And wove his garland of the lightning's wing, In sportive twist-the lightning's fiery wing, Which, as the footsteps of the dreadful God, Marching upon the storm in vengeance seemed

Then turned, and with the grasshopper, who sung

His evening song, beneath his feet, conversed. Suns, moons, and stars, and clouds his sisters

were;

Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds, and storms,

His brothers-younger brothers, whom he

scarce

As equals deemed. All passions of all men-
The wild and tame-the gentle and severe;
All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane;
All creeds; all seasons, Time, Eternity;
All that was hated, and all that was dear;
All that was hoped, all that was feared by man,
He tossed about, as tempest, withered leaves,
Then smiling looked upon the wreck he made.
With terror now he froze the cowering blood;
And now dissolved the heart in tenderness:
Yet would not tremble, would not weep him-
self.

But back into his soul retired, alone,

Dark, sullen, proud; gazing contemptuously
On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet.
So Ocean from the plains, his waves had late
To desolation swept, retired in pride,
Exulting in the glory of his might,
And seemed to mock the ruin he had wrought.

"As some fierce comet of tremendous size, To which the stars did reverence, as it passed; So he through learning, and through fancy took His flight sublime; and on the loftiest top Of Fame's dread mountain sat: not soiled, and worn,

As if he from the earth had laboured up;
But as some bird of heavenly plumage fair,
He looked, which down from higher regions

To bursting nigh, to utter bulky words
Of admiration vast: and many too,
Many that aimed to imitate his flight,
With weaker wing, unearthly fluttering made,
And gave abundant sport to after days.

"Great man! the nations gazed, and wondered much,

And praised and many called his evil good.
Wits wrote in favour of his wickedness;
And kings to do him honour took delight.
Thus full of titles, flattery, honour, fame;
Beyond desire, beyond ambition full,—

He died--he died of what? Of wretchedness.

Died all but dreary solitary pride;
And all his sympathies in being died.
As some ill guided bark, well built and tall,
Which angry tides cast out on desert shore,
And then retiring, left it there to rot
And moulder in the winds and rains of heaven;
So he, cut from the sympathies of life,
And cast ashore from pleasure's boisterous
surge-

A wandering, weary, worn, and wretched thing;
Scorched, and desolate, and blasted soul;
A gloomy wilderness of dying thought-
Repined, and groaned, and withered from the

earth.

His groanings filled the land, his numbers filled: And yet he seemed ashamed to groan. Poor

man!

Ashamed to ask, and yet he needed help.

"Proof this, beyond all lingering of doubt, That not with natural or mental wealth, Was God delighted, or his peace secured. That not in natural or mental wealth, Was human happiness or grandeur found. Attempt how monstrous! and how surely vain! With things of earthly sort, with aught but God,

With ought but moral excellence, truth and love,

To satisfy and fill the immortal soul!
Attempt, vain inconceivably! attempt,
To satisfy the ocean with a drop;
To marry Immortality to Death;

And with the unsubstantial shade of Time,
To fill the embrace of all Eternity!"

pp. 185-192.

"The joys of time, her joys of native growth," are the theme to which the poem changes in the fifth book, and very beautifully does the Bard of Earth expatiate on the "Loves, friendships, hopes, and dear remembrances-

tears

The kind embracings of the heart-and hours Of happy thought-and smiles coming to And glories of the heaven and starry cope Above, and glories of the earth beneath,

The rays that wandered through the gloom Of mortal life,-wells of the wilderness."

Although we have already been somewhat liberal of extracts, it would be injustice to pass over the following exquisite apostrophe to Love, and the noble passage on Friendship, which occurs a little further on.

"Hail, holy love! thou word that sums all bliss! Gives and receives all bliss; fullest when most Thou givest. Spring-head of all felicity! Deepest when most is drawn. Emblem of God! Overflowing most when greatest numbers drink.

Essence that binds the uncreated Three;
Chain that unites creation to its Lord:

On earth mysterious, and mysterious still
In heaven; sweet chord that harmonizes all
The harps of Paradise; the spring, the well,
That fills the bowl and banquet of the sky.

*

"Not unremembered is the hour when friends Met; friends but few on earth, and therefore dear.

