ing, first to the lively pipe his hand addressed; but soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, whose sweet, entrancing voice he loved the best. They would have thought, who heard the strain, they saw, in Tempe's vale, her native maids, amid the festal-sounding shades to some unwearied minstrel dancing: while, as his flying fingers kiss'd the strings, Love framed, with Mirth, a gay, fantastic round;-loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound;—and he, amidst his frolic play, as if he would the charming air repay, shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

XXI. SATAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.-Milton.

O THOU! that, with surpassing glory crowned, look'st from thy sole dominion, like the god of this new world !-at whose sight all the stars hide their diminished heads!-to thee I call, but with no friendly voice, and add thy name, O Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams, that bring to my remembrance from what state I fell; how glorious once-above thy spheretill pride, and worse, ambition, threw me down, warring in heaven against heaven's matchless King! Ah! wherefore? He deserved no such return from me, whom He created what I was in that bright eminence; and with His good upbraided none; nor was His service hard. What could be less than to afford Him praise, (the easiest recompense!) and pay Him thanks, how due! Yet, all His good proved ill in me, and wrought but malice! lifted up so high, I 'sdained subjection, and thought one step higher would set me highest, and in a moment quit the debt immense of endless gratitude, so burdensome- -still paying, still to owe!

Forgetful what from Him I still received; and understood not that a grateful mind by owing owes not, but still pays; at once indebted and discharged;-what burden then? Oh! had His powerful destiny ordained me some inferior angel, I had stood then happy; no unbounded hope had raised ambition! Yet, why not? some other power as great, might have aspired; and me, though mean, drawn to his part: but other powers as great fell not, but stand unshaken; from within or from without, to all temptations armed. Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand? Thou hadst. Whom hast thou then, or what, to accuse-but Heaven's free love, dealt equally to all? Be then His love accursed! since, love or hate, (to me alike,) it deals eternal woe! Nay, cursed be thou! since, against His thy will chose freely, what it now so justly rues.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly infinite wrath, and `nfinite despair? Which way I fly is hell! myself am hell! nd, in the lowest deep, a lower deep, still threatening to devour me, opens wide,-to which the hell I suffer seems a heaven! Oh, then, at last relent! Is there no place left for repentance? none for pardon left? none left-but by submission!-and that word disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame among the spirits beneath; whom I seduced with other promises, and other vaunts, than to submit, boasting I could subdue the Omnipotent! Ah me! they little know how dearly I abide that boast so vain; under what torments inwardly I groan, while they adore me on the throne of hell. With diadem and sceptre high advanced, the lower still I fallonly supreme in misery! Such joy ambition finds!

But say I could repent, and could obtain, by act of grace, my former state; how soon would height recal high thoughts! how soon unsay what feigned submission swore! Ease would recant vows made in pain, as violent and void;-for never can true reconcilement grow, where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep;—which would but lead me to a worse relapse and heavier fall: so should I purchase dear short intermission-bought with double smart! This knows my Punisher, therefore as far from granting, He--as I from begging, peace! All hope excluded thus, behold,-instead of us, outcast! exiled! -his new delight, Mankind, created, and for him this world. So, farewell hope! and, with hope, farewell fear! Farewell remorse! all good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good! by thee, at least divided empire with heaven's King I hold; by thee, and more than half perhaps, will reign-as man ere long, and this new world, shall know!

XXII. ON THE BEING OF A GOD.-Dr. Young.

RETIRE; the world shut out;-thy thoughts call home! Imagination's airy wing repress; lock up thy senses-let no passion stir-wake all to Reason, let her reign alone: then, in thy soul's deep silence, and the depth of Nature's silence, midnight, thus inquire, as I have done, and shall inquire no more. In Nature's channel, thus the questions run.

What am I? and from whence?—I nothing know, but that I am; and, since I am, conclude something eternal. Had there e'er been nought, nought still had been: eternal there must be. But what eternal?-Why not human race; and Adam's ancestors without an end? That's hard to be con

ceived; since every link of that long-chained succession is so frail: can every part depend, and not the whole? Yet, grant it true, new difficulties rise: I'm still quite out at sea, nor see the shore. Whence earth, and these bright orbs?-eternal too?-Grant matter was eternal; still these orbs would want some other father. Much design is seen in all their motions, all their makes. Design implies intelligence and art, that can't be from themselves-or man:-that art man scarce can comprehend, could man bestow? And nothing greater, yet allowed, than man. Who, motion, foreign to the smallest grain, shot through vast masses of enormous weight? Who bade brute matter's restive lump assume such various forms, and gave it wings to fly? Has matter innate motion? then, each atom, asserting its indisputable right to dance, would form a universe of dust. Has matter none? then, whence these glorious forms and boundless flights, from shapeless and reposed? Has matter more than motion? Has it thought, judgment, and genius? Is it deeply learn'd in mathematics? Has it framed such laws, which, but to guess, a Newton made immortal? If so, how each sage atom laughs at me, who think a clod inferior to a man! If art, to form,—and counsel, to conduct, and that with greater far than human skill.— resides not in each block; a Godhead reigns. And, if a God there is, that God how great!

