetrator; that human existence has no purpose, and human virtue no unfailing friend; that this brief life is every thing to us, and death is total, everlasting extinction, once let men thoroughly abandon religion, and who can conceive or describe the extent of the desolation which would follow ?

We hope, perhaps, that human laws and natural sympathy would hold society together. As reasonably might we believe, that, were the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches could illuminate, and our fires quicken and fertilize the creation. What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day? and what is he more, if atheism be true? Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and

selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, and poverty and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest would supplant every other feeling, and man would become in fact, what the theory of atheism declares him to be, a companion for brutes!

The blind Preacher.-WIRT.

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied near a ruinous, old, wooden house in the forest, not far from the road-side. Having frequently seen such objects before, in travelling through these States, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a place of religious worship.

Devotion alone should have stopped me, to join in the duties of the congregation; but I must confess, that curiosity to hear the preacher of such a wilderness, was not the least of my motives. On entering, I was struck with his preternatural appearance. He was a tall and very spare old man; his head, which was covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and his voice, were all shaking under the influence of a palsy; and a few moments ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind.

The first emotions that touched my breast were those of mingled pity and veneration. But how soon were all my feelings changed! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees, than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of the sacrament; and his subject was, of course, the passion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject handled a thousand times: I had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose that in the wild woods of America, I was to meet with a man, whose eloquence would give to this topic a new and more sublime pathos, than I had ever before witnessed.

As he descended from the pulpit to distribute the mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and manner, which made my blood run cold, and my whole frame shiver.

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion; and his death. I knew the whole history; but never until then had I heard the circumstances so selected, so arranged, so coloured! It was all new; and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His enunciation was so deliberate, that his voice trembled on every syllable; and every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His peculiar phrases had that force of description, that the original scene appeared to be at that moment acting before our eyes. We saw the very faces of the Jews; the staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. We saw the buffet: my soul kindled with a flame of indignation; and my hands were involuntarily and convulsively clinched.

But when he came to touch on the patience, the forgiving meekness of our Saviour; when he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes streaming in tears to heaven; his voice breathing to God a soft and gentle prayer of pardon on his enemies, " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," the voice of the preacher, which had all along faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until, his utterance being entirely obstructed by the force of his feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of grief. The effect is inconceivable. The whole house resounded with the mingled groans, and sobs, and shrieks of the congregation.

It was sometime before the tumult had subsided, so far as to permit him to proceed. Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious standard of my own weakness, I began to be very uneasy for the situation of the preacher. For I could not conceive how he would be able to let his audience down from the height to which he had wound them, without impairing the solemnity and dignity of his subject, or perhaps shocking them by the abruptness of the fall. But no the descent was as beautiful and sublime as the elevation had been rapid and enthusiastic.