The world used to have by heart one celebrated passage on friendship -and we shall not quote, as we hope "'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past she has not forgotten it; but we call hours; And ask them what report they bore to And how they might have borne more Their answers form what men experience call." There can be no experience, worth the name, without communion with heaven. The worldly-wise man is a mere mole-or at the best a bat. "Should not each dial strike us as we pass, Portentous, as the written wall which struck, on single lines-though we trust she remembers them too "Poor is the friendless master of a world." Almost as immense as Shakspeare's— "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." Do this and be happy"Judge before friendship, then confide till death." "When such friends part, 'Tis the survivor dies." Friendship has been called many million times a flower-and it is a O'er midnight bowls, the proud Assyrian flower; but Young asks you for whom it blossoms? and seeing you hesitate -in the multitude of the thoughts pale ?" Many men might have said that, within him he sums up them all in but few could have said this- The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth: What more could be said? No more?-Ay-listen "In reason's eye That sedentary shadow travels hard." "Abroad they find who cherish it at home." Who was Philander? We know not. But how the poet must have loved him, who thus lamented his loss! "Thy last sigh Dissolved the charm; the disenchanted earth Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers? Her golden mountains where? All darkened down To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears; The great poet is true to nature here-if too often-and we fear it is so he plays her false-and wilfully follows phantasies when imaginations were ready to crowd into his arms. And true to her is he in another place -far away from the above-but hallowed by the same spirit of grief. "I loved him much, but now I love him more, Like birds, whose beauties languish, halfconcealed; Till, mounted on the wing, their glossy plumes Expanded shine with azure, green and gold; How blessings brighten as they take their flight!." Call not that image fanciful-but if it affects you not as assuredly it af fected the Poet, sympathize with the awe that for a while held him back from depicting the deathbed of such a friend. "Yet am I struck; as struck the soul, Aerial groves' impenetrable gloom; In vaults; thin courts of poor unflattered Or at the midnight altar's hallowed flame. justify the Poet in saying- "Scorn the proud man that is ashamed to And we now call to mind another And each distress, distinctly shown, de- Of grief still more, as heightened by the A grief like this proprietors excludes; Far as the fatal fame can wing her way; From whom of all our living Poets could we select such pregnant lines as many of the above? We glance over the pages, and how thick the gems! "When gross guilt interposes, labouring earth, "Through chinks, styled organs, dim life peeps at light; "Like lavish ancestors his earlier years "Is not the mighty mind, that son of Heaven, ༑ ་་ "The world's infectious; few bring back at eve, Immaculate, the manners of the morn.' !! How wretched is the man who never mourned." "Truth shows the real estimate of things, Which no man, unafflicted, ever saw." "But some reject this sustenance divine; To beggarly vile appetites descend; Ask alms of earth for guests that come from heaven." { Irrationals all sorrow are beneath, That noble gift! that privilege to man." "Early, bright, transient, chaste, as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven." 'Like damaged clocks, whose hand and bell dissent, Folly rings six while nature points at twelve." "Like our shadows, Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines." " Age should......... Walk thoughtful on the silent, solemn shore Of that vast ocean it must sail so soon." "Our needful knowledge, like our needful food, "Like other tyrants, Death delights to smite, To bid the wretch survive the fortunate; "Our morning's envy, and our evening's sigh." "Man's lawful pride includes humility; "Who lives to Nature never can be poor; "Resolve me why the Cottager and King, "His grief is but his grandeur in disguise; "Man's misery declares him born for bliss." "If man can't mount He will descend-he starves on the possest.' "Shall we, this moment, gaze on God in man? "A Christian dwells, like Uriel, in the Sun." "Truth never was indebted to a lie." "No man e'er found a happy life by chance," "The house of laughter makes a house of wo." Our soul should murmur, or our dust repine." "Could human courts take vengeance on the mind, Though nature shakes, how soft to lean on Heaven! "Some joys the future overcast, and some Ah! dear Thomas Campbell! Thou "I will thank you in the grave." hast dealt out scant and scrimp praise But Silence and Darkness are but the to the Bard of Night-but it was of such lines as these that thou said'st angels of God. And the Poet, inwith thy native felicity, "he has inspired by them, ventures another individual passages which Philosophy might make her texts, and experience select for her mottos.' Gloomy indeed! Is not the Poem called "The Complaint?" If " Night then Thoughts" are not gloomy nothing is gloomy on this side of the grave. There is a Poem, you know, called "The Grave," and a noble one" Gloomy it stood as Night." Who? Death. vocation "But what are ye ?