earlier has poured forth a stream of most pathetic reflection upon this subject. Having set forth the state of man under the golden, silver, and brazen ages, he reaches the iron age, in which man was bereft of the last remains of his humanity. Hesiod was among the primeval poets, what Isaiah was among the Jewish prophets, with this difference, that Hesiod sung of an age of bliss and glory that was past, and Isaiah of such an age to come. Hesiod is immeasurably more entitled to the epithet divine, than Homer. He was the poet of religion, peace, morality, and the arts; Homer was the bard of desolation and blood; and hence he has ever been the idol of man, while Hesiod has been all but forgotten. Hesiod thus bewails the depravity of man, at the close of the heroic age, and with a sagacity almost prophetic, foretells the result of the principles which then began to be manifested:

"O! would I had my hours of life began
Before this fifth, this sinful race of man;
Or had I not been call'd to breathe the day,
Till the rough iron age had passed away :
For now, the times are such, the gods ordain
That every moment shall be wing'd with pain;
Condemned to sorrows and to toil we live;
Rest to our labour death alone can give.
And yet, amid the cares our lives annoy,
The gods still grant some intervals of joy :
But how degenerate is the human state!
Virtue no more distinguishes the great :
No safe reception shall, the stranger find;
Nor shall the ties of blood or friendship bind;
Nor shall the parent, when his sons are nigh,
Look with the fondness of a parent's eye;
Nor to the sire the son obedience pay,

Nor gaze with reverence on the locks of grey,

But oh! regardless of the powers divine,
With bitter taunts shall load his life's decline.
Revenge and rapine shall respect command;
The pions, just, and good, neglected stand.
The wicked shall the better man distress,
The righteous suffer, and without redress;
Strict honesty, and naked truth, shall fail,
The perjur'd villain in his arts prevail !
Hoarse envy shall, unseen, exert her voice,
Attend the wretched, and in ill rejoice.

At last fair modesty and justice fly

Robed their pure limbs in white-and gain the sky;
From the wide earth they reach the bless'd abodes,
And join the grand assembly of the gods,

While mortal men, abandoned to their grief,
Sink in their sorrows, hopeless of relief."

WORKS AND DAYS, BOOK I.

It were not easy to improve this striking picture, the exact truth of which is proved by its universal correspondence with the state of fallen nature. The inhumanity which is thus diffused among mankind, is the mother element of all social evil. The best poets of every age, since the days of Hesiod, have borne testimony to its prevalence, and denounced it. How striking and tender is the address of the sage Ulysses to the fierce Achilles, whom he reminds of his father's last words!—

"My child! with strength, with glory and success,
Thine arms may Juno and Minerva bless!
Trust that to heaven: but thou, thy cares engage
To calm thy passions, and subdue thy rage;
From gentler manners let thy glory grow,
And shun contention, the sure source of woe;
That young and old may in thy praise combine
The virtues of humanity be thine!"

HOMER, BOOK IX.

Of all the Roman poets, none had a keener perception of the evil which we deplore than Juvenal. The following vigorous passage presents man in a two-fold light,-first, in a state of unsophisticated nature, and then as hardened into a more than brutal insensibility:

"Compassion proper to mankind appears,

Which Nature witnessed when she gave us tears.
Of tender sentiments we only give

Those proofs; to weep is man's prerogative!
To show by pitying looks and melting eyes,
How with a suffering friend we sympathize!
Who can all sense of others' ills escape,
Is but a brute, at best, in hnman shape!
This nat❜ral piety did first refine

Our wit, and raise our thoughts to things divine,
This proves our spirit of the gods' descent,

While that of beasts is prone and downward bent:
To them but earth-born life they did dispense;

To us, for mutual aid, celestial sense.

But serpents now more amity maintain !
From spotted skins the leopard doth refrain:
No weaker lion 's by a stronger slain;
Nor, from his larger tusks, the forest boar
Commission takes his brother swine to gore;
Tiger with tiger, bear with bear you'll find
In leagues offensive and defensive joined !
But lawless man the anvil dares profane
To forge the dart by which a man is slain !
An impious race we now behold, whose rage
The slaughter of their foes cannot assuage,
Unless they banquet on the wretch they slew,

Devour the corpse, and drink the blood they drew."
SATIRE XV.

This dreadful picture, as applied to the applied to the savages of Polynesia, is not an exaggeration. How fearfully was the prediction of Hesiod, in relation to parents and

children, verified! By the practice kukumi anga, one of the most atrocious sights imaginable was exhibited. On a son reaching manhood, his first duty was to fight his father, and, in the event of victory, he immediately took forcible possession of his farm, and drove away his vanquished parent in destitution to shift for himself, or die in the woods! In all respects worthy of this, and still more inhuman, was the ao anga, by which the friends of a husband, on his death, came and seized his house, food, and land, turning adrift the mourning widow with her helpless offspring. Let us contrast the former practice with the precept, "Honour thy father and mother;" and the latter with the declaration that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction." Such was the condition of the people of the isles, such their destitution of humanity. The question is, What was the effect of the gospel of Christ upon them? In the emphatic words of Scripture, it changed the hearts of all who believed it from stone to flesh. In proof of this, I offer the dying declarations of Tuahine,-the very first plebeian convert of Tahiti. A day or two before his death, he thus wrote to Mr. Williams :—

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"Raiatea, November 11th, 1827. Oh, dear friend,- May blessings attend you and your family, through Jesus Christ our Lord. I have written this letter on the day that my body is completely destroyed with sickness. I am convinced of the near approach of death, for I perceive that my illness is very great. The 11th of November is the day on which I write; I write with great difficulty, my eyes are now dim in death. My compassion my family is very great; I therefore write in death

for

for

F

to you, my dear friend, about my family. We do not belong to Raiatea, neither myself nor my wife; we both belong to Tahiti; but, from love to the word of God, and attachment to you, our teacher, we have forsaken our lands, and now I am about to die. It is death that terminates our close connexion. This is what I have to say to you, my dear friend, about my family do not let them remain at Raiatea; take them to Tahiti in your own large boat; convey them there yourself; let no one else. They belong to Papeete : there are their parents and their land. My perplexity is very great, occasioned by my dear family crying and grieving around me. They say, 'Who will convey us back to our lands?' I refer them to you; replying, 'Mr. Williams is our friend.' We miss you very much in my illness, and grieve Now, my dear friend, let me

greatly at your absence. entreat you not to forget follow the custom of my

my dying request. Do not countrymen, and say, when I am gone, 'Oh, it is only the command of a corpse.' This is what they say, and then seize his little property. I have been endeavouring to lengthen out my breath to see you again, but I cannot my hour is come, when God will take me to himself, and I cannot resist his will. Perhaps this is the time the Lord has appointed for me. And now, my dear friend, the great kindness you have shown me is at an end; your face will not see my face again in the flesh-you and I are separated. am going now to the place we all so

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'May the grace of the Lord Jesus

you and your family!

"P.S.-Take care of my family."

Dear friend, I ardently desire. Christ be with

"TUAHINE.