Luther, saying, "I would wish you a better mind, were you not so well pleased with the one you have. Wish me what you will, only not your own disposition, unless the Lord see fit to change it." Luther grew more and more bitter. One Trinity Sunday he prays his people and all good friends of Christ to be enemies of Erasmus. He calls him "Erasmus, that vainglorious animal." He charges them, as his last will and testament, to hate and loathe "Erasmus, that viper." He does not forget Erasmus, even amidst the charms of home and nature. Does he call his children out into the fields to admire a lovely sunset? He remembers how little Erasmus can appreciate such things. "Poor Erasmus!" he says, in a sort of apostrophe, "indeed, what can you know of such beauties? You gaze at God's works as a cow stares at a new door!" Luther persisted in declaring that Erasmus wanted to establish paganism on the ruins of Christianity, and one of his last expressions with regard to his great antagonist was,-"I hold Erasmus of Rotterdam to be Christ's bitterest enemy." Poor Erasmus seems to have had little comfort in his last years. He complains bitterly of the multitude of sects that have sprung up or crept in at Bâle, and says, if he knew any place free from that plague of heresy and schism, thither he would go to live; and when, in 1529, Charles V. came into Germany to settle the religious difficulties, and Erasmus was quoted as favoring toleration, he came out with an indignant repudiation of the charge and asserted the right and duty of using the sword against heretics. The gravel and the plague, stoves, fish-smells, and Ulrich Hütten, seem to have tormented his life to the last. More than once he had left the little Swiss city, as he thought, for ever, saying, as he waved his farewell," Mayst thou never find a guest more troublesome than I have been!" But again and again he returned to it, for it was to be his last residence and resting-place. Refusing the offer of a cardinal's hat, which he was too poor to accept, he was made Rector of Bâle University, and died there, calling on Christ for mercy, on the 12th of July, 1536, in the seventieth year of his age. His last letter is dated the June previous, and signed, in abbreviated Latin, "Erasmus of Rotterdam, with a sick hand" (" Eras. Rot. æg. manû "). 1850.] Description of himself. LIBRARY OF THE (VIVERSI 5199OF MICHIG Erasmus's "person," we are informed, " was small, with light hair, blue, half-closed eyes, full of acute observation, and humor playing about the delicate mouth; his air was so timorous, that he looked as if a breath would overthrow him, and he trembled at the very name of death." Erasmus, in his latter days, beguiled some of the heavy hours by writing a sketch of his habits, principles, and experiences. "His health," he says, "was always delicate, and was tried by frequent fevers; especially in his fiftieth year, on account of the eating of fish, the very odor of which was offensive to him. He had a simple spirit, and such an abhorrence of mendacity that, when a boy, he hated boys who told lies, and, when old, was agitated bodily at the sight of them." What he says here about his simplicity and truthfulness may provoke a smile from some readers, and a repetition of Burns's lines about the difficulty of seeing oursel's as ithers see us, and the proverbial dislike of certain natures to recognize their own image in others. But, after all, whoso shall carefully study the man's whole situation and course, and consider that he lived in an age when fraud was consecrated by church example, and when even a Luther's skirts were not quite clear, will probably admit that Erasmus, on the whole, is true and truthful in this also, and that even when he did consult expediency, it was not always what might be expedient for himself that he calculated, but oftener what might be expedient for humanity, according, of course, to his own standard of its true interests. Let us hear him a little further: "He never wrote any thing that pleased him. . . . . . He was a steadfast despiser of riches and dignities, and prized nothing above liberty and leisure. A candid appraiser of other men's doctrines. In advancing good letters, none effected more than he, and he sustained a grievous odium from monks and barbarians on that very account. Up to his fiftieth year he had never attacked any person, nor been attacked by any one, with the pen. And it had been his purpose to keep his pen bloodless. .. The Lutheran tragedy loaded him with intolerable odium; while he sought to serve" (not please) "each party, he was hawked at and picked to pieces by both." In reviewing the career and character of Erasmus, we are filled with conflicting or alternate feelings of admira tion, impatience, and pity. Bravely did he battle with the pedants, bigots, and dunces of his day; much did he for the cause of reason, liberty, and liberality. Only, for himself, it would seem, he lived either too early or too late. And when we consider that he lived out the better part of his days in the twilight and transition period between the middle and the modern ages, we must be very ungrateful, if we can find it in our hearts to think it would have been as well had such a man never lived, to join with those who would denounce him indiscriminately as a pedant, a conservative, a dilettante, a mocker, and a timeserver, or to refrain from cherishing with a somewhat tender respect the memory of the philosopher of Rotterdam. On the pedestal of Erasmus's statue at Rotterdam are inscribed two stanzas, which, in their own language (though it may seem like imposing on the ignorance of the uninitiated to say so) are not without a certain rich music, and which, if one should sacrifice something of their native melody, for the sake of giving a Chinese copy of a Dutch original, would run, in the Queen's English, somewhat literally, thus: "Here the great sun rose, and at Bâle went under! She gives this second life, who the first gave, To him, the age's light and lord and glorious wonder. “Whom Peace, Love, Learning, graced with mingling ray, No tomb could honor, nor ten worlds repay; For that, must this blue vault Erasmus cover,— No narrower dome can roof his mausoleum over!" C. T. B. ART. VII.