applied to the case before us, marks the man called to pass through the waves of a troublesome world, furnished with the anchor of a sure and stedfast hope, whilst bright promises gleam in the far distance, but casting away his confidence, and afraid to trust himself to the faithfulness that is pledged for his security, because he had impatiently anticipated an immediate, instead of a delayed, fulfilment.

Our closing remarks must refer to the pronouns occurring in the passage: and here we observe the variation of his soul' in the prophet, and my soul' when the words are quoted. The seventy probably read 1, but without presuming to prefer this or the received reading i we may, according to remarks already made, adopt a sense with which either reading would not be much at variance. The kind of feeling expressed by hy οι ὑποστείληται, must certainly be such as belongs rather to the imperfect and faulty creature than to the glorious Jehovah; and it is not difficult to adopt a sense which may agree either with the pronoun of the third person hypothetically used-his, any one's, soul-or with that of the first person used as frequently, per кowwvíav. If the suggestions already offered be admitted, as having any weight, the text will have nothing to do with the Divine abhorrence of a supposed apostate. His soul,' or 'my soul,' will be referred to the man whose character presents the contrast to that of 'the just' who ‘lives by faith,' and He who might be the means of uprightness or the object of pleasure, will be the Lord, who is at once the way of righteousness, and the fountain of joy, to him who lives by faith.

The difference of expression, having pleasure, and being upright, is evidently connected with the similarity of the words and but there being also some connexion between the ideas expressed, there is not so much difficulty with respect to this as in the other words of the passage.

The result of our investigation may be summed up thus :

For the Hebrew text: Behold, his soul which is impatient, is not righteous, in, or by means of Him (who is promised as surely to come.)

For the Septuagint, quoted in the epistle: If it be [impatient and therefore] mistrustful, my soul has no delight in Him (who is life and joy to one who waits for Him with the confidence of faith.)

There is thus at least a harmony of sentiment in the two passages, which combine in warning the Christian under affliction or apparent delay of promised blessings, against an impatient desire of deliverance, or the desponding apprehension that the promises of his God are failing.

VII.

THE POETRY OF THE DAY.

THE fruits of literature are meant to be mingled with, but not to supersede its flowers: the appetite which demands solid food to satisfy it, is not inconsistent with the taste which enjoys, sometimes, a lighter and more luxurious fare. One would not choose a literary larder like Prince Potemkin's, stored richly with petits-pâtés and champagne, but without one morsel of bread, or a drop of water; nor would the other extreme of nothing but substantial bread and plain water, though far better, be to our taste the best provision that could be made.

We hold that the love of the beautiful harmonises well with the enjoyment of the useful, and that the variety is neither uninteresting nor unprofitable, which is supplied by turning occasionally from studying the rules of logic with Aristotle, and tracing Hebrew roots with Gesenius, to cull the beauties and to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers that spring up by the wayside paths of life. The mind, so far from growing unfitted, is rather braced up by such pleasant rambles, for returning with greater zest to the sterner studies that make it strong and healthful; and, therefore, do we invite the readers of pages solid as ours aspire to be, to bear with us in our half-hour's talk about the Poetry of the Day.'

Not indeed that poetry is always, or necessarily a thing for lighter hours. The poetical inspiration, when felt as Milton felt it, proves itself to be as he deemed it, one of God's higher and diviner gifts. Ascending with him to the height of an argument so great as his, is no holiday work. The mind is tasked to follow and enjoy. It is not, however, of strains like his, solemn as the deep sounding of cathedral music, that we purpose to discourse; our age owns no Milton as its birth sublime. It rather shows itself impatient of epics; those grave old times when divines wrote folios, and found men to read them, are gone by. The hurried, busy life of men to-day, seems to dictate to those who would tell upon the living generation, that they must be more brief and fragmentary than of old.

Nor do we quote this feature of our time as matter for lamentation and regret long and elaborate poems, in whatever age they may be written, are after all rather for the studious and thoughtful few, than for the many. Even Milton's audience is, at this meridian hour of his fame, more select than numerous; and Pope and Dryden and Thomson are, to all practical uses, for the multitude, as though they were not. Why regret, then, that their lengthened strains have given place to others much shorter, if what is lost in

length is more than made up in power? Men are given to think that ours is an unpoetical age, because we have no Paradise Lost,' no storied epic, or sublime heroic, of which to boast. The fact is, that there is poetry rich and true to be found among us even now, but its character and dress are altered to suit the form and body of the times.' Imagination and fancy are not dead, nor while men have hearts that feel, as well as heads that think, nor while man's life has its sorrows and its cares, its struggles and its fears, its joyful or regretful memories of the past, and its strong and hopeful yearnings for a better future, will the material or the utterance of poetry be wanting.