-Thou who didst put to flight Primeval silence, when the morning star, Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball! O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struck That spark the sun, strike wisdom from my soul, My soul which flies to Thee!" Assuredly the opening strain is magnificent; and what farther, is his prayer? "Through this opaque of nature and of soul, This double night, transmit one pitying ray, We have been familiar with Young's Night Thoughts from boyhood-and half a century ago the volume was to be seen lying-with a few others of kindred spirit-beside the Holiest-in many a cottage in the loneliest places in Scotland. The dwellers there were grave-not gloomy-but they loved to look into deep waters, which, though clear, are black because of their depth Lead it through varied scenes of life and and their overshadowings-yet show the stars. To lighten and to cheer. O lead my mind, A mind that fain would wander from its wo, death; And from each scene the noblest truths Nor less inspire my conduct than my song. will Teach rectitude, and fix my firm resolve Compare this with the opening of any Young, they say, was a disappointed man, and was world-sick because of unsuccessful ambition. Well he might be for his talents, learning, eloquence, genius, and virtue ought to have elevated him to a conspicuous station in the Church. But has he pictured the world worse than it is?Nor is it of the world-in the vulgar sense that he sings-though with a bitter scorn he sometimes exposes its follies and its mockeries. His poem is "Of man, of nature, and of human life" as they are by the necessity of their being-and who can blacken beyond the truth the character of sin and guilt "that makes the nature's groan?" We are not among the number of those, who from "golden urns draw light," and then make a display of their borrowed lustre an audacious trick of many a mean-spirited thief, imagining that the world will admire his head as if it shone like that of Christopher among the Mountains, while children, at first scared by the glimmer in the hedge, soon scorn the illuminated turnip. We steal from no bert Croft, the frog, that, with that bull in his eye, puffed himself up till he realized the fable. Thomas Campbell somehow or other missed it-the only miss he ever made—and when one poet goes wrong about another, he is neither to "haud nor to bin'," and flings the stones and gravel from his heels in a style that shows it would be the height of imprudence to attempt to follow. Bulwer alone has written worthily about "one among the highest, but not the most popular of his Country's Poets." And with a crowquill delicately nibbed by Mrs Gentle, two years ago, we copied in our Oberonic calligraphy, on the flyleaf of this our Diamond Edition, this fine and philosophic criticism from "The Student." "Standing upon the grave - the creations of two worlds are round him, and the grey hairs of the mourner become touched with the halo of the prophet. It is the time and spot he has chosen wherein to teach us, that dignify and consecrate the lesson: it is not the mere human and earthly moral that gathers on his tongue. The conceptiou hallows the work, and sustains its own majesty in every change and wandering of the verse. And there is this greatness in his theme-dark, terrible, severeHope never deserts it! It is a deep and gloomy wave, but the stars are The more glassed upon its bosom. sternly he questions the World, the Heaven. Our bane and antidote are more solemnly he refers its answer to both before him; and he only arraigns the things of Time before the tribunal of Eternity. It is this, which, to men whom grief or approaching death can divest of the love and han kerings of the world, leaves the great monitor his majesty, but deprives him of his gloom. Convinced with him of the vanities of life, it is not an ungracious or unsoothing melancholy which confirms us in our conviction, and points with a steady hand to the divine SOMETHING that awaits us beyond; The darkness aiding intellectual light, And sacred silence whispering truths divine, And truths divine converting pain to peace.' "I know not whether I should say too much of this great poem if I should |