interpolations, and with regard to the great poet himself, for his peculiar circumstances and the character of his times. But there is also very much of his poetry which a Christian mind may enjoy with a more unqualified delight. And to say nothing of isolated passages, the general design of some of Shakspeare's works seems beautifully accordant with truth and morality. He is, in at least some instances, eminently successful in what may be called the moral treatment of the most difficult subject with which a poet can intermeddle, the darker passions of the human heart. Thus, in the tragedy of Macbeth, the exhibition of these passions in their various workings, and in their fearful consequences—in the guilt-laden conscience, the utter misery attendant even on the most successful wickedness, the natural progress from utmost triumph to irretrievable ruin, the darkness within at the commencement, and the darkness all around at the close-is not not only impressive to the very utmost degree in which impressiveness can belong to poetry, but the impression which it is calculated to produce is, in our own opinion, a beneficial impression. We place out of account everything connected with the theatre-the morality or immorality of which must be determined on very different grounds from those on which the moral or immoral character of a poem is to be determined. We view Macbeth merely as a poem to be read, and therefore to be judged in the same way as the Paradise Lost. And we set aside all question as to particular scenes, particular passages, and everything except the general design of the poem-whose moral character will perhaps be better understood, if it be compared with some of the writings of Byron, in which also guilt and misery are seen in their real association, but yet the truthfulness of the picture is very partial—a false glare is flung over all-both guilt and its consequences are unambiguously referred to Destiny or Providence-and the poet still seems to aim at mitigating the enormity of vice and enlisting the sympathies of the reader on its side. Much of the moral superiority of Shakspeare depends upon the unequalled truthfulness of his pictures, and thus may in some measure be said to result from his poetic excellence. The question, however, is sometimes forced upon our consideration, whether it is right that such pictures should be drawn?

We might here make quotation after quotation, to illustrate the delight which a Christian mind may feel in various kinds of poetry, making no pretensions to the religious character. But we efrain from pursuing this subject any farther.

We have only to refer to the poetry of the

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Bible for proof that the fullest recognition of all truth is at least perfectly consistent with the most incomparable tenderness, and beauty, and sublimity. But we go farther, and assert that the fullest recognition of truth is conducive to every kind of genuine poetic excellence. There are truths which surpass all fiction. We are persuaded that no visions of fancy were ever so enchanting or so lovely, so calculated to awaken in the contemplative mind the noblest and most delightful emotions, as truth. We shall utter no high commendation of the little poem which concludes with the following lines, but of the lines themselves we shall say that they never fail to impress us with a sense of sublimity.

"That very law which moulds a tear,

And bids it trickle from its source-
That law preserves the earth a sphere,

And guides the planets in their course."

We anticipate no chilling of innate fervor, but upon the contrary a brighter incandescence of poetic fire, from the infusion of a greater measure of truth into the minds of poets, and therefore into poetry itself. Were it only by "arousing the dormant energies of intellect," the truths of religion would contribute to the production of poetry. It is not likely that Cowper would ever have risen to any very marked eminence as a poet, if he had not known the gospel, and been animated by sacred themes. The sublimest and most affecting passages of Milton are generally those in which the ordinary reader of the Bible must recognize the closest correspondence with its revelations, under the fullest influence of which the poet's mind seems to have given them birth. A similar observation may be made regarding the "Faery Queen," in which Christianity, Paganism, and popular superstitions are so incongruously commingled. Nor will much in the English language bear comparison with Spenser's Hymn of Heavenly Beauty, and his Hymn of Heavenly Love.

We may yet hope for nobler and sweeter poems than have ever been produced. Seldom, if ever, has the world seen the highest poetic genius associated with Christian enlightenment, a taste controlled by Christian judgment, and Christian fervor of a high degree-yet this conjunction is not impossible, and the increasing prevalence of Christianity must render it more probable. And even where poetic genius is not of the very highest kind, the exalting power of Christianity may elevate it far above what it might otherwise have attained. An opposite power has already, in many instances, produced a wonderful degradation.

