rolled by since our first parents gave earth to their offspring, who sealed the gift with blood, and bequeathed it to us with toil:-imagine, after all that experience can teach-after the hoarded wisdom and the increasing pomp of countless generations—an old man, one of that exiled and fallen race, standing among the tombs of his ancestors, telling us their whole history, in his appeals to the living heart, and holding out to us, with trembling hands, the only comfort which Earth has yet discovered for its cares and sores--the anticipation of Heaven! To me, that picture completes all that Milton began. It sums up the Human History, whose first chapter he had chronicled; it preacheth the great issues of the Fall; it shows that the burning light then breathed into the soul, lives there still; it consummates the mysterious record of our mortal sadness and our everlasting hope. But if the conception of the "Night Thoughts" be great, it is also uniform and sustained. The vast wings of the Inspiration never slacken or grow fatigued. Even the humours and conceits are of a piece with the solemnity of the poem-like the grotesque masks carved on the walls of a Cathedral, which defy the strict laws of taste, and almost inexplicably harmonize with the whole. The sorrow, too, of the poet is not egotistical, or weak in its repining. It is the Great One Sorrow common to all human nature—the deep and wise regret that springs from an intimate knowledge of our being and the scene in which it has been cast. That same knowledge, operating on various minds, produces various results. In Voltaire it sparkled into wit: in Goëthe, it deepened into a humour that belongs to the sublime; in Young, it generated the same high and profound melancholy as that which excited the inspirations of the Son of Sirach, and the soundest portion of the philosophy of Plato. It is, then, the conception of the poem, and its sustained flight, which entitle it to so high a rank in our literature. Turn from it to any other didactic poem, and you are struck at once by the contrast--you are amazed at once by its greatness. “The Seasons" shrink into a mere pastoral; "The Essay on Man" becomes French and artificial; even the "Excursion" of Wordsworth has, I know not what, of childish and garrulous, the moment they are forced into a comparison with the solemn and stern majesty of the "Night Thoughts."

There is another merit in the "Night Thoughts;" apart from its one great lesson, it abounds in a thousand minor ones. Forget its conception-open it at random, and its reflections, its thoughts, its worldly wisdom alone may instruct the most worldly. It is strange, indeed, to find united in one page the

sublimity of Milton and the point of La Bruyère. I know of no poem, except the Odyssey, which in this excels the one before us. Of isolated beauties, what rich redundance! The similes and the graces of expression with which the poem is sown are full of all the lesser wealth of invention. How beautiful, in mere diction, is that address to the flowers :

"Queen lilies, and ye painted populace,

Who dwell in fields and lead ambrosial lives-"

So, too, how expressive the short simile,

-like our shadows,

Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

What--but here I must pause abruptly, or I should go on for ever; for the poem is one which strikes the superficial even more on opening a single page at random than in reviewing the whole in order. Only one word, then, upon the Author himself. Ambition he certainly possessed; and, in spite of all things, it continued with him to the last. His love of ambition, perhaps deepened, in his wiser moments, his contempt of the world; for we are generally disappointed before we despise. But the purer source of his inspiration seems to have been solemnly and fervently felt throughout life. At college, he was distinguished for his successful zeal in opposing the unbelief of Tindal. In literature some of his earliest offerings were laid upon the altar of God. In the pulpit, where he was usually a powerful and victorious preacher, he is recorded once to have burst into tears on seeing that he could not breathe his own intense emotion into the hearts of a worldly audience. Naturally vain, he renounced the drama, in which he had gained so great a reputation, when he entered the church; and though called covetous, he gave- when his play of "The Brothers" was acted, not the real proceeds of the play (for it was not successful), but what he had imagined might be the proceeds-(a thousand pounds) to the propagation of the Gospel abroad. A religious vein distinguished his private conversation in health and manhood, no less than his reflections in sorrow, and his thoughts at the approach of death. May we hope with him that the crayings of his heart were the proof of an Hereafter

"That grief is but our grandeur in disguise,

And discontent is immortality."

While we admire his genius, let us benefit from his wisdom; while we bow in homage before the spirit that" stole the music from the spheres to soothe their goddess;" while we behold aghast the dread portrait he has drawn of Death, noting from his grim and secret stand the follies of a wild and revelling horde of bacchanals; while we shudder with him when he conjures up the arch-fiend from his lair; while we stand awed and breathless beneath his adjuration to Night,

"Nature's great ancestor, Day's elder born,

And fated to survive the transient sun;"

let us always come back at last to his serene and holy consolation :

Through many a field of moral and divine

The muse has strayed, and much of sorrow seeu
In human ways, and much of false and vain,
Which none who travel this bad road can miss;
O'er friends deceased full heartily she wept,
Of love divine the wonders she displayed:
Proved man immortal; showed the source of joy;
The grand tribunal raised; assigned the bounds
Of human grief. In few, to close the whole,
The moral muse has shadowed out a sketch
Of most our weakness needs believe, or do,
In this our land of travail and of hope,

For peace on earth, or prospect of the skies."