Sought oft, and almost sought as oft in vain:
Yet always sought: so native to the heart,
So much desired, and coveted by all.
Nor wonder thou-thou wonder'st not, nor
need'st:

Much beautiful, and excellent, and fair
Was seen beneath the sun; but nought was

seen

More beautiful, or excellent, or fair
Than face of faithful friend; fairest when seen
In darkest day. And many sounds were sweet,
Most ravishing, and pleasant to the ear;
But sweeter none than voice of faithful friend;
Sweet always, sweetest heard in loudest storm.
Some I remember, and will ne'er forget;
My early friends, friends of my evil day;
Friends in my mirth, friends in my misery too;
Friends given by God in mercy and in love;
My counsellors, my comforters, and guides;
My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy;
Companions of my young desires; in doubt
'My oracles, my wings in high pursuit.
O, I remember, and will ne'er forget,
Our meeting spots, our chosen sacred hours;
Our burning words, that uttered all the soul;
Our faces beaming with unearthly love;-
Sorrow with sorrow sighing, hope with hope
Exulting, heart embracing heart entire.
As birds of social feather helping each
His fellow's flight, we soared into the skies,
And cast the clouds beneath our feet, and earth,
With all her tardy, leaden-footed cares,
And talked the speech, and ate the food of
heaven.

These I remember, these selectest men;
And would their names record-but what avails
My mention of their name; before the throne
They stand illustrious 'mong the loudest harps,
And will receive thee glad, my friend and

theirs.

For all are friends in heaven; all faithful friends;

And many friendships in the days of Time Begun, are lasting here, and growing still: So grows ours evermore, both theirs and mine." pp. 212-214. Towards the close of this book, the Millennial age, the "sabbath-day of all the earth," is described in the glowing language of Scripture prophecy, not, however, as future, but as past. Mr. Pollok has cautiously adhered to the representations of the inspired volume; and the judgment he has shown in this part of the poem, is highly commendable. The book closes with recording that

"Messiah reigned; And Earth kept Jubilee a thousand years." In the Sixth Book, the harp "resumes its tone of wo." The Millennium being past,

A complete relapse is described occurred into every description of guilt. We do not now stop to ind far the Scriptures countenance this r tion. But it is for "a little seas signs of the approaching catastrop tailed with great force, and in a hig poetry. In the midst of the narr trumpet sounds, that "calls to eveni heaven;" and the theme is suspend scribe the varied employments of t inhabitants," all active, all engage pursuit, not happy else." A bard of that night the boundless song;-and concludes with the hymn of praise, Isaiah's harp, which "all in heaven

In the Seventh Book, the narrativ ed. Suddenly, the dread arrest is the wheels of nature. Every liv stands still, in dreadful silence. "Hope died in every breast; and or Came fear and trembling: none to bour spoke;

Husband thought not of wife, nor o The mother, nor friend of friend, nor In horrible suspense all mortals stoo And as they stood and listened, cha heard

Rolling in heaven: revealed in flam The angel of God appeared in statu Blazing; and lifting up his hand on By Him that lives forever, swore, t Should be no more. Throughou heard,

And sighed."

Another angel, after a pause, app poem requires us to speak of the a as past-and blew the trump of C sound of which

"The dead awoke, and all the living

The change which fell upon wither infancy, the diseased, deformed, i newly sheeted corpse, the bleedir men new fallen in battle, contend and the gaunt anatomy beneath th scalpel,-is vividly pourtrayed. suppress what follows.

"Now starting up among the living Appeared innumerous the risen dea Each particle of dust was claimed: For ages trod beneath the careless Of men, rose organized in human The monumental stones were rolle The doors of death were opened;

dark

The caravan that in mid journey sunk
With all its merchandise, expected long,
And long forgot, ingulfed beneath the tide
Of death, that the wild spirit of the winds
Swept in his wrath along the wilderness,-
In the wide desert woke, and saw all calm
Around, and populous with risen men;
Nor of his relics thought the pilgrim then,
Nor merchant of his silks and spiceries.
"And he―far voyaging from home and friends,
Too curious with a mortal eye to peep
Into the secrets of the Pole, forbid

By nature, whom fierce winter seized, and froze
To death, and wrapt in winding-sheet of ice,
And sung the requiem of his shivering ghost,
With the loud organ of his mighty winds,

Beneath all visible retired, none went
And came again, to tell the wonders there-
That morning, thou that slumbered not before,
Nor slept, Great Ocean, laid thy waves to rest,
And hushed thy mighty minstrelsy. No breath
Thy deep composure stirred, no fin, no oar:
Like beauty newly dead, so calm, so still,
So lovely, thou, beneath the light that fell
From angel-chariots sentineled on high,
Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living
change,

Thy dead arise......................................................

.Sudden arose

From out their watery beds, the ocean's dead, Renewed, and on the unstirring billows stood, From pole to pole, thick covering all the sea; Of every nation blent, and every age."

In the two succeeding books, the description, all the varieties of character distinguishing the of the congregated myriads is pursued through

several classes of mankind.

"It was a congregation vast of men,
Of unappendaged and unvarnished men ;
Of plain, unceremonious human beings,
Of all but moral character bereaved."

*

*

*

*

Of all mankind! innumerable throng!
Great harvest of the grave! waiting the will
Of Heaven, attentively and silent all."

