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age, without being themselves men of erudition, philosophers, or Christians. When the fine spirit of truth has gone abroad, it passes insensibly from mind to mind, independent of its direct transmission from books; and it comes home in a more welcome shape to the poet, when caught from his social intercourse with his species, than from solitary study. Shakspeare's genius was certainly indebted to the intelligence and moral principles which existed in his age; and to those moral principles the revival of pulpit eloquence, and the restoration of the SCRIPTURES to the people in their native tongue, contributed."

We do not believe, therefore, that Christianity exerts an influence prejudicial to anything essential to the character, or material to the existence of genuine poetry. Its nature is not to cramp or paralyze man's intellectual powers, but to quicken and invigorate them. We may go still farther. It has given more than it has taken away: it has not circumscribed, but enlarged the field of poetic invention. It will be admitted, that the Bible has rescued woman from her supposed inferiority and real degradation, and made her the friend, equal, and companion of man. Every valley has been filled, and every mountain and hill brought low; the rough and crooked ways of man have been smoothed, straightened, and strewed with flowers of a rich poetic hue.

Woman thus elevated has been called the poetry of life. And with reason too; for such are the elements of her character,-her beauty, grace, and gentleness, her fullness of feeling and depth of affection,-her courage, when danger and trials come, yet grafted on qualities of the softest kind; her vivacity, which throws its cheering light over the gloom of man,—the fidelity of her love to a wayward heart;—a sister's affection, sa feminine and dignified, and yet so fond, so devoted; the tenderness of a mother's love," those thousand chords, woven with every fiber of her heart, and which complain like delicate harpstrings at a breath." These are pre-eminently poetical, and in every form of fear, and love, and hope, have furnished some of the richest and most tender strains within the whole range of poetry. This entire influence, however, was unknown and unfelt by the heathen world. In that world she was the slave of man's passions. Her degradation destroyed the influence of her character.

The moral life of man, in which Christianity deepens our social interest, is not tamely prosaic, as it has sometimes been called. The charms of external nature are not so richly varied or so important as the world of passions and affections within us. To the keen observing eye of Shak

speare, the human bosom teemed with poetic images. To his mind the affections spread beyond ourselves, and reached far into futurity. The working of mighty passion armed his genius with an almost supernatural energy, in the delineations of every shade and lineament of human character.

He discarded at once the whole machinery of ancient poetry. To him the heathen mythology was of no avail. Instead of its cold and distant deities, interfering in the concerns of men, he had recourse to higher, nobler instruments. He looked at man,-studied the human heart, in all its lofty aspirations and its guilty depths, and employed the magic of powerful passion, and those illusions which it suggested, in his vivid descriptions, -descriptions of man's higher nature, which will continue to be read and admired, as long as that nature he has so admirably portrayed shall continue to exist.

If poetry should concern itself with human happiness; if it should comprehend man's higher life, and present it to the world in its deeper meaning, then indeed does Christianity exert a happy influence upon poetry. That influence carries the poet beyond where the eye of sense can penetrate, or the lamp of reason shine, and brings life and immortality to light, and thus fills his soul with

"grandeur, melody and love."

By its all chastening and subduing influence, it awakens in his bosom the purest feelings and the deepest sympathies for inan,

"A sweet, expansive brotherhood of being." Bursting the bonds of his hitherto imprisoned energies, it turns his thoughts upward to the joys and pleasures of our home in the skies, and thus throws around the character of man a dignity and importance unknown to the heathen world.

The poet who would attain to the "height of this great argument," must draw from the Bible the fountain of fiery inspiration, as Schlegel calls it. The fire of pure devotion must exist at the same time with that of the muse, kindled to as intense a glow, and blazing as high. He must drink in a sacred influence from the pages of the inspired prophets, and attain to a sympathy with their minds, in the feelings of highest elevation and deepest humility.

If it be objected, as it often has been, that religious subjects are not fit themes for poetry of the highest character, we adduce, with Mr. Montgomery, "the fact that three out of the only four long poems which are daily re-printed for every class of readers among us, are decidedly religious.

That fact ought forever to silence the cuckoonote, which is echoed from one mocking-bird of Parnassus to another, that poetry and devotion are incompatible. No man in his right mind, who knows what both words mean, will admit the absurdity for a moment." "That man has neither ear, nor heart, nor imagination, to know genuine poetry, or to enjoy its sweetest, sublimest influences, who can doubt the supremacy of such passages as the song of the angels in the third, and the morning hymn of Adam and Eve in the fifth book of Paradise Lost."

"The hymn at the close of the Seasons,' is unquestionably one of the most magnificent spe cimens of verse in any language, and only inferior to the inspired prototype in the book of Psalms. And Pope's Messiah leaves all his original productions immeasurably behind it, in combined elevation of thought, affluence of imagery, beauty of diction, and fervency of spirit."