I have given the substance-and, as far as I could remember, the words of my friend's remarks—the last conversation I ever held with him on his favourite poet-and although the reader, attached to more worldly literature, may not agree with L--as to the high and settled rank in which the poem thus criticised should be placed-I do not think he will be displeased to have his attention drawn for a few moments towards one, at least, among the highest, but not the most popular, of his country's poets. And as for the rest-it is not perhaps amiss to refresh ever and anon our critical susceptibilities to genius-its defects and its beauties, by recurring to those departed writers, who— being past the reach of our petty jealousies-may keep us, as it were, in the custom to praise without envy, and blame without injustice. And I must confess, moreover that it appears to me a sort of duty we owe to the illustrious dead-to turn at times from the busier and more urgent pursuits of the world—and to water from a liberal urn the flowers or the laurels which former gratitude planted around their tombs.

CONVERSATION THE NINTH.

The memory becomes more acute as we approach death-L's observations on the saying that 'Life is a jest'-The vanity of ambition-Our errors arise from our desire to be greater than we are-Thoughts on superstition -The early astrologers-Philanthropy-The fear of assisting in changes of which the good to a future generation may not compensate the evil to the present-Contrast between the tranquil lives of men of genius and the revolutions their works effect-The hope of intercourse with great minds in a future state-The sanctity of the grave-The Phædo of Plato-The picture of the last moments of Socrates-The unsatisfactory arguments of the Heathen for the immortality of the soul- Revealed religion has led men more logically to the arguments for natural theology-Disbelief involves us in greater difficulties than faith- Our doubts do not dishearten us if we once believe in God-L-'s last hours- His farewell to nature- - His death.

THE day was calm and cloudless as, towards the end of August, I rode leisurely to L-'s solitary house; his strength had so materially declined during the few days past, that I felt a gloomy presentiment that I was about to see him for the last time. He had always resolved, and I believe this is not uncommon with persons in his disease, not to take to his bed until absolutely compelled. His habitual amusements, few and tranquil, were such that he could happily continue them to the last, and his powers of conversation, naturally so rich and various, were not diminished by the approach of death; perhaps they were only rendered more impressive by the lowered tones of the sweetest of human voices, or the occasional cough that mingled his theories on this world with a warning of the next. I have observed that as in old people the memory usually becomes the strongest of the faculties, so it also does with those whom mortal sickness, equally with age, detaches from the lengthened prospects of the future. Forbidden the objects from without, the mind turns within for its occupation, and the thoughts, formerly impelled towards hope, nourish themselves on retrospection. Once I had not noted in L-that extraordinary strength of memory-the ready copiousness of its stores-that he now seemed to display. His imagination had been more perceptible than his learning-now, every subject on which we

*

* That is, properly speaking, the memory so far as it embraces early acquisitions or transactions-old people remember what happened fifty years ago, and forget what happened yesterday. Their souls have gone back to youth as the fitting port for the voyage to Immortality.

conversed elicited hoards of knowledge, always extensive and often minute-of which perhaps he himself had been previously unconscious. It is a beautiful sight, even in the midst of its melancholy, the gradual passing away of one of the better order of souls--the passions lulled as the mind awakens, and a thousand graces of fortitude and gentleness called forth by the infirmities of the declining frame. The character assumes a more intellectual, a more ethereal complexion; and our love is made a loftier quality by our admiration, while it is softened by our pity.

Full of these reflections I arrived at the house of my dying friend. 66 My master, sir," said the old servant, "has passed but a poor night, he seems in low spirits this morning, and I think he will be glad to see you, for he has inquired repeatedly what o'clock it was, as if time passed heavily with him." The old man wiped his eyes as he spoke, and I followed him into L's study. The countenance of the invalid was greatly changed even since I last saw him. The eyes seemed more sunken and the usual flush of his complaint had subsided into a deep but transparent paleness. I took his hand, and he shook his head gently as I did so. "The goal is nearly won!" said he faintly, but with a slight smile. I did not answer, and he proceeded after a short pause-" It has been said that life is a jest;" it is a very sorry one, and like bad jests in general, its dullness is the greater as we get to the close. At the end of a long illness it is only the dregs of a man's spirit that are left him. People talk of the moral pangs that attend the death-bed of a sinneras well might they talk of the physical weakness of a dying wrestler. The mental and the physical powers are too nearly. allied for us fairly to speculate on the fidelity of the one while the other declines. Happy in my case that the endurance if not the elasticity of my mind lingers with me to the last! I was looking over some papers this morning which were full of my early visions, aspirations of fame, and longings after earthly immortality. I am fortunate that time is not allowed me to sacrifice happiness to these fantoms. A man's heart must be very frivolous if the possession of fame rewards the labour to attain it. For the worst of reputation is that it is not palpable or present-we do not feel, or see, or taste it. People praise us behind our backs, but we hear them not; few before our faces, and who is not suspicious of the truth of such praise? What does come before us perpetually in our career of honours is the blame, not praise-the envy, not esteem. We ask the disciple and we find the persecutor."