It is the Christian's eye that takes in the

WISE men, in their illustrations of life and manners, generally go to find their extremes in the city and in the wilderness. Politeness and the mental and social embellishments and comforts attendant upon the arts and sciences, are attributed without exception to the city, while mere physical vegetativeness and the manifestations of a rude and savage condition of humanity, are the prescribed residents of the uncultured wilds. We do not require, however, to go beyond the moral boundaries with which the social economics of capital and labor have environed the homes of men to find the antipodes of human existence; the positive and negative conditions of life, like the points of a straight line, are to be found in every city; wealth lolling on its Sybarite cushions, feasting on its ambrosial dainties, and breathing its odor of roses, luxuriates hard by the dark and noisome caverns of ignorant, hungry, and almost naked poverty. Outcasts from the world of soul, and sense, and virtue, and home-life and love, drag on a weary load of proscribed debasement and suffering within the demesne of religion, and beneath the eyes of charity; while the former stretches her gentle helping hand to raise the darkling savage, and the latter looks with her tearful, dove-like eyes across the sea to men in pathless wilds, without seeming to know that there is a moral wilderness at home, peopled with types of poor humanity, more distant from heaven's light and radiance than he who, from his wigwam door, can look at morn and evening upon the sun, and feel its warming beams. It is to the wilderness, however, that men have gone and go to find their demigod, heroism; it is there that they bend their pilgrim steps to look upon incarnate endurance and temerity, and to bend to them in worship; but, even in the close-pent home of that neglected parish poverty, there resides a heroism which is unseen of men, but known and loved by angels; there love has its heart-warmed temple, resignation its martys, and charity its dwellingspots.

"Knives to grind," cried a poor man, as he limped through the streets, driving his old, crazy machine before him. "Knives and scissors to grind." Williams did not limit his trade to the grinding of knives and scissors exclusively; he was even thankful to obtain a hatchet to reduce

to chopping acuteness, but he only cried "Knives and scissors to grind," as has been the custom of itinerant cutlers since the days of Cataline. Williams drove his machine before him very slowly, and he perhaps required to do so, as it was rather fragile in its constitution; but he called "Knives to grind" with a lusty, cheerful, happy voice, that seemed to belie his own constitution; for he, too, like his precursor combination of beams, and stones, and wheels, was none of the most robust of creation's works. He was a little, ragged, lame, and feeble man, with an old and well-worn grinding-wheel as his only property; and anybody particular in affinities would have said they were made for each other.

Williams's face would have been notified merely as "a face," by a passer-by. Any one would have been satisfied at a glance that it was deficient in none of the constituent parts of the human visage; but the thought of whether it was beautiful or ugly, would never have intruded itself amongst his impressions. His large, old, broad-brimmed hat was slouched over his back and shoulders, and threw a deep shade upon his brow; and then, again, his thick black hair clung in large curls down his pale cheeks, and also partly obscured his features, so that his countenance was not put forward to advantage, and therefore it might be full of hidden beauties for aught the world knew. His well-patched coat hung loosely round his spare form, investing it with even more than its own due proportion of apparent robustness; but poverty's universal and palpable mantle hung over him all, with a truthful, tell-tale earnestness, of whose reality there could be no mistake. In this guise Williams limped along then, crying out for customers, and looking sharply about him for the same. He would turn his glancing eyes to the windows of the wooden-fronted house, from which pretty damsels were looking into the street, and then he would look earnestly at the portly merchants who passed into their lofty doors; but, though neither dame nor citizen would pay any attention to him, Williams would still jog on and shout as gaily as if he were a wild bird uttering his accustomed cry.

Up one street went he, and down another. He often rested in front of the church, and looked admiringly at its architecture, for he had a strong

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love for the beautiful, although he was only a knife-grinder; and sometimes he would seat himself upon the handle of his machine, in order to contemplate the outward grandeur of some imposing edifice; but if any one had supposed that there was one envious thought in all his contemplations, he did the knife-grinder injustice, for no envy had he, poor though he was.