The influence of Christianity is necessary to the poet himself. To be a poet, and at the same time a happy being, a man must, we believe, be religious. We speak here of religion as a conservative principle in this life. The follies and misfortunes of this class of men are well known. Their minds are so peculiarly constructed, that nothing but religious principle can save them from total bankruptcy of heart. The celestial element of poetry in their minds is above this earth, and is destroyed by the grossness of vice. If God be not the central sun, from which such bodies receive their light and cheering warmth, and around which they revolve, and to which they are bound by a sweet attractive influence, the disturbing force through which they must pass will most assuredly forever hurl them from their true and proper orbits. The names of Burns and Byron occur to our minds as mournful examples of this fact,-names which we cannot mention without sorrow of heart. These men had the soul of poetry in them; their hearts were tremblingly alive with adoration,-but "there was no temple in their understandings." They were most unhappy men,-minds they had of the very first order, but they wanted the balancing power of religious principle,—truly splendid were the efforts of their genius, but these could not hush the mad turbulence of their bosoms. 'Like moonlight on a troubled sea," they only brightened the storm which they had no power to calm.

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The influence, then, of Christianity on poetry is most happy. Nor is it to the twilight of knowledge, or the mists of seperstition, that we are to look for the most splendid examples of poetic invention and diction. Light and purity exalt

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this divine art. What, we would ask,-if a single doubt remain in the minds of our readers on this subject, what produced those examples of unequaled sublimity," that bright constellation of Hebrew poetry," which looks down from its celestial elevation on all the productions of the human intellect? What but the clear manifestation of truth to the minds of Isaiah, Job, David, Habakkuk, and Nahum, called forth those inimitable strains of poetry? What but the clear and full communication of truth

"To the prophet's eye-that nightly saw,
While heavy sleep fell down on other men,
In holy vision tranced, the future pass
Before him, and to Judah's harp attuned
Burdens that made the pagan mountains shake,
And Zion's cedars bow?"

The Bible, it is a remark of Schlegel, has exerted the same influence upon the poetry of our more cultivated times, which Homer did among the ancients: it has become the fountain, the rule and model of all our figures and images. From this source, the great masters of painting and poetry have drawn their scenes, and kindled their sublimity. It was here that the Florentine caught his inspiration. It was the habitual and yearning contemplation of the sacred volume, which furnished Milton with his finest images and prepared and animated him for the noblest flight of human genius. It was on Zion's hill, and at Siloa's brook, that he caught that inspiration which raised him above the Aonian mount. Yes, it was under the refining, elevating influence of the holy oracles, that he rose as on an angel's wing, and "soared, like the bird of morn, out of sight, amid the music of his own grateful piety." The history of English poetry bears ample testimony to the ennobling influence of Christianity on this divine art;-an influence that has produced some of the finest, sweetest strains to be found within the whole range of poetry. We would not undervalue the originality and elegance of the Grecian muse, but we cannot repress the feeling that in all the scenes of domestic tenderness or moral sublimity,-in all that is calculated to excite and agitate the soul, or to move the softer and more gentle affections of the heart, the British poets stand unrivaled. Homer may be more dramatic, and Virgil more correct; but in Milton there is a sublimity, a moral grandeur of conception, which we believe is unreached by any other uninspired poet.

Our English poetry, as a whole, is indeed a rich inheritance, the tender legacy of the master spirits of by-gone days. But while we thus express our admiration, we must not forget that there are many things in this poetry which only

REVOLVING centuries had left their stamp
Upon the world's broad front ;-age set its seal
Deeply upon the everlasting hills,

And giant cedars reared their knotted trunks,
Moss-grown and hoary with the weight of years.
Thick-strewn along Euphrates' hallowed banks,—
By all the thousand streams that girt the land,-
Upon the sunny slopes of Ararat,-
O'er Syria's swelling hills and lovely vales,-
Throughout the spicy plains of Araby,-
Along the Nile and even to farthest Ind,
The human race had spread and found abode.
Yet wheresoe'er were homes or haunts of men,
The curse had left its witness,-sepulchres

Were hewn in many a rock; and men had learned,
What haply they were slow to learn, that none
Once borne within the dark and dim recess,
Returned to mingle with their fellows more!

Yet still arrayed in Godlike majesty,
The first-created stood; relentless Death
Seemed fearful of such prey, and even Time
Forebore to mar the glory of a form
That wore the visible stamp of Deity,
And claimed coeval being with his own.

But century was piled on century,
Till the old man grew weary of the weight,
And sighed to leave a world his sin had made,-
Oh, thought how full of grief!-so sorrowful!