This thought suggests to us another, that while the sources are many and very various from which the poet draws his inspirations, there are two which, from their prominent importance, may be deemed the very well-springs of poetic thought and feeling; these are nature and man. There is the poetry of the outer and of the inner world; the poetry of life in its manifold varieties without, and that of human life within. Types and examples of what we mean will readily supply themselves. Wordsworth is emphatically "Nature's High-priest;' the serious, which are by far the best poems of poor Thomas Hood, affect us so powerfully because they are full of the poetry of our own daily life. The first dwells with rapt gaze on the glories of this fair world, and 'babbles of green flowers and running brooks,' all gladly and sweetly, and with most eloquent music. The last lays its finger on the beating pulse of these warm hearts of ours, and discovers to us each nerve and fibre that threads the flesh and blood of our common humankind.

Each has its high and holy uses, but it is this latter which speaks with most power, and is heard with most attention amidst the busy life that men are living now. It would not perhaps be easy to distinguish accurately the province of the one from that of the other, or to draw minutely the dividing lines; but distinction we think there is nevertheless-a distinction to be marked in the fact, that while men, by multiplying railways, and marring the picturesqueness of many a quiet scene, are drawing forth piteous laments from the laureate, in his peaceful home by Rydal Water, others can find a theme for exulting song in the promise thus given of increased enjoyment for an elevated and improving people.

But more directly to our task, and first of all, honour to the departed! We have spoken of Thomas Hood. Let us speak of him again. We shall not soon forget the saddened look and solemn voice of a friend who had just left the chamber of the dying man, and told of his acute agonies, and how the sufferer was lying praying to be delivered from them speedily. That must have been a sight to make one pale in remembering it. There amidst his pain, firm and trustful in the expressions of his Christian hope, he lingered,

and in the early spring-time of last year he died. A voice was silenced then, that had spoken to us thoughtfully and eloquently often, and a heart grew still that had throbbed with emotions of the purest love, and pitying tenderness, for all the sorrowing of the one brotherhood to which he belonged. In him extremes seemed to meet; mirth and melancholy sprang up in his spirit like a twin growth we never knew before how closely to each other could abide the fountains of smiles and tears. The editor of the Comic Annual, he wrote the Dream of Eugene Aram; the author of 'Up the Rhine,' he startled the world with the 'Song of the Shirt.' It is in writings like these, stored up for us in the two volumes just published, that we rejoice to hail him as one of the most powerful poets of the day. Where in the range of English poetry is there anything more strikingly beautiful than that Bridge of Sighs,' every line of which haunts the memory and will not depart? We actually gaze with the poet's own pitying look on the sad memorial of misery, and guilt, and despair. Harsh thoughts might come, but no! a word forbids them; and instead, we are taken to the once glad and loving home, where those light tresses were toyed with by a mother's fondness, before purity and innocence had been marred and destroyed. Thence, rapidly as thought, we pass to be witnesses of those fearful struggles with passion and strong despair which end in that wild resolve

And there it is, the ruined monument of that awful tragedy! We have dwelt on this, the rather as it illustrates our previous remark respecting the great characteristic of the poetry that is most powerful. What is it that gives to these lines their great force what but the fact that they show us truthfully the stirrings and strivings of a heart trusting, guilty, breaking, and that we know that it all is real, that even now while we write, there are hearts whose emotions attest too truly the reality? It is powerful because it is the poetry of actual life. The strong passions it describes and the many thoughts that it suggests are all poetry, and poetry that all must recognise and feel.

But if Hood could arrest with what is wild and terrible in the working of the spirit, he could also melt and subdue by the exquisite pathos of his more gentle lays. We have seen how he could crowd Rembrandt-shadows round one dying scene: see how, in another, he can suggest the soft and mellow glow of a Claudesunsetting. We will quote but this one, and so pass on. Is there

not about it a something that affects one like the pathetic minor' of distant music? One seems to read it with hushed tone and bated breath, as though a spell were in the words :—

6 THE DEATH-BED.

We watched her breathing through the night,

Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,

So slowly moved about,

As we had lent her half our powers,
To eke her living out.

Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied-

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,

Her quiet eyelids closed-she had

Another morn than ours.'

If it be the poet's office to find sweet words for thought and feeling which others have, who are scarcely conscious of having them till thus their hearts are mirrored to them by the poet, then is this truest poetry. We have most of us lingered in silence, deep almost as that of death, by the dying bed of one we loved, and we have all felt, though we could not have so described it, the truth and beauty of that description of the heaving wave of life.' We have moved with noiseless step through the chamber, but who but the poet could have given such a meaning to our quietness as that given here? While the contrast of the dull chill dawning with the brighter morn, into which the loved one is waking, leaves the mind with a calm, hopeful, almost reconciled feeling, even when turning from the bed of death.

Barry Cornwall is amongst those who have used well the strong words of their household mother-tongue. In him we find that forcible brevity, which is the soul of song as well as of wit. That 'fine natural eloquence which a warm heart has taught him,' is here poured out in real poetry. He himself complains, and at the same time proves himself an exception to the complaint, that 'our verbiage is the Corinthian capital which has succeeded the finer Ionic. Almost Doric, indeed, in its severe simplicity is the poet's architecture. A worthy companion-piece to Hood's Bridge of Sighs,' is Barry Cornwall's London lyric of Within and Without.' Strong, nervous in its strain, sympathising with wronged