of God, the principle of spiritual and immortal life implanted in the soul, is recognized by the sincere followers of the Lamb as the transcendent point of mutual attraction in the midst of minor differences.'

Foster, pleading, in 1834, for the dissolution of the Established Church as a State institution, says of the Dissenters, among whom the Methodists are the most aggressive:

In a survey of the country there are brought in our view several thousand places of worship, raised at their expense, many of them large, many of them smaller ones under the process, at any given time, of being enlarged, with the addition of many new ones every year. And I believe a majority of them are attended by congregations which may be described as numerous in proportion to their dimensions and the population of the neighborhood. So that if the dissenters be somewhat too sanguine in assuming that their number would already be found, on a census of the whole country, fully equal to the attendants of the churches of the establishment (in most of the great towns they far exceed), there is every probability that their rapid augmentation will very soon bring them to an equality.'

In the National Church, however, there were now no Wycliffes, no Latimers, no Taylors, no Butlers, whom plenitude of Divine Presence had made possible in ages of genius and piety. The curates were ill paid, the prelates overpaid. The abuse was converting bishops into surpliced merchants. Said Brougham

in the House of Commons:

How will the reverend bishops of the other House be able to express their due abhorrence of the crime of perjury, who solemnly declare in the presence of God, that when they are called upon to accept a living, perhaps of four thousand pounds a year, at that very instant they are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and administration thereof, and for no other reason whatever?'

The old structures were kept in repair, but the spirit that once dwelt in them had gone out to animate other activities. The Establishment was the church, not of the poor, but of the gentry, the well-bred, whose worship was a quotation and a ceremonial. Hence to Sidney Smith Methodism was foolishness. Its preachers gained popularity by arts which the regular clergy were 'too dignified' to employ. Yet the convulsionary sect was producing a moral revolution; an upsetting of the physical machine, some would call it; a mad fermentation, he would say:

That it has rapidly increased within these few years, we have no manner of doubt; and we confess we cannot see what is likely to impede its progress. The party which it has formed in the Legislature; and the artful neutrality with which they give respectability to their small number,- the talents of some of this party, and the unimpeached excellence of their characters, all make it probable that fanaticism will increase rather than diminish. The Methodists have made an alarming inroad into the Church, and they are attacking the army and navy. The principality of Wales, and the East India Company, they have already acquired. All mines and subterraneous places belong to them; they creep into hospitals and small schools, and so work their way upwards. We most sincerely deprecate such an event; but it will excite in us no manner of sur

prise if a period arrives when the churches of the sober and orthodox part of the English clergy are completely deserted by the middling and lower classes of the community.'

The morning that spread upon the mountains was shedding its glory upon the plains.

The religious element, with whose European antecedents we may here assume a general acquaintance, was dominant in the initial idea and impulse of the colonies; it was mighty and pervasive through the whole colonial period; and among the forces which have entered into American development, it must be regarded as the first in time, the steadiest in mode, and the most potent in energy:

'It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States, religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation, and all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force. To this powerful reason, another of no less intensity may be added; in America, religion has, as it were, laid down its own limits. Religious institutions have remained wholly distinct from political institutions, so that former laws have been easily changed, while former belief has remained unshaken. Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America; and it should be particularly remarked that its sway is not only that of a philosophical doctrine, which has been adopted upon inquiry, but of a religion, which is believed without discussion. In the United States, Christian sects are infinitely diversified and perpetually modified; but Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.'

Religion, in this country, is by common consent a distinct sphere. Nowhere is it invested with fewer forms, figures, and observances. By a judicious respect for democratic tendencies, moreover, it has sustained an advantageous struggle with that spirit of individualism which elsewhere, at certain epochs, has proved to be a most dangerous antagonist. It may here be a confirmed habit, or there a tender memory; but it is not an institution—a something planted and fixed, which would thwart or stay the spiritual laws of human nature.

Poetry. With the sudden concourse of extraordinary events, the human mind flowered anew. Amidst the visible progress and the general ennobling of the public was manifested the moving sentiment of the age, at once generous and rebellious,-discontent with the present, aspiration for the future. We have seen it in the fervor and misery of Burns, in the overcharged soul of Cowper; we may see it in the passionate unrestraint of the Byronic school; in the dissenting principles, in the humanitarian dreams, in the restless explorations, of the school of Wordsworth. The heart, in weariness of the precise art that fettered it,

