der good auspices, by the Bishop's active exertions. In April last was to be observed, at Calcutta, a day of general thanksgiving; in June a confirmation was to be held there, and the consecration of a newly erected Church, in Madras, was fixed for November in this year, or for as early a time as in his round of visitations the Bishop could visit that quarter.

But to return to our Poet, each succeeding year, if future years be like these which we of this generation have witnessed, will probably prove more and more eventful and important; and give Mr. T. opportunity to weave into his Poem, in a more conspicuous manner, (we will answer for his doing so with effect) the wonders of these latter days.

Abhorrent even from the appearance of cavil or fastidiousness, where the work, under consideration, proceeds from a pen, employed, like Mr. T's, in the sacred cause of truth, and having been perhaps already too free in our general remarks, we shall not dwell long on any particular passages we think exceptionable ; convinced that Mr. T. will hereafter be the first to correct inaccuracies, he will give us leave however to point out some faults which we must not pass over. In order to lengthen and eke out his lines, Mr. T. frequently approaches very near the bathos. In one instance he sinks down, deep indeed. The condemned wicked are depicted as

"Lost to all feeling, but the sense of guilt,

Cursed and immortal, WRETCHED and debased.”

Had the sentence ended at "immortal" all had been well. The reader would have feared to reflect on that vast aggregate of misery, contained in the two short words "cursed and immortal.” In p. 149 there is an expression applied to Pedmala, for which we confess our want of taste.

"Then came the goddess Queen, Pedmala, fair,
CHURNED from the milky sea."

Hell in an early part of the Poem is said to be boundless; yet in P. 157 we read of

The fearful bound

Of hell and nature."

Nor are we at all reconciled to "the dunghill earth." The same carelessness has permitted Imaus to stand with a wrong quantity.

"While sultry winds the last remains of life

Destroyed, and Imaus, girdle of the earth, &c." P. 303.

This want of revision is very conspicuous in a passage, which otherwise has considerable merit. Satan, in P. 133, is said to have

Serene and tranquil;"

A front

but in the same description of him, we find that before any fresh circumstance could have arisen to cause the alteration,

66

Now, on his brow

Blind shame, and faint repentance, mad remorse,
Keen self-reproach, despair and hate and grief
Engrave their pangs, rage in his bleeding heart,
And turn to agony the lingering smile
Of hope and scorn." P. 134.

We must observe further, at the hazard of being esteemed hypocritical, that amongst other redundancies, the exclamation "Oh" stands prominent, giving a very tame and poor effect to passages, which in themselves want neither spirit nor richness. The rhythm, which, in blank verse, is of the first importance, is not sufficiently varied. Mr. T. would do well to cultivate a more fastidious ear: Milton was pre-eminent in this particular; his ear being in a peculiar manner nice and discriminating. But we will not lengthen our list of objectionable parts of Armageddon: we have given it, in the hope that Mr. T. may hereafter turn to good account what we trust he will consider as friendly suggestions. It is time that we proceed to point out a few of many beautiful passages, which, exclusive of those already brought forward in our detail of the Poem, have much delighted us.

In an address to the moon (P. 11) are contrasted, with much poetical effect, the lovely stillness of that orb, and the calmness of feeling which contemplating it excites, with the raging tempests of passion, and that tumult of woe arising both from natural and moral causes to which mankind are liable.

"Oh! what fearful scenes
Of horror, thro' thy long continued course
Of twice three thousand years, hast thou beheld,
Pale sovereign of the night! thy peerless rays
Have played in transient softness, o'er the mass
Of dark and raging tempests, as they lashed
The sounding shores; have seen them vex the deep
With hurricane, and swallow in th' abyss
Of maddening waters potent fleets, that rode
In stately majesty above, and seemed

To conquer Ocean! thou hast tinged the surge

That

That closed the space of their descent, and howled
A louder roar, big with the dying shrieks
Of the wrecked Mariners, who turn to thee,
A sad farewell, despairing look and drown.
Thou, when gaunt Famine, Pestilence, and War,
Have swept with fevered wing the groaning lands,
The wealth of nations, and the pride of states,
Mid all the terrors of the thundering bolt,
And midnight lightnings, flashing thro' the clouds,
Of heaven; amid the battle and the storm,
Thou, unconcerned, hast held thy stately course,
And, heedless of an agonizing world,

Poured thine expanded beams alike on all." P. 11.

If it were proposed to us to imagine one moment of time more awful than another, we should select that in which those who may be alive at the last day shall hear the angel summon the dead, "To wake from the sleep of death." The idea loses nothing of its effect in the hands of our Poet. When the dead are summoned, the living also hear the voice which calls them to judgment. The effect is-a total cessation from every pursuit connected with things of this world, or suspension of every earthly feeling.

"The pause of life was fearful; as the voice
From every rock and mountain, hill, and plain,
And wilderness, and ocean, echoing wide,
Alike suspended hope, and joy, and fear,
Ambition, love, and hatred, and the thirst

Of gain, the pride, and wants, and cares of man." P. 16.