All cities fell, and threw their buried millions forth; while, with the works of man, "Tree, herb, and flower, and every fowl of heaven,

And fish, and animal, the wild and tame,
Forthwith dissolving, crumbled into dust.

At length, suddenly, the angelic host descend to execute the high and awful commission to separate, to right and left, the good and the bad, to meet no more;

"These ne'er again to smile, nor those to weep."

Another breathless pause; and then,
"Upon the circuit of the upper spheres,
A glorious seraph stood, and cried aloud,
That every ear of man and devil heard:
'Him that is filthy let be filthy still.
Him that is holy, let be holy still.'
And suddenly, another squadron bright,
Of high arch-angel glory, stooping, brought
A marvellous bow; one base upon the Cross,
The other, on the shoulder of the Bear,
They placed, from south to north spanning the
heavens,

And on each hand dividing good and bad,—
Who read on either side these burning words,
Which ran along the arch in living fire,
And wanted not to be believed in full:
'As ye have sown, so shall ye reap this day.'"

From the last book we shall make no extract. It opens with a solemn and devout invocation of Divine assistance in attempting the ineffable theme. The judge descends; the sentence is pronounced upon the accursed and the blessed; their doom is consummated. The Bard of Earth concludes his awful narrative

feeling in which any one who has a heart to feel, must find himself at closing the work will both disincline and disqualify him to exercise the critical function. Hereafter, we may be able to detect all sorts of faults in Mr. Pollok's noble poem; but we confess, that at present, we cannot shake ourselves free from the spell which either his genius or his theme has cast upon us. We had intended to offer some remarks upon the opinions of the Author relative to the Millennial age, and some other points connected with the prophetic discoveries of Scripture; but these we must now defer till we resume the general subject of prophecy. The Author of Palingenesia contends for the identity of the Day of Judgment and the Millennium, and speaks of

"The fixed duration of the judgment day.”

Mr. Pollok's poem will answer an important end, by serving to counteract such visionary absurdities. In no light, perhaps, does he appear to greater advantage, than in comparison with those writers who have ventured upon the awful theme before him. The exquisite felicity of the fiction by which he transports his readers into a higher atmosphere, to

-regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth,"

in order to listen to the accents of an immortal, places the Poet on a vantage ground which enables him almost to defy criticism. Nothing can be more admirable than the propriety and dignity with which the whole subject is treated. Compare the Author's manner for a moment with the courtly style of Young, who, even in singing of the Last Day, could not forget to

make his bow.

"This mighty scene I next presume to draw; Attend, great Anna! with religious awe."

Or, to take a fairer instance,-his description of the Resurrection:

"Now monuments prove faithful to their trust,
And render back their long-committed dust;
Now charnels rattle; scatter'd limbs, and all
The various bones, obsequious to the call,
Self-mov'd, advance; the neck, perhaps, to

meet

The distant head; the distant legs the feet.
Dreadful to view, see through the dusky sky
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly,
To distant regions, journeying there, to claim
Deserted members and complete the frame."

The puerile extravagance and littleness of this picture, so unworthy of the Author of the Night Thoughts, may serve at least to illustrate the difficulty of describing so unimaginable a scene, at once with force of conception and propriety. Mr. Pollok is always master of his imagination, always intent upon his great purpose. Even his inaccuracies appear intentional; for instance, his systematic sacrifice of grammar to euphony, in substituting, after the relative, the third for the second person of the verb.

"That morning, than that slumber'd not before, Nor slept."

"Thou sitt'st on high and measu nies."

But we are forgetting our promise: scend to verbal criticism, so as to ex selves to the Author's sarcasm on the

"simple race of men, w One only art, which taught them stil Whate'er was done, might have be done."

This, in the present case, we feel tion to say. We have, on the contra sitation in expressing our decided c that "The Course of Time" is the fi which has appeared in any language radise Lost; and without meaning to that it discovers genius superior to th ton, it is, of the two, the poem of should ourselves prefer to have been t Our readers may, if they please, in decision to an infirmity of judgment that which led our great poet to give dise Regained the preference amon compositions. Mr. Pollok has succee Dante,-not for lack of native powe want of better guidance than the dim tered lights of that dark age,-faile could imagine a purgatory, and cr guage; he was the Michael Angelo but he was only a poet. Milton was a saint as well as a patriot, a the well as a poet, with the immense ad living in the full light of the Reform Christian poet, in the present day, ever, still higher advantages. If th be unfavourable in some respects t play of originality, there can be n that it is far more advanced in script ledge. The palmary merit of M work, is, that he has so constantly pathless course by the Bible;-that e in his poem which is fiction, is kep nate, the mere drapery of truth. breathes the inspiration, not of the fount, but of Siloa's brook,-of th which makes glad the city of God. not refuse credit to his representati has devoutly sought, not in feigned but on his bended knees, the unct Holy One, which will sufficiently a his having so far transcended the lo of earthly wing. It is, in fact, a poe we dare not speak lightly, believing only written with the highest and 1 tives, but adapted to leave the mo impressions on the heart. It is poe mistake not, of the highest order, c to the noblest object, and ensuring thor the purest and most permanen

It is with sincere regret that we readers, that subsequently to the the above article, we have heard t spectable and highly gifted autho Course of Time," is no more. The the Rev. Robert Pollok, at the e twenty-eight, took place on the 1 tember, at Shirly Common, near So at which place he had arrived, on! from Scotland to Italy, for the reco health.