clamored for pulsation and utterance. Already the nation had returned to the fresh wild strains of its youth, and Percy's Reliques had fed the enthusiasm which it accompanied and indicated. Other omens of the change were Warton's Anglo-Saxon Poetry, and the imitations or forgeries of Macpherson and Chatterton, all which materially strengthened the new reviving love for the romantic past. This was the historical impulse, which reproduced on the literary stage at this moment the conceptions and manners of the Middle Age, the ideals of the Renaissance, and the vanished civilizations of the East. A second impulsethe philosophical was communicated over the whole of Europe from Germany, whose literature from this date onward, bold, speculative, profound, has been gaining ground in both England and America, and has become the most vigorous of European forces. Of the political excitement which carried discussion and commotion everywhere; of the social circumstances which refined experience, enfranchised the intellect, and stimulated hope, we have spoken. In this period of converging tendencies, conservative and revolutionary, the useful, the beautiful, and the worthless struggled together for survival and preeminence. The era does not reach the elevation of the Elizabethan, but its productions are more varied, and only less magnificent. Poetry-narrative, dramatic, lyric, didactic is clearly its distinguishing feature. Among the minor poets who rank as its renovators, is Crabbe (1754-1832), a gloomy painter of every-day life, uniting great power of delineation to great fondness for nature, but lacking ideality, and very unequal; often exciting admiration, too frequently provoking derision. His Tales of the Hall has a more regular plan and a more equable strain than any of his other works. Two brothers, meeting late in life at the hall of their native village, relate to each other passages of their past experiAfter many years, the elder discovers, as he says, the lost object of his idolatry living in infamy:

ence.

"Will you not ask, how I beheld that face,
Or read that mind, and read it in that place?
I have tried, Richard, ofttimes, and in vain,
To trace my thoughts, and to review their train-
If train there were that meadow, grove, and stile,
The fright, the escape, her sweetness, and her smile;
Years since elapsed, and hope, from year to year,
To find her free-and then to find her here!
But is it she?-O! yes; the rose is dead,

All beauty, fragrance, freshness, glory, fled;
But yet 'tis she-the same and not the same -
Who to my bower a heavenly being came;
Who waked my soul's first thought of real bliss,

Whom long I sought, and now I find her- this.'

She offers her hand, sees his troubled look, bids him discard it, then, while he stands gazing and perplexed, sings:

'My Damon was the first to wake
The gentle flame that cannot die:
My Damon is the last to take
The faithful bosom's softest sigh:
The life between is nothing worth,
O cast it from thy thought away;
Think of the day that gave it birth,
And this its sweet returning day.

Buried be all that has been done,
Or say that nought is done amiss;
For who the dangerous path can shun
In such bewildering world as this?
But love can every fault forgive,
Or with a tender look reprove;
And now let nought in memory live,
But that we meet, and that we love.'

He is moved to pity:

'Softened, I said, "Be mine the hand and heart,
If with your world you will consent to part."
She would, she tried. Alas! she did not know
How deeply-rooted evil habits grow.'

In vain; the fateful presence is there, and the resisting soul yields, sinks, then wastes to the end:

There came at length request

That I would see a wretch with grief oppressed,

By guilt affrighted,- and I went to trace
Once more the vice-worn features of that face,
That sin-wrecked being! and I saw her laid

Where never worldly joy a visit paid:

That world receding fast! the world to come
Concealed in terror, ignorance, and gloom;
Sin, sorrow, and neglect; with not a spark
Of vital hope,- all horrible and dark.

It frightened me! I thought,- and shall not I
Thus feel? thus fear? this danger can I fly?
Do I so wisely live that I can calmly die?'

Living in two eras, he wrote in two styles; dealing in the first rather with the surface, in the second more with the heart, of things. But in general he was too classical, and has been nicknamed 'Pope in worsted stockings.' Here, in a glimpse of the unpromising scene of his nativity, is a specimen of his rough energy of description:

'Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er
Lends the light turf that warms the neighboring poor;
From thence a length of burning sand appears,
Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears;

Rank weeds that every art and care defy,
Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye:
There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,
And to the ragged infant threaten war;
There poppies nodding mock the hope of toil;
There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil;
Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf

The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf;

O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,
And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade;
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,

And a sad splendor vainly shines around.'

Another who enters the new school without abandoning his half classical but noble style, is Campbell (1777-1844), a Highlander in blood and nature, dreamy and meditative, of delicate taste and pure sentiment, calm, uniform, and mellifluous in the general tone of his verse. At eleven he begins to compose, and at twenty-one, in a dusky lodging of Edinburgh, writes the Pleasures of Hope, writes much of it several times over, writes it in sections, then arranges them in proper order; writes the opening last, revises it again and again, because he appreciates the importance of a good beginning, then, when it bears no resemblance to the original draught, captivates us with this exquisite picture:

'At summer eve, when Heaven's ethereal bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hill below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Thus, with delight, we linger to survey

The promised joys of life's unmeasured way,

Thus, from afar, each dim-discovered scene

More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,

And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.'

Hardly less felicitous are the following lines:

'Till Hymen brought his love-delighted hour,
There dwelt no joy in Eden's rosy bower!
In vain the viewless seraph lingering there,
At starry midnight charm'd the silent air;
In vain the wild-bird caroll'd on the steep,
To hail the sun, slow wheeling from the deep;