Smith's 'City Poems.'

It has been observed that the prose of Gibbon excels in the sentence, the prose of Macaulay in the paragraph. Similar distinctions are to be found among the poets. One is distinguished for the harmony and oneness of his poems as a whole. A severe self-control subordinates ornament to action, and constantly gives law to imagination. Matthew Arnold is eminent among our young poets in this respect. Another, like Dobell, displays a masterly skill in the building up of separate passages of blank verse, which answer to the paragraph in prose. Marlowe, again, among our old dramatists, inferior in some other respects, was surpassed by Shakespeare only in the melody or the might of individual lines. And in this kind of excellence Alexander Smith is no mean proficient. His longer poems owe their claim to admiration not so much to any skill of construction, dramatic force, or compass of thought, as to the frequent felicity of single lines, or of couples and triads of lines. 'Horton' is a poem dramatic only in form. 'Squire Maurice' is dramatic in reality, understanding by the word, successful impersonation.

But what has been said concerning the isolated or irregular character of these beauties is applicable only to the blank verse poems. The stanzas are wrought throughout with a truly artistic hand. Poems like 'Glasgow,' and 'The Change,' are Mr. Smith's masterpieces. They vindicate completely his poetic claims, for in that kind of poem only the genuine gift can achieve success. The last stanza in the song to Barbara is perfect of its kind. Admirable, too, is the description which opens the second part of 'A Boy's Poem.' Mr. Smith should seek, still more earnestly, choiceness, rather than abundance of metaphor. A great number of his metaphors and similes are of the right sort-legitimate and sterling beauties. But some of them should be consigned by the poet to the rhetorician. Much nonsense is talked about the necessity for

a sparing use of such ornament. If the metaphor be worked into the main substance of what is said, be neither cumbrous nor overlaboured, it is always a delight to the mind. If, however, metaphor be much used, it should very frequently be such as lies in a word, rather than a clause-an epithet, rather than a sentence. There are compressed figures and telling touches of this kind, which show that Mr. Smith is not wanting in the faculty; let him only address himself to its farther cultivation.

SECTION III.

Thoughts on Religion.

WE

HEN my son relinquished his pastorate at Birmingham, the people of his charge were very desirous that he should print some of his sermons. He did not promise compliance with this request, but intimated that he should probably publish some thoughts on religious subjects that might serve to remind them of past days. From the pressure of other engagements he did little in pursuance of this intention, but some of the fragments which follow were written out with his own hand with a view to publication; others are taken from his papers. As a whole, they will assist the reader to judge somewhat concerning the author's manner as a religious teacher.—EDITOR.

You think of the old Hebrew seers and prophets of the Lord, and are almost ready at times to envy the overwhelming glories of those visions-the eminence of that rapture which beheld the splendours of Emmanuel and the 'land of far distances'-and the grandeur of their commission who were sent, equipped so marvellously, to comfort the downcast, and warn the wavering, and confirm the strong, and reclaim the apostate, by their testimony of glory and of judgment. Sublime, indeed, that calling-blending the exultant powers of the poet with the yet loftier aspirations of the saint-beholding all nature with an eye kindling from the inner spirit's light, and seeing in the forms, the changes, and the aims of all things in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, the signs that mark the course of the Almighty-the universe their zodiac, and God their

sun! Enviable, indeed, seems that mantle of prophetic power— that hearing harmonized and raised to catch every heavenly utterance and hidden meaning in their present and their past-that insight which beheld the stars, walking in their Eastern brightness, and saw in them the emblems of those earthly powers which should be shed like leaves from their heights of pride, by the shaking judgments of the Almighty arm-which marked in the wasteful winter flood, and woodland beast roaming for his prey, the symbols of devastating visits from angered loving-kindness—which gladly recognised the types of the Messiah's kingdom in the pastoral calm of flocks, in the rich and rocking grain, in the cliff-built villages amid. savage snowy heights (pictures of rural quiet wardered by stupendous strength), and in the mountains covered with aromatic plants-those vast rock-citadels hung with banners streaming out sweet odours-saw in all this the quietness, the safety, and the wealth of that far-off latter day, when the soft-falling dew of peace, and the cloudless shining of Incarnate Love, should fill the compass of the reign of mercy and the reign of might.

Envy them not! The least in the kingdom of Christ hath a fuller light. The eyes of their age grew dim with watching for that sun which lit our childhood's morning. They made ready the foundations of Christ's kingdom by prophetic words; it is for you. to build it towards the topstone by memorial deeds.

The religious spirit of the past cannot be reproduced. You may disinter relics and worship them, but the manhood of each generation makes its own tools, and will not carve a truncheon from the exhumed bone of an ancestor. Men may come so to believe in ghosts that they shall cease to believe in God. There are spiritual ghoules in whose eyes the phosphorescence of the graveyard has more beauty than all the stars of heaven. How contemptible appear the attempts of Anglicanism to mimic with puny irresolute hands the insatiate self-torture of the mediæval devotees. How silly the endeavour to recall the soul of the past by stealing some

of its gestures. How sickening that sentimentalism which substitutes for the spiritual conflicts of many a noble though benighted nature, the lisping and languishing devotion, the morbid casuistries, the hysterical passion for darkness, which characterize our semiRomish pietism. This delusive adoration for the externals of the past is scarcely more wise than the superstition of the idolatrous Tahitians, who used to collect nails and eyebrows of their departed relatives, believing that while. they possessed these remains the spirits of the deceased would bless their fields and increase their store. The ritual of Rome attempts a similar feat of religious magic, and will in like manner conjure spirit into matter.

your

All

The maxim (very common in the present day), 'Be true to self and all is well,' requires very important qualification. depends on the kind of self to which you endeavour to be true. If in that self evil habitually predominates, the sooner it is changed, and a better substituted, the happier for you. Consistency with your past self is perdition; inconsistency the most complete is your salvation. No man can say on the moment, and without reference to the past, I will henceforth be true to myself, so that henceforth all my errors shall at least be those of sincerity. Our present is the offspring of the past. Our disregard of conscience, our hasty excesses, our insensible abuse of things permitted, the feebleness of our desire to be at all costs morally right in every action—all these defects, in proportion as they have characterized our bygone days, are warping the judgments of to-day. The change must be more thorough. We must seek another heart. We must be ready to revise any of our former judgments about right and wrong, and to supply those obliterations which carelessness has made in our inward statute-book from that perfect outer one which is given us in Revelation. But the more true we are to an internal does not point truly, the farther must we voyage from port.

compass which