It is an unkind propensity that many writers have, to make old women poetical through the instrumentality of their passions, exaggerating them into witches and monsters of the most repulsive description, and that not so much "to point a moral," as "to adorn a tale;" but in such instances the writer is indebted to their recollections for all the interest which his unnatural exhibitions excite-to flashes of former tenderness shooting through the gloom of despair-to bright and glowing associations following in the wake of madness-and to once familiar images of love and beauty, re-animated by a strange paradox, at the touch of the wand of death, and bending in all their early loveliness over the brink of the grave.

Infinite indeed beyond the possibility of calculation, must be the recollections and associations of her, whose long life, from its earliest to its latest period, has been a life of feeling--whose experience has been that of impressions, rather than events--and whose sun goes down amidst the varied and innumerable tints which these impressions have given to its atmosphere. Endued with an inexhaustible power of multiplying relative ideas, how melancholy must be the situation of her who was once beloved and cherished, now despised and forsaken-who in her turn loved and cherished others, and is now neglected. If she be a mother-one of those fond mothers who expect that mere indulgence is to win the lasting regard of their children, what sad thoughts must crowd upon her at every fresh instance of unkindness, and every additional proof that she has fallen away from what she was, both in her own and others' estimation. Over the brow that now frowns upon her, she perhaps has watched with unutterable tenderness through the long night when every eye but her's was sleeping. The lips that now speak to her coldly, or answer her with silence when she speaks, she has bathed with the welcome draught

when they were parched and burning with contagious fever. The scorn with which her humble pretensions are looked down upon, arises in the hearts of those for whose higher intellectual attainments she has made every sacrifice, and exerted every faculty. And what if she be unlearned in the literature of modern times, she understands deeply and feelingly the springs of affection, and tenderness, and sorrow. She knows from what source flow the bitterest tears, and

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child."

She sees the young glad creatures of another generation sporting around her, and her thoughts go back to the playmates of her childhood-some reduced to the lowest state of helplessness or suffering-some dead and some forgotten. She hears the reluctant answer when she asks a kindness of one of the merry group, and she thinks of the time when kindness was more freely granted her, though far less needed than now. She starts at the loud laugh, but cannot understand the jest, and no one explains it to her listening ear. She loses the thread of earnest conversation, and no one restores the clue. She sits within the social circle, but forms no link in the chain of social union. Her thoughts and feelings cannot harmonize with those of her juvenile companions, and she feels in all its bitterness, that least tolerable portion of human experience-what it is to be desolate in the midst of society -surrounded by kindred and friends, and yet alone.

In looking at the situation of woman merely as regards this life, we are struck with the system of unfair dealing by which her pliable, weak, and dependent nature is subjected to an infinite variety of suffering, and we are ready to exclaim, that of all earthly creatures she is the most pitiable. And so unquestionably she is, when unenlightened by those higher views

which lead her hopes away from the disappointments of the present world, to the anticipated fruition promised to the faithful in the world to come. But the whole life of woman, when studied with reference to eternity, presents a view of the great plan of moral discipline mercifully designed to assist her right conduct through the trials and temptations which surround her path. In childhood she is necessarily instructed in what belongs to social and domestic duty, and here she learns the difficult but important task of submitting, and of making her own gratification give place to that of others. In youth she is plunged into a sphere of greater temptations, and of more intense enjoyments, where her experience, embracing the widest extremes of pain and pleasure, teaches her all the different means to be made use of in avoiding or palliating the one, and in promoting the other. As a wife and a mother she has an opportunity of acting upon the knowledge thus acquired, and if her practice does honour to her theory, it is here that she obtains an importance, and derives a satisfaction, which might be dangerous even to a disciplined mind, did not age steal on and diffuse his sombre colouring over the pleasant pictures to which her affections had given too warm a glow, and which her happiness had persuaded her to be satisfied with contemplating. But this cold, blank medium intervening between life and eternity-between beauty and ashes-between love and death, comes to warn her that all she has been desiring, is but as the scattering of the harvest to be reaped in heaven; that all she has been trusting in, is but typical of that which endures for ever; and that all she has been enjoying, is but a foretaste of eternal felicity.

Let then the aged woman be no longer an object of contempt. She is helpless as a child; but as a child she may be learning the last awful lesson from her Heavenly Father. Her feeble step is trembling on the brink of the grave; but her hopes may be firm

ly planted on the better shore which lies beyond. Her eye is dim with suffering and tears; but her spiritual vision may be contemplating the gradual unfolding of the gates of eternal rest. Beauty has faded from her form; but angels in the world of light may be weaving a wreath of glory for her brow. Her lip is silent; but it may be only waiting to pour forth celestial strains of gratitude and praise. Lowly, and fallen, and sad, she sits amongst the living; but exalted, purified, and happy, she may arise from the dead. Then turn if thou wilt from the aged woman in her loneliness, but remember she is not forsaken of her God!

THE POETRY OF THE BIBLE.

IN tracing the connexion of poetry with subjects most frequently and naturally presented to our contemplation, we observe how it may be associated with our pursuits, so as to give interest to what is familiar, to refine what is material, and to heighten what is sublime. We now open the Bible, and find that poetry as a principle of intellectual enjoyment derived from association, is also diffused through every page of the sacred volume, and so diffused, that the simplest child, as well as the profoundest sage, may feel its presence. This in fact, is the great merit of poetry, (a merit which in no other volume but the Bible, can be found in perfection,) that it addresses itself so immediately to the principles of feeling inherent in our nature, as to be intelligible to those who have made but little progress in the paths of learning, at the same time that it presents a source of the highest gratification to the

scholar and the philosopher. Let us refer as an example, to the first chapter of Genesis:

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.

A child but just grown familiar with the words contained in these verses, not only understands their meaning here, but feels something of their sublimity -something of the power and the majesty of the God who could create this wonderful world, whose Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and who said, Let there be light: and there was light! While learned men of all ages have agreed, that no possible combination of words, could express more clearly and powerfully than these, the potency of the first operations of almighty power of which mankind have any record.

We have more than once observed that poetry must have some reference, either uniformly or partially, to our own circumstances, situation, or experience, as well as to the more remote and varied conceptions of the imagination; and in the Scriptures, we find this fact fully illustrated. Witness the frequent recurrence of these simple words-and God said. We are not told. that the mandates of almighty power issued forth from the heavens, but simply, that God said: a mode of speech familiar to the least cultivated understanding, yet in no danger of losing its sublimity as used here, because immediately after, follow those manifestations. of universal subordination, which give us the most forcible idea of the omnipotence of Divine will.

Again, after the transgression of our first parents, when

they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. •