What crowding memories thronged upon his view,
As on life's outer verge he stood and gazed
Thro' the long line of ages, to that point,
That luminous spot, where he had known the joy
Of new, untried existence! How his soul
Kindled with rapture, as he called to mind
The hours of sacred converse with his God,-
When Angels were his visitants,-and she,—
His beautiful Eve in her divinest grace,
Was like a loving seraph at his side!
Then came the bitter memories of the fall,—

The fearful curse,-the wreck of innocence,-
The banishment from peace and Paradise!—
Until his soul with penitential shame
Was humbled in the dust. The promise then
Rose to his vision, and his faith's firm gaze
Pierced thro' centurial darkness, till it saw
The light of Bethlehem's star.

Within his heart

Stirred the remembrance of the bliss he felt,
When in his arms he clasped his eldest-born:
And then, that first experience of death,-
That realizing of the curse !-No time
Could blot the horror of that fearful hour!

Onward throughout the vast vicissitudes
Of unrecorded ages, memory strayed-
Ages how full of marvelous events,

Of sins and sorrows,-myriad births and deaths;
Till wearied wandering o'er this ocean wide,
She sought his bosom's sheltering ark again.
But now the lengthened life drew near its close;
And he whom his posterity perchance
Deemed born to earthly immortality,-
The judge, the arbiter, the ancient man,
Whom all regarded with mysterious awe,-
Was doomed, like common men, to pass away.
How flew the tidings!-how the multitudes,
Countless as leaves of summer forests, pressed
To see once more the patriarch!-How the crowds
From populous cities poured their living stream!
Upon the mountains, shepherds left their flocks,
And in the valleys, husbandmen their fields:
All on one common pious errand bent.

When on the stately brow the hues of death
At length sank heavily, and on the face
The lines grew rigid, and the palm-like form
Silently settled to its last repose,-

A thrill of universal sorrow ran

Thro' all that anxious, thronging multitudeEarth's family was orphan'd!

WILDLY blew the keen March wind everywhere; along the dark dreary waste and through the lamp-lit streets of the crowded city, sweeping with fierce gusts the grassy downs, and careering over the ocean with a force no bark could stem. But nowhere did its voice sound louder or more dismal than while roaring and howling among the rugged rocks of Daffer's Point, and around the dwellings of the few villagers. Every now and then a ruder blast than common tore away a fragment of some roof, while every cottage trembled as though the next breath would lay it low.

But whatever spirits rage without, the spirit of love can shed light and peace within; and in one cottage, where three persons sat around the bright clear fire-a girl working, her mother knitting, and a young man telling tales of other lands-the gale was little noted.

At length, as the cottage was trembling beneath a furious gust, the young man paused abruptly in his narrative, and observed, glancing towards the window, as though he could have gazed through the darkness afar on the tossing

waters

""Tis a wild night afloat! We shall hear something of this gale."

The girl dropped her work; and though the speaker quickly resumed his story—and it was a deeply interesting one-with, "Well then, as I was telling you," she no longer heard the words uttered by the voice which was so dear to her, but after a moment rose, and, leaning against the casement, listened anxiously to the wild sounds without. Then, when the roar of another terrific blast had died into the usual tones of the tempest-voice, she came suddenly to the young man's side, and murmured

"Oh, William, how wretched I should feel if you were at sea to night!"

But I'm not at sea, my dear girl," said he, laughing; "so there's no need of your being wretched about the matter. Come, do not look so melancholy; it is enough to be unhappy when one cannot help it—is it not, Mrs. Weston?"

"Quite enough," said Mrs. Weston. "Sophy would make but a poor sailor's wife, if she went on in this way."

Sophy shuddered. "Oh, how dreadful it must be, year after year, to hear the tempests howling

But you are not to be a sailor's wife," said William, smiling. "This voyage over, and then, Sophy, I shall come into port for altogether."

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"But why should there be this last voyage?" sighed Sophy, while tears trembled in her eyes. 'Because it is prudent," said her mother. "It will give you the means of settling with more comfort, and beginning the world without the difficulties and hardships you would otherwise have to struggle with."

"Comfort!" thought Sophy-" at what a price it must be bought! Oh, William!" she sighed, when they were alone, "I would sooner bear any hardships, any difficulties, than that you should brave danger for my sake. And if our home was humble, I should like it better than to see things around me which could but recall the fears and anxieties with which they had been purchased."

Perhaps William Collins might have been won over by Sophy's simple eloquence, for there was a voice within his heart ever whispering "how pleasant it would be to hear her soft tones and look on her fair face every day, instead of dreaming of them in absence." But Mrs. Weston's prudence carried the day; she called Sophy a foolish child, and talked of the great importance which this voyage would be in setting them forward in the world-for William was just made first mate of a South American trader, and the higher pay of his new post, and the expected success of a few private ventures, promised to double the young couple's means of beginning housekeeping. Indeed, Mrs. Weston would have preferred that William should retain his situation, but that his uncle wished him to give up the sea altogether, and come and assist him in the management of his mill, with which he had been acquainted from his boyhood; and, as the old man said, he would continue to have sails to trim, and find the wind of so much consequence that he might have all the delight of fancying himself still looking out for rocks and shoals.

