One over

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and

his will by the pen of the evangelist tranquil on every other. and the harp of the prophet. He powering sentiment had subjected had been wrested by no common to itself pity and hatred, ambition deliverer from the grasp of no com- and fear. Death had lost its terrors, mon foe. He had been ransomed and pleasure its charms. They had by the sweat of no vulgar agony, their smiles and their tears, their by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. raptures and their sorrows, but not It was for him that the sun had been for the things of this world. darkened, that the dead had arisen, thusiasm had made them stoics, that all nature had shuddered at the cleared their minds from every vulsufferings of her expiring God! gar passion and prejudice, and Thus the Puritan was made up of raised them above the influence of two different men, the one all self- danger and of corruption. It someabasement, penitence, gratitude, times might lead them to pursue passion; the other proud, calm, in- unwise ends, but never to choose flexible, sagacious. In his devo- unwise means. They went through tional retirement, he prayed with the world, like Sir Artegale's iron convulsions, and groans, and tears. man Talus with his flail, crushing He was half maddened by glorious and trampling down oppressors, or terrible illusions. He heard the mingling with human beings, but lyres of angels, or the tempting having neither part nor lot in huwhispers of fiends. He caught a man infirmities; insensible to fagleam of the beatific vision, or tigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not awoke screaming from dreams of to be pierced by any weapon, not everlasting fire. Like Vane, he to be withstood by any barrier. thought himself intrusted with the Such we believe to have been the sceptre of the millennial year. Like character of the Puritans. We perFleetwood, he cried in the bitter-ceive the absurdity of their manness of his soul that God had hid ners; we dislike the sullen gloom of his face from him. But when he their domestic habits; we acknowtook his seat in the council, or girt ledge that the tone of their minds on his sword for war, these tem- was often injured, by straining after pestuous workings of the soul had things too high for mortal reach: left no perceptible trace behind and we know that, in spite of their them. People who saw nothing of hatred of popery, they too often fell the godly but their uncouth vi- into the worst vices of that bad sages, and heard nothing from them system, intolerance, and extravagant but their groans and their whining austerity,-that they had their anhymns, might laugh at them. But chorites and their crusades, their those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment, and an immutability of purpose, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject made them

Dunstans and their De Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body."

The writer closes the article referred to by an eulogy on the prose writings of Milton. The eloquence and pathos of the concluding paragraphs will commend themselves,

I was reclining, methought, wrapped in a delightful reverie, on a bank covered with pleasant flowers; above me was a smiling sky; the landscape which lay spread before me was varied and lovely, and there was an air of gaiety and peace on every thing around. The streams

sterling by the general consent of illustration, to impress upon the mankind, and which are visibly reader the necessity and solemnity stamped with the image and super- of the truth that "God is just." scription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are refreshing to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise were kissed by the breezes and to the earth, distinguished from the laughed in the sun; the cattle gamproductions of other soils, not only bolled over the meadows or reposed by their superior bloom and sweet- in the shade, and the human habiness, but by their miraculous efficacy tations seemed to be tenanted by a to invigorate and to heal. They cheerful and industrious population. are powerful not only to delight, but Suddenly there was thrown a darkto elevate and purify. Nor do we ness over the whole scene; every envy the man who can study either figure on which I had been gazing the life or the writings of the great grew more and more indistinct, and poet and patriot, without aspiring to at last faded altogether from my emulate, not indeed the sublime view. I looked up to the sky: the works with which his genius has en- sun became paler and paler, and riched our literature, but the zeal then, sinking amid clouds of a raven with which he laboured for the pub- blackness, disappeared; the moon lic good, the fortitude with which was then seen for a moment, but he looked down on temptations and she looked yellow and sickly, and dangers, the deadly hatred which soon was beheld no he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame."

A DREAM.