XXIII.-A SNOW-STORM-THE MISERIES OF LIFE.-Thomson.

As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce all winter drives along the darkened air, in his own loose-revolving fields the Swain disastered stands; sees other hills ascend, of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes of horrid prospect shag the trackless plain; nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid beneath the formless wild: but wanders on from hill to dale, still more and more astray; impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, stung with the thoughts of home:-the thoughts of home rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth in many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul! What black despair, what horror, fill his heart! when,-for the dusky spot, which fancy feigned his tufted cottage, rising through the snow,-he meets the roughness of the middle waste, far from the track and blest abode of man: while, round him, night resistless closes fast; and every tempest. howling o'er his head, renders the savage wilderness more wild.

Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, of covered pits

unfathomably deep-a dire descent, beyond the power of frost! of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, smoothed up with snow; and what is land unknown, what water; of the still unfrozen spring, in the loose marsh or solitary lake, where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift, thinking o'er all the bitterness of death, mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots through the wrung bosom of the dying man-his wife, his children, and his friends, unseen!

In vain for him the officious wife prepares the fire fair'blazing, and the vestment warm; in vain his little children, peeping out into the mingled storm, demand their sire with tears of artless innocence. Alas! nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, nor friends, nor sacred home! On every nerve the deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense; and, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse, stretched out and bleaching in the northern blast.

How

Ah! little think the gay licentious proud, whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround; they who, their thoughtless hours, in giddy mirth, and wanton, often cruel riot, waste; ah! little think they, while they dance along, how many feel, this very moment, death, and all the sad variety of pain! How many sink in the devouring flood, or more devouring flame! How many bleed, by shameful variance 'twixt man and man! How many pine in want, and dungeon-glooms, shut from the common air, and common use of their own limbs! How many drink the cup of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread of misery! Sore pierced by wintry winds, how many shrink into the sordid hut of cheerless poverty! many shake with all the fiercer tortures of the mind-unbounded passion, madness, guilt, remorse! How many, racked with honest passions, droop in deep-retired distress! How many stand around the death-bed of their dearest friends, and point the parting anguish! Thought fond man of these, and all the thousand nameless ills, that one incessant struggle render life—one scene of toil, of suffering, and of fate; Vice, in his high career, would stand appalled, and heedless, rambling Impulse, learn to think: the conscious heart of Charity would warm, and her wide wish Benevolence dilate; the social tear would rise, the social sigh; and, into clear perfection, gradual bliss, refining still, the social passions work.

XXIV. THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL.-Pope.

VITAL spark of heavenly flame, quit, oh, quit this mortal frame !-trembling, hoping, lingering, flying; oh, the pain, the bliss of dying! Cease, fond nature! cease thy strife, and let me languish into life!Hark, they whisper! Angels say, "Sister spirit, come away!" What is this absorbs me quite, steals my senses, shuts my sight, drowns my spirit, draws my breath? Tell me, my soul-can this be death? The world recedes !-it disappears! heaven opens on my eyes!-my ears with sounds seraphic ring! Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?

XXV. THE FLIGHT OF IMAGINATION.-Akenside.

THE high-born soul disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth and this diurnal scene, she springs aloft through fields of air; pursues the flying storm; rides on the volleyed lightning through the heavens; or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast, sweeps the long tract of day. Then high she soars the blue profound, and, hovering round the sun, beholds him pouring the redundant stream of light; beholds his unrelenting sway bend the reluctant planets, to absolve the fated rounds of Time. Thence far effused, she darts her swiftness up the long career of devious comets; through its burning signs, exulting, measures the perennial wheel of nature, and looks back on all the stars,whose blended light, as with a milky zone, invests the orient. Now, amazed, she views the empyreal waste, where happy spirits hold, beyond this concave heaven, their calm abode; and fields of radiance, whose unfading light has travelled the profound six thousand years, nor yet arrives in sight of mortal things. Even on the barriers of the world, untired, she meditates the eternal depth below; till, half recoiling, down the headlong steep she plunges: soon o'erwhelmed, and swallowed up, in that immense of being. There her hopes rest, at the fated goal. For, from the birth of mortal man, the Sovereign Maker said, that not in humble or in brief delight, not in the fading echoes of renown, Power's purple robes, or Pleasure's flowery lap, the soul should find enjoyment; but from these turning disdainful to an equal good, through all the ascent of things enlarge her view-till every bound at length should disappear, and infinite perfection close the scene.