To those who knew all about Williams, there was nothing more incomprehensible in the world than his lightness of heart. That he should sing, was one of the most startling of anomalies-he, whose father, the fireman, perished in trying to rescue his own wife and Williams's mother from the flames of his burning house. It was often said by those who saw the knife-grinder's evercheerful aspect, that he might think of his father and mother, and if nothing else could remind him of them, surely his own lameness might; for it was upon the night when they perished that he was afflicted, and yet he didn't seem to think so.

The life of the poor knife-grinder was a lonely one enough, without adding to it the pains and penalties of a morbid melancholy; but some folks didn't think so, and would have had him forever sad as well as lonely. It was acknowledged that he was a wonderful lad, however; and as this phrase is capable of a multiplicity of explications, it may be as well to state that he had refused all offers of a pecuniary nature from anybody whatever, had established himself in a little dwelling, and supported himself by his grinding-machine, and this is why he was termed wonderful. If it had been possible to look into the bosom of the knife-grinder, there would have been seen throbbing there, and sending through every channel of his frame a current of boundless love, a heart as rich and pure as ever bosom bore. It was a wonderful heart, too; for it was stout and strong, and bore up as if it had been a giant's, sent to animate a weakling. There was no flinching in its courage, no drooping in its joyous mood, no change in its loving pulsations from morn to night, as he plodded up one narrow street, down another, through crossings and squares, and courts and byways. The knife-grinder's heart was a hero's; and let who will say otherwise, we will maintain with tongue and pen that it was, and one of the proudest order too. It is easy, it is natural for hearts to maintain their beauty and their goodness in those sunny spots of the world to which love and beauty are indigenous. By cheerful hearths, where, in the ruddy glow of the log, and in the bright flame, you picture golden gardens, and caverns, and groves, or behold the brightly

lighted faces of childhood, how can the heart wither or grow sad? In the duality of love resides its natural life. Heart answering heart, bright eye enlightening eye, kind words echoing back love's gentle aspirations-these maintain the eternal spring of the affections, as sunlight and heat give to the earth her summer. But to maintain a vital relation to bright and glorious heaven, amidst the darkness and gloom of a lonely little room in the dingiest spot of the city, was heroism-let the world say as it will.

“Oh, have pity, and give the poor little homeless one a mite!" said a soft and gentle voiceso soft and gentle, that the words might have been with propriety addressed direct to Heaven, as well as in the ear of one of Heaven's humblest agents upon earth-the knife-grinder.

It was in a dark and wretched quarter of the town where he was thus accosted, a spot whose gloom the shade of evening scarcely deepened; black walls, grim with the smoke of ages and crumbling to ruin, rose on either hand, and, converging at the top, seemed agreed to meet and exclude the blue heavens and sunbeams. Little windows, dirty, dingy, broken, and ragpatched, told that these high walls were the walls' of homes, and the faces of human beings peeping now and again from them were the indices of immured life and thought. Yet, even in that lofty series of chambers, where humility scarcely could brook to live, the little outcast who had breathed her piteous accents to Williams, had no spot to lay her head.

"One little farthing to buy a roll to poor Bessie," pursued the child in tremulous tones; "oh, I am hungry!" and she laid her hand on that of Williams, and looked up in his face.

The knife-grinder's machine dropped from his hands as if he had been suddenly struck, and he turned towards the little suppliant with so benign a look, that the child smiled in his face and crouched nearer to his person. "Poor Bessie," said Williams, decimating his fortune, and presenting the tithe to the infant, "art thou hungry?"

"Yes; and cold, and sad," said the child, artlessly; "I have no father nor mother, nor anybody to care for me; I am a beggar and an outcast."

