As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night! And floods of glory burst from all the skies! Such a scene as this impregnates the imagination with the unity of a sublime and pathetic moral. For when the mind is enriched and diversified with science, every object has its beauty; and every beauty adorns itself with the colouring of moral eloquence : The passions, to divine repose, Persuaded yield and love and joy alone Are waking:-love and joy, such as await II. To worship JEHOVAH, under the hope of receiving rewards for the homage, is insulting to his benignity, and deserves, for an age of adoration, an eternity of disappointment.-Such is not the religion of the heart; nor is it the religion, that astronomy teaches us to acknowledge. The faith of astronomy insinuates itself into the soul, like the soft vibrations of the most delicate music, emanating from amid the compass and grandeur of the noblest and sublimest of harmonic sounds. In this repose of the passions, evening diffuses a fascinating charm; and every star, as it were, become the mother of devotion. Watching the emersion of Jupiter's satellites; contemplating the two thousand five hundred stars in the constellation of Orion; or viewing the whole capacious firmament ;-every system, that we see, hymns, as it were, a perpetual hallelujah. The mind is ravished and the soul transported.-Harmonizing with all the nobler passions, love assumes a chaster character; and we turn with delight to that beautiful passage in Milton, where Adam and his companion, arriving at their shady lodge, and beholding "the moon's resplendent globe and starry pole," burst out Thou also mad'st the night, Maker omnipotent, and thou the day! Recalling this sacred passage, the fragment of Sappho, preserved by Demetrius Phalareus,1 sinks into nothing!-And, gazing on the vast concave of the hemisphere, what are all the mausoleums, the triumphal arches, the palaces, and the pyramids in the world? WRITTEN IN A GLEN, NEAR VALLE-CRUCIS ABBEY, IN THE COUNTY OF DENBIGH. TIME ;-Sunset. HERE let me rest!-In this sequestered glen, Far from the tumults of a giddy world, The joys, the hopes, the energies of life, Pleas'd, I'd resign. Those mountains rude, which rear their heads so high, 1 Vesper omnia fers; Fers viuum, fers capram, Fers matri filiam. And those dark woods, that screen their giant sides, Ah! how delighted were my peaceful spirit, III. When the evening star sinks gradually behind the hill; and when, rising from among clouds, the moon has thrown her solemn mantle over all nature; who is there with soul, so abject and depraved, that does not elevate his thoughts to heaven, and deify its architect? The soul acknowledges the powers of poetry; and while the various orbs are advancing with silent rapidity through the repose of night, how often do we recur to the sublime descriptions of the sacred writers !-In Milton, we behold one of the archangels leading his radiant files, nightly, through the confines of heaven, dazzling the moon with their splendour ;-and in the Apocalypse' a woman, wear 1 Rev, c. xii. ing twelve stars upon her head, as a crown; while the sun and the moon are standing at her feet. In one passage of the Paradise Lost, we behold Satan steering his course among the constellations; and pursuing his voyage through the kingdom of Chaos, and the vast regions of space, while a bridge is thrown over the infinite void. In the Revelations a great burning star falls and embitters the third part of the waters1:-in another passage a star falls from heaven to whom are given the keys of hell; then at the sound of an angel other stars fall; the sun, and 'moon, are smitten and darkened, as was threatened to Egypt in the days of Ezekiel,5 to Babylon in those of Isaiah,6 and as written to precede the second coming of the Christian Messiah." Then, reverting to the description of the Evangelist, we behold a picture of the new Jerusalem: -walls of jasper; gates of pearl; streets of transparent gold; walls with emeralds, sapphires, beryls, and ame thysts;-all illumined with a light, far surpassing that of the sun. IV. 4 AUTUMN,—the most solemn and affecting season of the year,-succeeds: and the soul, dissolving, as it were, ́into a spirit of melancholy enthusiasm, acknowledges that silent pathos, which governs without subduing the heart. For Nature, as it were, robes herself in a 7 Acts ii., v. 20. Matt. xxiv., v. 29.. 8 Rev. xxi. more sober mantle; the mountains assume a deeper hue; the torrent a bolder swell; the woods vary themselves with every tint; and the clouds roll themselves into a thousand magnificent volumes. This season, so sacred to the enthusiast, has been, in all ages, selected by the poet and the moralist, as a theme for poetic description, and moral reflection: since now, all nature, verging towards old age, reminds the young, as well as the old, of the shortness of life, and the certainty of its decay. This reflection gave occasion to many of the ancient poets, to draw a comparison between the regular march of the seasons, and the progress of the life of man :-and, since they were unenlightened on the argument of futurity, the subject in their hands became pensive and ungrateful. Melancholy allusions to the renovation of natural objects and the eternal sleep of man, are, therefore, but too frequent among the ancient poets. A striking instance of which occurs in the poem of Moschus on the death of Bion, so well imitated by Horace, in the eighth ode of his fourth book. To these complaints the whole doctrine of the christian testament furnishes a beautiful reply, and in no part of that consolatory book more than in the writings of St. Paul. Whatever may have been his reading, and whatever may be his faith, we may triumphantly challenge the boldest of critics to produce a poem, more admirable in the choice of language; more abounding in that union of the solemn and magnificent in manner; and more productive of sublimity of feeling, than the 15th Chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. Had it been written by Mahomet, |