In like manner, the events presented by the sacred historian, after the institution of Monarchy in Israel, are among the most momentous that the annals of nations furnish. The noble, but ill-regulated character of Saul-his early promise, and speedy declension and fall; the youthful gallantry of his ill-fated son, and the gentle episodes of his friendship with the future successor to his own forfeited birthright; the vicissitudes of David's story; the fatal prosperity of the wisest of men, and the mournful eclipse of his virtues and greatness; the subsequent disruption of the kingdom, and the degeneracy and crimes of the succeeding dynasties ; these, like the moving or dissolving pictures of the present day, succeed each other with unexhausted interest, and awaken every variety of emotion. They combine the strangeness of romance with an authenticity which no other histories possess; and are filled with profoundest lessons to nations, to sovereigns, and individuals. A classical fancy might almost find in the unhappy Saul, with his impulsive valour, and his tragic end, another Achilles; and in David - his desert wanderings, and varied hardships-a younger Ulysses.

Poetry fulfils best its high vocation when, through the play of fancy and the music of rhythm, it deals with man as a being formed for immortality; aims to exalt and purify his moral nature; and recognises a Divine government and a Divine revelation. The great classical epics were in this sense religious, for although their

mythological machinery was impure and false, it was all that they were acquainted with; and their authors did not, like the unhappy Shelleys and Keats of modern times, ignore or repudiate a theology too high for their apprehension, or too pure for their love. Our own 'Paradise Lost,' the greatest of epics, is but an amplification-by genius almost superhuman-of the opening revelations of the Pentateuch. The 'Night Thoughts' of Young, though too exclusively didactic and painfully monotonous, owe to the Scriptures an unequalled sublimity. Cowper's religion and morality run, like a golden thread, through every page of his graceful verse. Thompson crowns his noble Temple of Nature with a yet nobler hymn to her great Author. Gray, in the greatest of his too sparing contributions to our poetical stores, finds access to every heart, by blending the mortal and frail in our nature with the unseen and undying. Goldsmith paints in the village church and the village pastor the fairest features in his deserted landscape. Pope (to go further back in the regions of the muse) has transplanted into his Eclogue the richest flowers of prophetical song; and his Essay on Man' teaches, but on insufficient foundations, an elevated and spiritual morality. While Dryden gives, in a few immortal lines, an ideal of the true aim and scope of the lyre, although an unsanctified heart, and a corrupt literature, forbade him to his latest day (for which he has incurred the indignant strictures of Macaulay) to realise the fair conception. It is thus

he confesses his own faults, which, unhappily, he never

sought to repair :—

'Oh, gracious God! how far have we

"Profaned the heavenly gift of prophecy !
"Made prostitute and profligate the muse,
"Debased to each obscene and impious use;

"Whose harmony was first ordained above,

"For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love."*

:

And-to come back to times nearer our own-Scott, Wordsworth, Crabbe, Southey, Campbell, Macaulay, and others if they less directly appeal to the high sanctions of religion, are, one and all, found cultivating the sweetest sensibilities of our nature, the gentle charities of life, and the purity and elevation of human cha

racter.

These, and such as these, should ever be the characteristics of the true poet. In aims like these he may put in requisition all the resources of nature, art, science, physical beauty; of learning, wit, humour, imagination, passion; all the affluence and felicities of the most graceful of instruments, language. By these he may refresh and invigorate the fancy, fortify principle, and carry the strongest fastnesses of the heart. And it is in proportion as he falls short of these, that he derogates from his high calling, and foregoes the choicest prerogatives of genius.

* Ode to Mrs. Killegrew (Daughter of Oliver Cromwell).
("Excellent in the two sister-arts

of poesy and painting.")

"Great is song,

"Used to great aims;"

is the fine sentiment (and supplements well one much greater, and of far other days*); the above quoted are the words of onet who, if he had always acted more up to his own axiom, and better appreciated the " fine issues," and the "great aims," for which the gift of "song" is bestowed, would, perhaps, command a more discriminating, if a less numerous audience. And it is, probably, to the failure of too much of the poetry of the present day thus to satisfy the demands of a manly and elevated intellect, a refined taste, and sound and healthy principle, that the disfavor of this department of literature, so apparent to those who watch with an enlightened interest its course and phases, is to be attributed.

However this may be, the writer of these pages believes he has not so far miscalculated public taste, that, in the wide domains of fancy, a standing-place may not again be found for the sacred muse, provided her utterances be not unbefitting the high sources of her inspiration. And in whatever degree he may have failed to reach the standard he has prescribed, he trusts he shall have succeeded in showing the adaptability of these portions of the Divine records for rhythmical treatment, as well as in furnishing some eventful scenes of human

* "Spirits are not finely touched

"But to fine issues."

Shakspeare (Measure for Measure).

+ Tennyson (Princess).

story, and pregnant lessons for human conduct, and some pleasing pictures for a well-regulated imagination. He has already met with approval and success in former literary efforts, although of a different nature from the present; and he has not, therefore, now to learn what care and labor should be employed, by all who aspire to the permanent favor of a fastidious, but generally candid public.

He rejoices, likewise, in the opportunity which the nature of his work affords him to bear, in these times of shallow doubt, or systematic depreciation of Scriptural truth, the humble but earnest testimony of "A Layman," to his full and unqualified belief in the strict authenticity and Divine source of the miraculous agencies here recorded.