authority and power, and thus shall have restored all things to order, peace and harmony. The prophets never spake of any further restitution than this.

John the Baptist restored all things which the prophets spake respecting him, before he finished his course and Christ will have restored all things which the prophets have spoken respecting him when he shall have put all enemies under his feet. The enemies of Christ have often triumphed thus far. He has had to maintain his kingdom against a mighty array of opposition. The righteous and the wicked have lived together on the same soil, and often in the same families. The tares and the wheat here grow together. But this state of things shall not always continue. The day of separation-the great harvest of the world-is hastening on. Then all things will be restored to permanent order. That mixed state of things which has existed ever since the first apostacy will be brought to a close. The friends of God will no longer be oppressed, nor persecuted, nor afflicted, but will enter upon an inheritance of unfading glory.

ARTICLE X.

COWPER'S POETRY AND LETTERS.

By the Author of the Article on "Modern English Poetry." Vol. 1. p. 206.

The Works of William Cowper; his Life and Letters. By William Hayley, Esq., now first completed by the introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence. Edited by the Rev. T. S. Grimshawe, A. M., London. 1835.

It is strange that there should ever be a doubt in a rational mind of the utility of Poetry. It is strange, moreover, that in usage, Utility and Poetry, should have come to occupy, as words, antagonist places; so that it is common to hear a man who values himself on his correct judgment, vaunt his utter want of susceptibility to poetical influences, as a proof of a sound and solid understanding; while, on the other

hand, every body knows, that many who desire the reputation of poets and geniuses consider nothing so necessary to the establishment of their claims, as an unmitigated contempt, both in precept and in practice, of all the rules of right reason and common sense. The mathematician professes to hold fancy in abhorrence: the bardling, prates his sovereign dislike to the whole army of sines, co-sines, tangents and interminable series. And so the realms of matter and the realms of mind seem likely to be kept in eternal discord, by a commotion unnatural, and a war schismatically waged, between twin parts of the well-balanced system of the allharmonious God.

It is to be especially regretted that THE CLERGY have too generally allowed themselves to be caught in the snare of this plausible distinction; and to be ranked with utilitarians, in opposition to the encouragement of poetry: as if, in reality, there could be any thing in the one necessarily hostile to the other: and as if it were not becoming the ambassadors of God, in every thing to maintain the wisdom of whatever He has made inseparable from intellect in full development. Why should they not, therefore, be the grand unionists between the utile and the dulce; practically combining, in the illustration of their sound philosophy, divine wisdom with divine symmetry; and the grandeur of their doctrine, with the harmony of its Author's nature; and the sublimity of truth with the beauty of holiness?

We define poetry as, in its element, the natural expression of sympathy with whatever outgoing of the divine mind has produced things gratifying to soul or sense. This includes, of course, all the emotions of the sympathizing spirit, produced by a violation of these congruities. Poetry then, is, in its nature, sympathy with the being of God; and that, whether it delights in objects supersensual, and lives in a spirit-world; or whether it adopts this fair earth as its field of pleasant thriving; and views in all sweet or glorious things of sense an emanation from Deity, and ever sings his wisdom, in the pious aspiration of Akenside:

Let us take a Bible view of the subject. Does the Lord really, in his revelation of himself, exhibit his own wisdom,

as the origin of poetry? Does he, theoretically, manifest his approval of it, by a system combining poetical objects with natures adapted to them? Practically-before the fall, did he employ it to enamour the soul of man with goodness; and since, to reconcile the world unto himself, through the gospel? Is poetry conformable to the ideal which Scripture gives us of a perfect state of existence? Is it agreeable to revealed notions of the abodes of the blessed? Man enjoys it, in his weakness; and in his depravity, corrupts it to his soul's hurt-does it inhere to his sinful nature? Is it part, only, of a fuller being? or is it rather, an unbroken tie, that still draws him back to virtue? Is it a genuine exertion of the Spirit's influences, that purely followed out, would reject all that conforms not to the will of the Lord? Would it be a soiling of a seraph's plumes, should he shake his wings in ecstacy, and speak in rapture over some new world, bursting into birth, under the hand of his Creator? Is HE imperfect, who writes such lines as thrill all intelligence, and awe all being, in the rich hues of nature, in the glorious light of day, in the heavens that declare the glory of God, and the firmament that sheweth his handiwork!

