that spirit up to Nature's God-this is the foppery of song— the dance of words-the waste of life! Such is the practical opinion of many a philosopher of our day, who with the Rail Road Journal in his hand, and spectacles on his nose, rejoices that Science is steaming it along smooth tracks, while Poetry is completely run ashore, and fast going to decay.

Walking the fields with Dogmaticus, we point him to the beauty of the landscape. With equal good manners and fine sentiment, he deigns to reply with a "humph," and not very secretly smiling at our littleness, he walks on, congratulating himself that while we are occupied with things so small, he is on the point of triumphantly answering that great poser of the schools," utrum chimæra, bombinans in vacuo, possit comedere," etc. And yet shall Dogmaticus be answered, by the merest leaf which we pluck from the hedge-row. Look on its beautiful outline; its notched and scalloped sides; its velvet surface; its gentle tinge. Nay, see it marked with a thousand fibres, arteries, and veins. What a little world it is! It might have served the purposes of life to the plant, without these beauties. Why then did its Maker fashion it into such comeliness, if beauty is not to be felt and admired? Yet this is but one of millions; and what will Dogmaticus say, when we pass from the leaf to the flowering blossom? And when the rich fruit is ready for his palate, why should the apple be of such a hue, or the peach of such a tinge, or the pine apple such a picture? Look then, Dogmaticus; shall the Mighty God deem such trivial things worthy of his care and invention to make them fair to look upon; and shall I negligently enjoy his bounty, without admiring his handiwork; and shalt thou presume to call him idler whose life is spent in illustrating to others the perfect harmony of the universe of God, around, above him, and within.

We say within, for the universe of the soul is indeed the nobler world of the poet. There is the heaven of the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit-there is the hell of man's earthly passions and rebellious will. Surely, Dogmaticus himself will confess that poetry hath here a use. But no. In the study of our spiritual nature he himself delights; but not after the poet's fashion. He, forsooth, hath a theory of the understanding, and a doctrine of the will, and a syllabus of the affections; but this holding the mirror up to nature; this

song and response; this chanting and antiphony; this calling of the lonely soul to its fellows; this natural yearning to mother earth; this heavenly aspiring for a better world. Pshaw! says our philosopher, "Cui Bono, Cui Bono !"

In answer to Dogmaticus and his school, we deem it final and sufficient to inquire the opinion of the great Author of mind, as he has expressed it in the written word of his truth. And turning to the law and testimony, how is it (if he be right) that he cannot open those glorious pages without being reminded at once, that of half its living lines, poets were themselves the penmen! How is it, that leaf after leaf unfolds to us sweet idyl, noble elegy, or burning ode? Why is this long drama of the Uzzian written, enforcing a moral that like the Iliad's, might be " folded in a nutshell." Why have we this rhapsody on the horse-this canto on leviathan? Why this song of Arcturus, and the bands of Orion, and the sweet influence of Pleiades? Wherefore this ode on the ostrich this high lyric on behemoth? Nay, another leaf; and for what is the Book of PSALMS! And the Proverbs! And the Preacher! And lo! THE SONG OF SONGS! The bride of Christ sings spousals; and the Lord of the Church, our Redeemer and God, can reply. And here are the pæans of Isaiah; high lyrics, that are worthy of the hallowed lips that were lighted by an angel for the office. And the plaint of Jeremy. The very woes of God's people, are denounced to them in song. And now listen to the rapture of Ezekiel; and then to the far voices that come up to the prophet's ear, from the unborn ages of the gospel. Scarcely have we time. to listen to the prayer of Habbakkuk, for hark! the virgin "doth magnify the Lord" in poetry. And Zacharias is on fire with song; and old Simeon raises his faltering voice in the swan-like Nunc dimittis. Yea, the very heavens are alive with the rapture; and the anthem they are chanting, peals in our ears below, "Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace; good will to men."

And the visions of the Apocalypse are full of music, and hymnings, and harps. There is poetry in the presence of God. The ransomed are returning with songs and everlasting joy. The elders have harps with their vials full of odors. The Godhead is worshipped in poetry. Peace, then, Dogmaticus; heaven, earth, and the Bible, are spoiling thy theory; and the answer of inspiration to thy cynic cui

bono, is only vouchsafed, like the oracular responses of the haunted groves, in words that must torture thee, for they are poetry.

If in Nature, and Holy Writ, then, God himself hath marked poesy with his undoubted sanction, would it not be well for his ambassadors to attach full value to its influence? As long as face answereth to face in water, so long will man have a heart that answereth to heart; and just so long will that heart be the pupil or the plaything of the genuine poet. We then should not despise the wisdom of the serpent, however we may desire to blend with it the harmlessness of the dove. Of this we may be speedily convinced by the sober page of history. All nations have taken character from the character of their poets. Greece were not Greece but for her Homer; nor Rome, Rome without her Horace and Virgil. Italy were no Italy, without her Dante and TassoEngland no England, without Milton and Shakspeare; and we judge that he was wiser than Dogmaticus, therefore, who sagely said, "Let me make the ballads of a people, and you shall make their laws."