E. S.

more; the stars, too, peered out for an instant upon the earth, and then died out one by one; and at length there hung above me one vast, ebon vault, uncheered by any vestige of former beauty, unillumined by the feeblest glimmer of light. And while I trembled at the awful gloom in which I had found myself enveloped, a dull but fiery glare was flung over the landscape. I again looked

Si j'allois vous enseigner quelque erreur, je verrois tout mon auditoire se révolter contre moi: je vous prêche les vérités les plus importantes de la religion; que feront-elles? up timidly to the heavens; and there, BOSSUET. horror-stricken, I beheld traced in It is probable that most of our large and burning letters on the readers have read a dream by Jean sunless sky, the horrible words, Paul Richter, in which, by supposing "God is unjust! I started up the non-existence of a God, that and ran on with heedless rapidity. eccentric writer sublimely exhibits Onwards I impetuously rushed till the horrors of Atheism. We have I found myself amid a crowded city, endeavoured, by adopting in the and oh! how fearfully hideous did following vision a similar mode of the houses and the countenances of

netitig nirmurs of musa stail e vir freeam of less fr tiem 10 x of and wakening And then he hail sook win their wings of frezet ezultation, and he day of nature and as he woke the ices of the mourning was to hem a festivu tead pearet to vix more pale, and a rumen. Ihastet from his and wear a more loathsome hideseene of dreadful mirth in horror ousness. I rushed again into the and treputation, and I at length street and met a company of grave reached a church, the doors of men who were locking at each other which stood wide open. Lascended with silent anguish. At length one the steps and in the vestibule I met said: "God is unjust. We have, a priest with his countenance full of then, believed in Him for nought; despair and his robes soiled and we have breathed our prayers to the

wind; we have mortified the flesh, the flowers appeared already fading we have lodged our hopes in the and they were never to revive. skies, we have turned away from Another wore on his head a crown the fascinations of the world, we of gold and gems, but he cast it to have beheld in faith the Cross of the earth, trampled on it with his the Saviour and the glories of heaven feet, and cried, "God is unjust! -and all in vain! To whom shall He has forsaken his servants. The we go? We have left all for Christ, happiness of heaven has reached its and he has forsaken us. We have termination, his worshippers have no father but God, he has deserted been banished from their thrones, us, and we are orphans. To whom, and the sky is emptied of its melody then, shall we go?" Then, me- and its brightness. Better, far thought, there came up a company better, never to have known the of evil spirits, led on by one of an joys of eternity than to have tasted aspect cruel and malignant, yet them only to lose them thus-for most beautiful withal; and the ever!"-and he wept aloud. But leader of this fearful band said to while I stood contemplating these these righteous persons, "Come fallen splendours, and lamenting with us. We are faithful. We will their most unhappy fate, methought not desert you. Come with us.' one of the evil spirits who environed But the good men turned from me approached towards me with them, and passed on, mournfully menacing gestures, and seized me, murmuring as they went, "We of saying, "Come with us!" and, all men are most miserable."

And, then, suddenly the dark heavens divided, and there fell to the earth many radiant and winged forms whose floating garments were disordered, and whose faces were stamped with unutterable woe; and these, methought, were some of the late blessed inhabitants of heaven. They looked upwards, but thither there was no return; they looked around, and they saw only the hateful fiends who crowded about them to rejoice in their fall. O what sorrow sat on the beautiful countenances of these fallen celestials! Their wings fitted for such noble flights, and adapted to heavenly ministrations now hung listlessly at their sides, and their long and glossy ringlets were gathered in dishevelled masses on their foreheads. One of them still held in his hand a harp, but its unfinished thanksgiving, I thought, was to be awakened no more. On the brow of another hung a rose-wreath, alas!

struggling violently to escape, I awoke, and behold! it was a dream.

We would add two observations by way of moral to the above:

First, if the very supposition that the Deity can be unjust appear so terrible, how careful ought we to be lest we should at any time charge God foolishly; with what scrupulous anxiety ought we to avoid the very thought that whatever be our sufferings we are requited otherwise than as our iniquities deserve: if we be despisers of the gospel, how ought we to tremble lest we should receive the due and certain reward of contumacy; and if we be believers in Jesus how firm ought to be our confidence that He will never forsake the children of His love.

Secondly; we pray the reader to ask himself what would be his emotions if a declaration, like the one we have supposed to be written in the heavens, were actually to be made. Would he be inclined to exult that his sins would now escape punish