The passage is short, but the thought presented to us in it, is striking, and we think Mr. T. might have enlarged upon it, with great propriety, and with increased interest to his Poem, and, above all, with additional moral advantage to his reader. We think it of a nature to check "vice in his high career," and make even "heedless rambling impulse learn to think." There is a description of our earth after the resurrection of the dead, and the departure of the living, which displays real beauty.

The silent globe its wonted course pursued,
The seasons held their sway, and day and night
Continued: and the birds their sweetest song
Trilled softly, grateful to the opening flowers,
Wafting their perfume o'er the lonely woods;
And winds and waves obeyed the sovereign voice,
That gave them motion first: Man, Man alone,
The potent Monarch of this lower realm,
Torn from his empire, sought a nobler state!

Man

Man from the regions of the Earth had flown,

And the sun set upon a desert World! P. 21.

Though Mr. T. be occasionally deficient in spirit, the following passage will prove him capable of the most animated style. The fiends are gazing on the wretched beings, once on earth subdued by their temptations, now in Hell tormented by them.

prayer

"To the stern roar they listen, and to shrieks,
That, borne on many a whirlwind, wandered by;
As in the savage islands of the South,
Some barbarous Chieftain, on his rugged cliff,
At midnight's solemn hour, hears the wild
For refuge from the sea-worn mariner;
Catches the scream of murder on the blast
Loud swelling, as his comrades in the storm
Wave high the flaming torch, and hail the crew
From Ocean's foaming billows to the toils
Of slaughter, shuddering at the wished-for sound,
Though joyous o'er his prey: so hear the fiends
With gladness, dread, and trembling." P. 102.

Of" beauty's voice and eye," the picture is full of truth and feeling; and cold indeed must be the heart which is not warmed on reading it. From that and many passages which the reader will note with pleasure, we judge Mr. T. to possess a heart feelingly alive to all the sweet charities of life. No man who could not himself feel and act as a friend, could have depicted, in the following animated, though short, passage, the delights which friends would enjoy during the state of a millenium. Then

"Here pure and early friendship bloomed again

In all its youthful vigour; no vain pride,

No envious coldness, severed the true friends,
Or broke that sacred intercourse of soul,

The vulgar, proud, and selfish never knew." P. 230.

The eighth book closes with a scene most highly painted and touched with a master's hand. To read the last twenty lines of that book unmoved would betray a want of taste; an insensibility to every thing like poetical effect, which, we trust, can be charged upon none of our readers. The earth, after its conflagration, appears as a burning globe, glimmering in space with a dark and angry light. The scene of stilly awe presented to us-no busy hum of men on this nether world-not a living being left-vegetation destroyed, and its former variety changed to one "shoreless, waveless sea of molten glass," is well fitted to rivet all our attention,

Sa

"So closed our great commission: now we leave
The solar path, among th' unpeopled stars,
To wing our solitary way, and rise

To Armageddon's War: but once, once more,
While yet its desolated Mass was seen,

Down to the burning globe our anxious eye
We turn, around a solemn stillness reigned;
Darting from every side an angry light,
The red ball glimmered in the troubled air!
The smoke had rolled away, the Earthquakes ceased
And o'er th' exhausted Ocean, o'er the vales
And mountains, o'er the sunk and ruined pride
Of gay Creation, and the pomp of Man,
A shoreless, waveless sea of molten glass
Moved its unruffled tide, the tomb of Earth!
No sound amid the awful calm was heard,
Save when the Comet in its wandering flight
Smote on some distant world, and Nature spake,
In dull and sullen murmurs through the deep,
Indignant resignation to her fate." P. 313.

It appears from our view of the part of Armageddon now published, that the moral of the Poem is of the highest character, and that the sentiments and diction, if they equal not the sublimity and extent of the subject, are at least of a superior cast. And here perhaps it might be expected that we should shew the superiority of our matchless Milton; but Mr. T., with a modesty which does him honor, deprecates any comparison with the great master of English epic. We forbear, therefore, to institute any thing like a regular comparison, although, we must confess, the impossibility of divesting our minds of the delightful magic which pervades Milton's pictures of the same characters. Mr. T's delineation wants that appearance of truth, that realizing spirit which directed Milton's pencil. It is indeed so far unfortu nate, that though the one poet draws the character of the arch rebel at the close of his career, as the reigning king of darkness, and the other has painted him, when he first began his reign, and declared himself the enemy alike of God and man; yet the situations, in which, as a fallen spirit under torment, he is exhibited; the characteristic energies which those emergencies call forth; and the unconquered mind which animates him under all circumstances are too similar to, and correspond too closely with, Milton's representation of them to allow Mr. T. any hope of being equally successful. But it is no discouragement to any poet, that he is inferior to one, who was himself" Nulli secundus."

The plan of Armageddon, as laid down by Mr. T., comprehends, as we have found, matter of the highest import. The

state