But with other good things, the prince of this world hath been wiser than the children of light, in employing the divine art in the dissemination of that evil of which he is styled the father. Conscious of the value and the power of poetry, he has distorted it from its natural inclination to virtue, and married it to sin. And so long has it been found in practice the corrupter of good morals, that we scarcely wonder, after all, that many of the good should rank it with the theatre, of which Pollok dryly says, in answer to those who maintain that it might be made the handmaid of virtue,

"And so perhaps it might, but never was."

But, in fact, the case is different in regard to poetry. There its earliest specimens are the inspirers of virtue. And while we do not marvel at those who condemn the art of Anacreon, Horace, and the author of Don Juan, we must still deem those few far wiser, who have in any manner the shrewdness which Wesley showed in relation to the twin-sister art of music. That holy man did not scruple to set many of his most beautiful hymns to the airs of fashionable songs, and pieces which had before been the favorites of the gay dancer,

or roaring bacchanal. These are now extensively used in the churches, under sober names; and for far more than we suspect of the sweet melodies which now warm the Christian's heart in the services of the sanctuary, on the holy day, we are to thank that good man, who said, "it was indeed a shame, that the devil should have all the good music."

But whatever is due to Wesley's fame in this glorious department of art; pre-eminently is the honor of the Reformation of Poetry attributable to William Cowper. We are no undervaluers of Herbert, and Addison, and Steele. They were the streaks that announced the coming morning. But Cowper was the sun in his strength. The mighty Milton had indeed long before him employed the imagination in a Christian flight to heaven; but Cowper was the first to bring down the angel Muse to earth; to mingle with all earth's woes, its joys, its miseries; and to touch the heart with the burning words of a gospel religion.

Careful then, should we be, how we allow ourselves to fall into the fashionable cant of literature, and to speak of the idle life, and absurd monomania of that holy man. Let us rather read his own sweet apology for his retired and noiseless life, and confess, that in his case, it is doubly true, that

"Stillest streams

Oft water greenest meadows; and the bird
That flutters least, is longest on the wing."

Cowper seems well and wisely to have improved the talents and the time committed to his trust. Many a mind diseased like his, would have excused itself from all responsibleness to its day and generation; but Cowper has done for the world what the halest intellect might envy as a life-time's labor. The Lord seems to have shaped this mysterious creature of his hand, for just the noble end he has subserved. Constantly did divine Providence lead him in the way which his own wisdom chose not, but which seems to have been in truth, "the way he should go." So great was his own awe of his holy art, that had he foreseen to what it would lead him, he would probably never have indulged himself in the luxury of a Sofa. But a hand more careful of his good, and ours, imperceptibly lured him to an enjoyment, which

he only perceived when finished to have been a Task. That noble poem grew like the subject which Lady Austen gave him, as it were from a clumsy joint-stool, to a throne. He might have given it the motto, which he afterwards threatened to inscribe on a summer-house, which had been finished more expensively than he designed

"Beware of building. I intended

Rough logs and thatch;-and thus it ended!"

He little dreamed that his loyalty to the fair was to make him the Columbus of a new world of poetry. With reference to the Art, Wordsworth has been styled the regenerator of English poetry. Let us in a higher sense claim that proud title for Cowper. We doubt if Wordsworth would have been Wordsworth, had not Cowper gone before him; and as for the Excursion compared with the Task, what more can its proudest admirers claim for their favorite poem, than, at most, the designation, "pul chrior filia, pulcherrima matre ?"

When the poor valetudinarian of Olney, began, in his fiftieth year, to draw on his early reading for amusement; and to prove his remaining facility in the French language, by doing into English the songs of Madam Guion, who would have foretold the career of glory that was before him! Who would have foreseen, in that glimmering through the mists of sickness and derangement, the brightness of "the bridegroom coming out of his chamber!" Who would have imagined, when the day of his life was so far spent, that the sun of his original splendor should break through the vapors that obscured his morning, to gild them by the light of an holy eve, and, at least, to go down in glory!

Such, however, the issue has proved the case to have been. Yet, we may safely say, the influence of Cowper is only now beginning to be felt, in any thing like its proper degree. The world is just beginning to discover how deeply she injured him, when, for a season, she seemed inclined to pass him by, as a pious man in a corner, who made pious verses. His fame, though now so spreading, has been of very gradual increase; but this we might have predicted from his own teaching:

"So slow

The growth of what is excellent,--so hard
To reach perfection in this nether world."