We know of but one state of things, that has ever existed, which has received the perfect approval of the Lord our God-one only, which he has pronounced good. Space may hold system on system, as perfect as that which the Lord hath blessed. But of all possible worlds one only is detailed to us, as good in all. That was our own little plannet, as Jehovah made it a residence for man, in which emotions were forced on his holy nature, the mere fancy of which, in our day, is the highest poetry. Where our first parents dwelt, they must have fallen, long before the bitter tree was tasted, if Poetry be not good. Their father hedged them in where they had no necessities. Their first cries were not those of mere utility: they opened their eyes on all things needful for them. Their first emotion must have been that of the beautiful. Then was their first accent, praise. It was sympathy with the mind that had prepared such good things for them. We may call it gratitude, then, in their souls-but, on their lips!-Oh, glorious thought!—the first words ever utterred, by breathing man, must have been poetry!

When the world came fair from the hand of its Creator

the green earth, the beautiful, and the bright: spinning, and sleeping on its axle, and wheeling through the deep heaven, ever lighted in its trackless round, by its little sattelite lamp -what was it, but Jehovah's embodiment, of all that glorious ideal, which we call POETRY? It had no blight, no sin, no stain. The lion couched, harmless, in the shady thicket: and the leopard dallied with the fawn. There was painting in all around in the rich soil, pranked with a thousand flowers; in the tall trees, with their living greenness; in the vine that entwined them, lovely and graceful in its spiral beauty; and in the bright clusters that shone out from its canopy of leaves. There were blossoms perfuming in the shrubbery, and fruits of all golden rind, that glittered in the branches. The graces of all seasons were there, woven into one. The blue sky was above, unclouded; and beneath was the clear water, ever more beautiful for reflecting the eternal smile of Heaven.

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And there was music from the fountain and the grove. The brooklets that brawled on their way to the four rivers, warbled in their pebbly bed, and flowed with melodious murmurs. The happy birds sung anthems all the day, from choir and and antiphon, which the wildwood made. There were matins for the lark to celebrate all fowls sung vespers; and when came on the solemn vigil, there was still an anthem from "one-the livelong night." The very beasts sent forth a song of joy from their coverts, for the lion's roar was not yet for his prey; and the horse neighed not among trumpets.

And there was sculpture, besides. Amid all this scene of beauty, walked forth the lords of the domains, erect and tall; in such symmetry of limb and joint, as God alone could conceive-compared with which the poet's dream is vague; and all the perfection that was ever warmed to life from the cold marble, scarce better than deformity. How they went forth in glory-that first imperial pair! How happy was their lot! The world their home, and all lovely things their heritage! In all around them they beheld the present God, and knew that God, their father! The wood bent down its fruitage to their toilless hands, and they plucked it, as the good gift of their heavenly friend. The fountain sprung up at their feet; 'twas the ceaseless flow of their Maker's love. When the shadows of evening came down on the landscape,

the stars were in heaven, and the moon. So, ever about them was the eye that never slumbers nor sleeps. In the morning watch, came up the daylight, and the sun; the mists rose like incense from the pleasant valleys, and with it they joined their voices, as they woke with the world around them. High noon came on, and still the shining scorched not: a few short hours, and the shadows were stretched out on the face of the earth; but still it was "a pleasant thing to behold the sun," and they knew it was the eternal light of their Father's countenance.

Now if the theories of many be true, it was no part of the wisdom of God to make such a glorious world, and to impress the spirit of man within, by such a conformation of things without. There are those who deem it very unphilosophical, to spend a minute in admiration of the gauzy wing of the beetle that we tread upon, or of the coat of many colors that robes the butterfly. "Small business this," they say, with a shrug and a sneer. Was it small business in the Lord to make it such? They consider it the worst fanaticism to delight in the fields, the forests, and the rivers. Even the mountains, and the skies, and the host of heaven-yea, the very heavens that are telling the glory of God-these, if they kindle in our minds such rapture as the Holy Spirit warmed into song in the breast of David, are enough to make us fools in the eyes of many men, that "have eyes, but see not." But in another way, we may examine them. For the sake of elucidating some dogma of the schools, we may consume years in looking at nature, if we will but take the learned names of Zoologists, Entomologists, or Astronomers. Poets are mere idlers. But a man shall gape, all his life, at Aldebaran, through sheet-brass and lenses, and is a philosopher, forsooth; scientific, and mightily to be praised. To blacken paper with ciphers about eclipses; and with angles and triangles about distances and elevations; to dissect bugs, and impale them, learnedly on pins; or to embalm the precious carcase of an antedeluvian tree-toad, or to let loose more odorous gases from a lump of earth, than there were restive winds in the bag of Ulysses. This is science-this the triumph of genius-this the march of mind! But to tell of Nature's glories in numbers; to live ejaculating; to immortalize the soul's emotions; to express their tumult, or their calm in varying verse; to mirror the spirit of man to itself; to lead

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. NO. IV.

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