that ideal of perfect aspiration to which the soul looks up in all its best desires, where it longs to find the consummation of its most ardent yearnings. Better still, unutterably better, the Being, infinite and supreme, the source of all thought, the sum of all excellence, the origin of all truth, the author of all beauty, the life of nature, the light of heaven; whom the pure in heart can see, and whom in seeing they are blessed for

ever.

LESSON LXXIX.

Extract from an Essay on Crabbe. IDEM.

THE literary life, like the military, holds a thousand promises to the ear, which must be broken to the hope. Like the military, it is in fancy all bright and joyous, with no gleam in the future but the blaze of glory, and no cloud upon its light but the flag of victory; like the military too, on the other side, it is in the reality to the multitude of aspirants an experience of toil, danger, anxious life, an obscure death; and instead of a sun rising high upon their path, opening to them a wide horizon, and filling it with the gladness of their fame, they have the scorching heat of a weary day; and the shadow, which, at a distance, they pictured as the banner of their triumph, they find, upon advancing, often to be only the dimness. of a garret or the blackness of their grave. The scholar, like the soldier, pants for distinction, and in the scholar it is a desire as humane as it is profound; it is a generous desire, and yet it can be but rarely gratified.

Men must content themselves to work and be forgotten. They must work on, work well, work faithfully; and then, when their labor is finished, be satisfied to go into the fathomless and the everlasting silence. The past, as it recedes, sinks

into benevolent oblivion; and nature mercifully prepares a new world for others as they come. The grass has been scarcely ten times renewed upon our graves, when neighbors forget who sleep beneath them; and the fate of men is that of writings. Every large library we enter, and every olden folio we open, remind us of the facility with which the world forgets; it is, in fact, the great winnowing process, whereby the true seed of thought is preserved, that would otherwise rot in accumulating rubbish.

The diffusion of knowledge, also, which characterizes our age, whilst it has increased the demand for literature, has also, in a much larger degree, multiplied the candidates for its distinctions. Reputation becomes more and more difficult of attainment, and if attained, more and more transient and uncertain of possession. Literature, therefore, as a field for glory, is an arena where a tomb may be more easily found than laurels; as a means of support, it is the very chance of chances.

These remarks have peculiar force in reference to poetry. Mediocrity of bardship is held fatal; it is doubly cursed; it can procure neither fame nor food; if sing it must, the crowd will not stop to listen, and while it sings it starves. In other days, poetic mediocrity was not utterly hopeless; a lord who longed for praise, found a minstrel who wanted bread; the peer swallowed the yearly ode, and the poet devoured his daily loaf. Mediocrity ate its venal portion in content, but genius took it with bitterness; the one warbled away comfortably in the cage of patronage, the other drooped its pinions, or dashed them against the bars; the one is now broken on the blast of an open public opinion, the other mounts proudly upon the tempest, and rises to the sun.

In criticism which is not merely literary, but moral also, it will not seem inappropriate to refer to influences which create etry such as Crabbe's, and to tendencies which it indicates. The concerns of humble life are the principal topics on

which our poet dwells; but, though in Crabbe they are distinctive, they have a prominent position in all the modern literature of English life. Sympathy is in others; reality in Crabbe. Goldsmith has idealized the rural village in his lambent fancy and his melodious verse; he deceives us into delight, and from childhood to old age, as Sir Walter Scott has said, we return to him with new desire, to his gentle pathos, that moves the heart without storming the passions; to his happy style, that wins attention without solicitation, that never taxes, and that never tires. The description of a poor country girl in the metropolis, towards the close of the Deserted Village, is a picture of lowly tragedy, which Crabbe might have conceived and painted.

Many others I might name, but I pass on to Cowper. Cowper, yet more than Goldsmith, had strong sympathies with the trials of the English poor. He was peculiarly fitted, by his simple habits and benignant genius, to take a strong interest in the concerns of lowly life. The objects amidst which he lived, and of which he loved to write, were, for the most part, unpretending and retired — the shaded walk, the neatly trimmed garden, the sunny corner, the nest of flowers, the grassy valley and the woodland hill, the social parlor, the cheerful winter fire. From these, and such things as these, his loving heart extracted a poetry which cannot fail of readers, while goodness has any place in letters, while the grace of purity can give comeliness to human speech. The poor man's labors and the poor man's cares were with him in his familiar thoughts: he paints, with true hand and inspired eye, the poor man's home, the virtues and the pleasures of his fireside, the sanctity of his domestic altar, the beauty of humble holiness, the griefs and the joys that lie along the path of laborious life. Of all writers, he is the most sinless in art and humor. What " in others turn to ribaldry or gall, he "turns to prettiness; expression, polished and effective; in fancy, playful, chaste, rich; he stirs up mirth from the very bottom of the heart, un

til the shaking sides are tired and the laughing eyes are dim; yet in no word or hint does he leave a trace upon the soul which could shame the holiest memory in its holiest hour. Pungent, but not envenomed, uncompromising, but not uncharitable, grave in truth, gentle in ridicule, he makes nothing odious but sin, and he makes nothing laughable but folly.

Poetry such as this, and such as Crabbe's, is the creation of Christianity. It is the result of interests which Christianity has developed, and of sympathies which it has inspired. Christianity has opened springs of joy and sorrow before untouched; it has called new and unimagined agencies into being. Man has received a redemption from contempt. It may not always save man from wrong, but it guards him from scorn; much he may be made even now to suffer, but he can never be as he was, despised. By the glory it gives the soul, the lowly and the poor have gained importance, and with importance they have risen to a history and a literature.

LESSON LXXX.

The Same, concluded. IDEM.

THE laboring classes of ancient nations afforded no scope for poetry, no materials for story. In the universal vassalage which brooded over pagan states, no ideal interest could pertain to the unprivileged masses. There was nothing in the laughter or the tears of the multitude to command attention or dignify description; nothing to give embellishment to the feast, or gain an audience at the games. What was it to the proud and mighty, what was it to the learned and the brave, what was it to the philosophers of academy or the philosophers of porch, where helots lived or how helots died?

But Christianity, in its revelation of a spiritual and immortal being, has given man an infinite worth; it has enriched him with an endowment independent of social distinctions, and transcendently superior to them. In restraining the passions, it has diversified and raised them; in exalting woman, it has created the poetry of domestic life; in ennobling every destiny, it has deepened and complicated all the tragic elements of our nature; it has sublimed the catastrophe, both of good and evil; the good with a holier joy, and the evil with a gloomier sadness.

In beauty of forms, in harmonies of language, in incidents of romance, our times certainly cannot compete with ages that are gone; but, assuredly, the poetry of those departed ages is more desirable than their practice. Greece and Rome, in their classical period, present, to our retrospective imagina. tions, a vista of most wondrous glory. We behold them in remote and majestic serenity, with the sun of an enchanting loveliness lingering over them; we behold them in fragments of art, unapproachable and unrivalled; we behold them in a long array of statues, temples, columns, but, while we muse delighted, we recall not the butcheries of the circus; we are charmed with the music of noblest eloquence and divinest poetry, but while we are raptured with such harmonies, we hear not the groans of dying gladiators, we hear not the rabble yells which drowned them, we come not in contact with slaveries wide almost as the world, that called forth no pity, and knew no hope; we comprehend with no adequate conception the wilderness of evil which the gloom of heathenism covered; the dark destinies which a ray from heaven scarcely pierced; the wretchedness unsolaced, and the sin unrebuked; which fancy shudders to paint, and faith is unwilling to believe.

Europe, in the middle ages, has its glory too a glory that deludes us with many fascinations. A picturesque and romantic splendor overspreads these ages, but the obscurity which