From the Christian Review. BIBLICAL RESEARCHES AND TRAVELS IN RUSSIA; including a Tour in the Crimea, and the Passage of the Caucasus: with Maps and Plates. By E. Henderson. London: Nisbet. 8vo. pp. 538. 1826. LETTERS ON THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS STATE OF SOUTH AMERI

CA. Written during a Residence of nearly Seven Years in Buenos Ayres, Chile, Peru, and Colombia. By James Thomson. London: Nisbet. 12mo. pp. 296.

We can hardly imagine a subject of more sublime interest than that which the volumes before us introduce to our contemplation. The diffusion of knowledge, even in its lowest elements, can hardly fail to be considered as an object of very high importance to mankind. The enlargement of the bounds of science, the spread of intellectual energy, the discovery of new principles in nature or new powers in man, have a stronger hold upon our interest. But we feel a yet higher and deeper delight in reading the history of those who, at different periods of the world, have visited the dark corners of the earth, and, by the light of their genius, their intrepidity, and laborious research, have taught their fellow-beings the truths they had discovered. The sages of antiquity, travelling from country to country, inquiring after and diffusing knowledge; the scholars of the middle ages, rousing in the schools and universities the slumbering spirit of philosophy; the travellers of a later period;-the astronomers of one country, measuring the earth; the naturalists of another, exploring her deep vales and untrodden glens; and the geologist of a third, penetrating into her centre;-all these are objects of our high regard, and we read their histories with a never-failing interest. But if it be thus with the promoters of human knowledge, or the imperfect systems of human philosophy, there must ever be a sublime feeling of admiration attached to the efforts that are made in spreading the clear and glorious light of a pure and Divine Religion. With the Scriptures in his hand, the Christian philosopher has a text-book of morality confessedly superior to any system that human ingenuity has contrived. If he would civilize, therefore, a barbarous people; if he would introduce among them order and social comfort, and raise them in the scale of human existence; he has no foundation so sure as that laid in the morality of his system. But, while in this point of view he ranks above all who have sought to extend the civilization of mankind, he has a new and higher object to accomplish, for which he alone possesses full and ample materials. The Book from which he draws his wisdom, as a teacher of mankind, is the true oracle of their

protracted wandering, to leave but this blessing of a plain Christian behind: to do this, we feel that a man deserves the veneration of his race, and the admiration of all to whom truth and charity are dear. With these feelings, we have received no ordinary pleasure in the perusal of the works which head our present article. They have led us forth with the sower; made us companions of his toil through the day of labour; taught us to look forward with hope for the spring-tide and harvest of Divine truth, and to pray more earnestly that our lot may be with those who shall bring home their sheaves rejoicing.

Were this the only point gained in the publication of such works as those before us, it would be amply sufficient to reward their authors; but there are other advantages consequent upon their production, of an equally important nature. The reports of societies are necessarily confined to the immediate objects of their formation; must always consist of details and minute statements; and are totally unfitted for conveying a clear and comprehensive view of the considerations branching from the main subject. To supply their deficiencies, we require a wide and personal observation, or the results of observations carried on with all the advantages of a cultivated and enlarged understanding. This is necessary to further the designs of societies formed for the enlargement of scientific discovery-it is necessary to promote the aims of literary investigation; and it is equally so in carrying on the great designs of Bible and Missionary exertions. We want a something, which a few detached anecdotes; a sermon, however eloquent, or an address, however persuasive, can never supply: we want to feel ourselves present in the scene of the missionaries' labour, and to form our own views and make our own theories in respect to the exertions that are to be made in future Much, we believe with confidence, may be done by the sole operation of spiritual devotedness, but we believe, with equal confidence, that more may be done when, in addition to this principle of life and energy, the infinite variety of means are skilfully employed, which the situation of the world and the enlargement of human science present for the purposes of Christian benevolence. Narrow views on such a subject as this, are, next to spiritual coldness, above all things to be deprecated. The united zeal and talents of the most gifted among men, might be well employed in the promotion of its success, and find an ample scope and an ample reward for the noblest of their exertions. Political wisdom will no where gain so fair a guerdon, as among those whom she has taught to labour profitably in the world for the world's salvation; learning will in no cause have better reason for exertion, than when seated henaath