If cold, if stern, to courtlier ear,

Ev'n praise by Freedom poured, appear,
"Tis not for thee to learn, in sooth,

How Doubt hath stol'n her fire from Truth-
How long-how oft-our race hath borne
The good denied the pledge forsworn;
Till Foresight-means the sceptic's eyes—
And to mistrust, is to be wise!*

Yet, oh! what glory waits his mind,
The moral Theseus of mankind,

Who with firm step and dauntless gaze
Shall thread the dark unholy maze,
Who-not content the maze to win-
Shall slay the Monster-Vice within.
All private ties with years decay,
Love chills, and Friendship rots, away.

* When Hartley, (Observations on Man, vol. i. 304,) speaking of private morals, said, "great care ought to be taken not to esteem our friend a nonpareil," and "that it is a great injury to any man to think more highly of him than he deserves;" he uttered what, if taken in the seeming sense, not that in which the speculator meant it, Age calls at once a moral, and Youth a meanness. But in private life, after all, it is wiser in the long run to confide than to suspect. In public life all experience tells us the reverse. What Epicharmus said more than two thousand years ago, and Polybius (whose actual experience in the world gave not the least merit to his noble history) has so emphatically retailed, hath lost none of its melancholy wisdom by time. "In distrust are the nerves of the mind."

But in Earth's Common Soul each deed

That serves mankind, records its meed.
There Envy breathes-but there avails not,
Change dims all else—that splendour fails not.
Wave after wave Time onward sweepeth,
The same bright spot the glory keepeth.
It fires-but never needs-the bard,
Eternity hath grown its guard.

It lives with all men honour most-
A date-an heir-loom-and a boast.
Each future good by Heaven decreed
To grateful Earth-is deemed its seed-
And not one after-light can shine,
Nor blazon forth its glorious shrine.

But why to THEE this worthless strain ?—
Can verse no emblem then contain?
Lurks there, then, in the Sybil rhyme,

No type-no token of the time.

What in this tale may we descry?

The moral men in vain deny!

Behold the Two whom Heaven had made
To love each other and to aid,
Bound by a tie that grows a thrall,

Till what should strengthen-can but gall.

To one, 'tis true, the irksome chain
Sits light—and custom conquers pain;

But in the moodier Twin, our verse
Portrays its torture and its curse.
What! in mankind can we behold
No state like that our tale hath told?

But mark as we proceed-and grows
The darkling legend to its close,
The one who bore with lightsome cheer
The chain-hath now the most to fear.
As loathing takes its latest change,
And swells Despair into Revenge.
What! in mankind can we behold
No state like that our tale hath told?

Mark yet-if we could all release
That tie-would not the peril cease?
In wonted streams freed Nature flow,
And in the brother merge the foe.
What! in mankind can we behold
No state like that our tale hath told?

Are there no Orders like that two-
That in the moral world we view?
No bond that maddens while it draws-

And makes that hell-UNEQUAL LAWS ?*

66

* An expression that owes none of its warmth to poetry-impartial law has been confounded with the Deity himself. God being as the writer de Mundo well expresses it, vóμos lookλins, an impartial law,

R

Release is then the surest tie

Here pause we nor the rest supply!

Enough-and now forgive the rhyme
That plays the moralist with Time;
And think the verse which least appears
To flatter-oft the most reveres.

and as Plato, μéтрov таvтwv, the measure of all things."-Cudworth's Intellectual System, vol. i. 425. If James the First was right when he said, "Since the devil is the very contrary opposite to God, there can be no better way to know God than by the contrary ;"-(Demonologie, book ii.) it must be allowed that we have given his majesty's plan of knowing God a very long trial!

BOOK THE FOURTH.

CHAPTER I.