So it was arranged--yet one voyage more! The first-mate of a large vessel would be thought somebody in the village, and pride as well as prudence prompted this decision in the elders of both families.

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Never, until this stormy night, had even Sophy shrank so fearfully from the thought of a separation; and not all the arguments of her mother, or the encouraging gayety of William, could reconcile her to the idea of his voyage, or convince her of its propriety.

But when the morrow's sun shone over the sea, Sophy's late fears seemed like a fevered dream, and it was easy for William to laugh them away, and win her to listen to his dreams of the happy hours that awaited them in future years-when, if thorns and shadows should sometimes come, there would be a loved one nigh to pluck away the thorn, and smile hope's welcome through the gloom.

At length the hour of parting came, and Sophy wept bitterly; but there was another whose tears flowed fast as her own-for William's mother had no child but him.

But the sea wore its fairest summer aspect, and the wind blew steadily over its bright blue waves; and now came tidings of some vessel having spoken the Peruvian on her passage, and, after a time, the gladder news that she had safely reached her port. Then there were letters from William, telling of all he thought, and felt, and saw, and awaking smiles almost as bright as though his own cheerful tones were uttering each welcome word. Letter after letter came, to be smiled over, and wept over, with the mingled emotion which bids us shed tears on the characters traced by the loved and absent. And then Williain wrote that they should hear from him no more until he reached the British waters, for the Peruvian would sail in a day or two, and perhaps be home almost as soon as the ship which brought his letter.

A bright sunny morning smiled on Sophy Weston, as these glad tidings greeted her eyes, and her joy appeared uncontrollable, as, with a light step and buoyant spirit, she ran up to the mill, to share her happiness with Mrs. Collins. How pleasantly she and the fond mother talked over the bright hours in prospect!

Sophy slept the calm deep sleep of youth that night, but towards daybreak the howling of the freshening gale penetrated her mother's lighter slumbers. In an instant she was wide awake, and lay anxiously listening to the wild blasts which swept boisterously by, and to the quiet breathing of the unconscious sleeper at her side, who was dreaming, perchance, of William's ship floating over a summer sea. Louder and louder still the wind blew, and Mrs. Weston listened with a painful intentness, she seemed not to know for what. Then the gale appeared suddenly to gain in fury, and roared like thunder

around the cottage, which shook to its very foundations, while a few bricks, loosened from the chimney by the violent gusts, clattered on the roof, and fell loudly to the ground.

Sophy awoke with a start. It was daylight, and, springing up, she looked from the window on the waters of the little bight which, only partially sheltered by the high land, was covered with foam. Oh, mother!" she exclaimed, "I cannot-dare not think of where William may be now!"

Neither dared her mother; yet she went on dressing herself, as she said, soothingly, "My dear child, it is not likely that his ship should be so near to land; and you know that on the open sea these gales do little damage."

"This must be terrible anywhere!" said Sophy, shuddering, "Oh, that I knew he was safe, were it ever so far away!"

It took but few minutes for the anxious girl to dress, but, as she was hastily banding her soft brown hair, her hands fell, clasping each other. "Oh, mother!" she cried in agony, I what was

that?"

Mrs. Weston was deadly pale; she could not answer; for it was indeed the sullen boom of a gun, which, amid a lull of the tempest, had reached their ears. Without another word, Sophy caught up her bonnet and shawl, and hurried out of the house.

Early as was the hour, and wild the weather, Sophy was not the first to reach the high land which afforded a view of the open sea, now raging and tossing in all its fury. Again and again had the fearful sounds of the minute-gun thrilled to her heart, and now, as she gained the spot where the wide wilderness of foaming waters burst on her sight, it fell once more on her

ear.

"There's the ship!-just beyond the reef, there!" cried a little boy eagerly, thoughtless of the misery of his listener.

Yes there lay a large vessel, scarce, it seemed, a cable's length without the breakers, which stretched in long lines of gleaming foam for miles on either hand. Her foremast had gone by the board, and, crippled as she was by its loss, she was making strenuous but vain endeavors to struggle with her fate, and beat up against the heavy gale, which was driving her towards the shore. But the canvas spread on her remaining masts availed little but to make her labor more heavily amid the billows, that leaped and raged madly around her, dashing fiercely over her decks, and casting their spray high over her yards; and, though her head was turned seaward, it soon became evident that the wind and