-WORDSWORTH THE CHRISTIAN POET. A PECULIAR interest is always attached to the closing period of the lives of men distinguished for their genius, or their position and their power over others. "The last words of King David, the anointed of God" and “ the sweet Psalmist of Israel," - with what intenseness we read them, and how sacred to us is their import! That monarch had reigned for forty years, and " he died,” 1850.] The Christian Poet. 101 at last, as we are told, "in a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor." But what constituted his chief honor and his permanent glory? Not the multitude of his riches, nor yet, again, his royal majesty. No, his wealth was soon squandered by his successors, and his dominion was eclipsed at once by the splendor of his son's, and it soon wasted away and was comparatively forgotten. It was his works and his fame as the sweet Psalmist of Israel that transmitted his name with an undying renown. It is mainly as a poet, uttering rich strains forced from him by his eventful experience, that he has come down to us and is destined to an honor that cannot perish or be dimmed while there are hearts left upon earth to suffer and to rejoice. A parallel may be drawn between the illustrious Psalmist and a poet recently departed in our fatherland, which, in some points, is striking. Wordsworth died, as he did, in a good old age, full of days, and if not of riches, yet surely of honors. He did not indeed occupy a throne, yet he was the Poet Laureate of his monarch, and he sat on an inner throne whose foundation will endure when crowns and sceptres have vanished from the globe. He should not pass away without a special commemoration in our Christian journals, for he was eminently a Christian poet. Not only did he drink in the inspirations of nature, and imbue himself with the truths and spirit of philosophy, but he was also the poet of humanity, and in the highest and best sense he was the poet of religion. Take the narrowest view you will of Christianity, you cannot so contract its compass as to exclude his writings fairly from it. Say that he only is a Christian poet who confines himself to the themes of religion and morality, and there is no place so sacred that the claims of Wordsworth, on this ground, should not be presented there. But Christianity does not make this illiberal estimate of the province and merits of poetry. Wherever God has shown forth his handiwork, in all the myriad powers and processes of creation, there is a field hallowed by the touch of his finger, and whoever by his pen portrays worthily any part of these works is entitled to the respectful notice even of the Church and the pulpit. And he who paints to the eye of imagination, and in a spiritual tone, the interior realm of man's being, and sets forth with elevation the philosophy of our nature, is discharging an office to be honored now by the Christian, and to be held in a pious and unfailing remembrance. The great man of whom we write was emphatically the poet of Nature. His spirit, like that of David, was steeped in her works. In his ear day was ever uttering speech unto day, and night showing knowledge unto night. Dwelling in a region of surpassing loveliness, where one seems to hear nothing but her melodies, and to see nothing but her delicate tracings, where indeed we feel an unearthly exhilaration breathed into us by the heaven-reflecting lake, the sublime mountain, the graceful valley, the modest rill and gentle waterfall, he inhaled constantly an atmosphere of quiet beauty. Others, amid sterner scenes, were putting forth a more fervid and exciting verse; but his long life fed itself with an unruffled content amid these tempered and peaceful views. The star above, the glowworm below, the humble daisy, the imposing mount, - all objects, whether enlarged or minute, were made to pour their varying voices through his pliant measure. His attentive ear welcomed the glad testimony as a personal benefit:-"Wherever snow falls, or water flows, or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love, there is beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee." But the outward did not engross his powers. He entered also, and with the same all-comprehensive and the same minute fidelity, into a portraiture of the interior world. His personal experience was not apparently diversified by many trials and changes of fortune. He was not, like the Psalmist of Israel, raised from the condition of a shepherd to that of filling a throne. He did not win laurels on the battle-field, or suffer so bitterly as David from trials and enemies, or from domestic afflictions. And yet, like him, he has struck nearly every chord of the human heart in its multitudinous experiences. He is alike skilled in the musings of abstract sentiment, and in the simplest emotion of the infant child. No hour is so jubilant and none so sad that he does not present us some line meet for the occasion. With a magic skill he |