The knife-grinder held in his breath, as he bent to listen to the words of the child, and when she had done, he caught her hand, stretched himself proudly up, and breathed long and freely, while his eyes became radiant and his face illumined with a sudden and noble purpose. "Alone, like me," exclaimed the knife-grinder; "poor child! Oh! is there another even more

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destitute of all the reciprocities of love than lame Williams?" and he turned his kindly face towards the little girl; "I could sit at my lone fire at night, when the world around me slept, and I could hold communion with my parents' spirits in silent peace and joy; but Bessie, what will night be to her but houseless horror? I am a man," pursued he, again stretching himself up, and striving to look strong; "I am independent," and he shook the coppers in his pocket; "can I not snatch this child from sorrow and hunger? John Ross, the water-carrier, keeps a great dog, which I am sure will eat more food than this little thing; why not keep a child as well as a dog?" The spirit within the knifegrinder seemed to say, why not? and the spirit of the outcast child seemed to know it; for she crouched still closer to the knife-grinder, and looked up in his face, as if she knew him. "And does no one care for you, Bessie?" said the poor, lame youth, softly; "is there no one to love you ?”

"None but the Father who dwells beyond the stars with good angels," said the child, timidly. "Then thou shalt go with me," said Williams, snatching her up in his arms and kissing her pale, thin cheek as lovingly and rapturously as if it had bloomed in health and beauty. "You shall go with me, and I will love you and take care of you, and you shall grow up to be a woman, and I will be as a father to you. Sit there, Bessie, and hold on firmly; my machine is not very strong, but it will bear you. I am not so brave and stout as the sentinels at the castlegate, but I will be weaker if I cannot carry you home; so here we go,” and with a heart overflowing with feelings which he had never known before, and his eyes dancing with a pleasure which surpassed all former emotions, he limped on with his crazy wheel and smiling child.

"Here we are," cried the knife-grinder, as he hurled Bessie into the dark passage of his home, opened his door, and lifting her gently down, placed her upon his cold hearthstone. "It wont be cold long," cried he, laughing cheerily, as he struck a light and applied it to the wood which filled his grate. "It isn't a palace this, Bessie; but if you are not as happy as a little queen, it shall be no fault of mine. Come, let me wash your face and hands, and eat thou or this brown bread."

After ministering in every possible way to the comfort of his protégé, Williams sat down, and looked upon her with eyes that sparkled in the light of his crackling logs. A strange, elevating sensation stole over his spirit—a sense of dignity and power that he had never known in

his loneliness. Was it not a direct radiation from heaven which exalted the soul of this poor man with an inward cognizance of paternity? "My child,” muttered he, with a sweet smile; "mine!-I now have something to care for; something that I will learn to care for me. John Ross's dog loves him I know, and would fight for him, but his dog is but a brute. This young Bessie was sent from heaven, fresh, rosy, and glowing with a celestial nature, and then misfortune blighted her, to render her a fit companion for me."

Everybody wondered to see how clean and neat the knife-grinder became all at once. He felt that it was necessary to give Bessie a good example in all things, and so he kept his frock as clean as if every day were Sunday. A change came o'er the aspect of his home, too; he became particular with regard to scrubbing his floor, and burnishing his two little cooking-pans, and arranging his crockery; and when he took Bessie to school, and paid a weekly instalment of what he intended to pay for her education, she and he were so trig and neat, that the teacher said he was glad to see a brother have such care over his sister.

Williams became filled by degrees with a sense of home and an assurance of love. When he was abroad, his thoughts were dancing in the flames of his own beaming hearth, and smiling in the face of pretty, blooming Bessie. In every penny he earned he recognized her share; in every step he took at nightfall towards his dwelling, amongst his anticipations of peace, rest, and comfort, her face was seen smiling him on, and her hands were seen spreading his board. His fortunes began to mend as the little girl began to grow up. He could not account for it, unless as a gracious dispensation of that great Ruler of good, who sent a double share of work to him for Bessie's sake. But work came to him now, when he didn't call out for it; and as he was respectable, and could go with his new machine to the Park, it was astonishing how much money he would carry home in the evenings. Nobody would have believed that the knife-grinder, who had his name painted jauntily on a board in front of his machine, and wore a smart frock and beaver, was the same lame man who bore home the little foundling five years previously. His cheeks were clean and ruddy, and his bright black eyes were scarcely brighter than his well-combed locks; and the cookmaids who brought him knives to grind, often declared that his face was very handsome; and, blessings on their woman's hearts, they pitied him that he was lame, and you would have thought that they