PRISON BOOKS AND THEIR AUTHORS. INTRODUCTION. "WHOм the Lord loveth He chafteneth," faid the wife fon of Ifrael, and the experience of all ages confirms the deep truthfulness of his words. The bleffed and abiding influences of forrow and suffering are pure and holy, and ftrengthen the foul for endurance, and prepare and fit it for final victory. The power of joy is of a light and tranfient nature compared with the perennial power of forrow. Laughter compared with. tears is as the light ripple on the face of fome sweet lake, kissed by the flightest summer breeze, to the glorious rollings of the tempeft-toft billows of the fea. Mirth is bright and beautiful, and lovely to look upon is the face radiant with fmiles; B but it has not the ferene and ineffable divinity which beams from the countenance of the long and forely-tried child of forrow. Nay, was not the Saviour the man of forrow? And He by his life, and still more by his death, has fanctified the benign elements of grief, and made it celestial in its results. The greatest and wifest of men have ever borne willing teftimony to this truth-that adversity has killed its thousands, but profperity its tens of thoufands. And this must ever be true while life is a battle, a conteft, a mystery, and an When it becomes a miferable commedietta, or a still more miserable farce, then perhaps, but not till then, will forrow ceafe its high and holy functions, and give place to "laughter, holding both his fides.” awe. The paffage in the Divine Book has found its echo in the deepest poetry written fince. All tragedy is more lafting than comedy; and only that comedy which has an element of the tragic in it (which all true comedy has) lafts beyond its own day and generation. Dante's fong ftands like a giant above all the other fongs of Italy, glorious as is the "Jerufalem Delivered;" and Milton's Epic of " Paradife Loft," whofe very name is a pathos, is the greatest epic the world poffeffes. A goodly fized volume might be filled of quotations from our most inspired poets, proving how deeply they had |