A sharer in thy fierce and far delight,— A portion of the tempest and of thee! How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again 't is black,-and now, the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth."

No where perhaps, in all literature, is the deep sympathy of the human heart with the beauty and sublimity of nature so vividly expressed as in this most memorable description.

Finally, I come to speak on that which is the main subject of this lecture, the immediate moral influence of poetry.

Poetry is the grand expositor of the moral and religious nature of man. All true poets are to a greater or less extent preachers of righteousness, and often when they least intend it. They utter the true voices of universal humanity. They give utterance in clearest and most definite expression to those moral convictions, which are are God's primitive law written upon the heart. The soul of every man that is born into the world has a feeling of the nobleness and the glory of virtue. It has the consciousness that it was made for virtue. It has as deep a sense of the

meanness and the degradation of vice. These sentiments no personal misconduct can ever change. No man despises and abhors the sinner so much as he does himself. And no man has a heartier admiration for virtue than the habitual transgressor. It follows then, that the moral sentiments of good and bad men are the same. It follows likewise, that no flower of spring, no tint of the evening sky, can appear more beautiful to the eye, than moral loveliness and purity do to the mind. Mountain or ocean is not more sublime than incorruptible integrity, unconquerable fidelity, heroic courage in defence of truth and honor, than that self sacrificing love that is stronger than death. All these qualities are in the highest degree poetic, and the poet, if he speak at all, must sing their praise. Whilst he is setting them forth in that exalted eloquence in which it is his prerogative to speak, he is stimulated in his task by the consciousness that he is uttering the sentiments of all mankind, and will meet a response in every human heart.

But vice is essentially unpoetic. To the higher nature of man, the moral and intellectual, where poetry is born, vice is loath

some and abominable. To name it even is accompanied by a secret shame, which damps and extinguishes all poetic ardor. As Balaam could prophesy only when he would bless the people of God, and found the oracle dumb within him when he would curse them, so the poet is visited by visions of beauty and splendor only when he would uphold the cause of truth and goodness. Vice is moral deformity, and the more it is exhibited the more odious it appears. One of the strongest proofs of the identity and universality of the moral sense is, that it pervades the literature, and particularly the poetry of all nations, and is nearly the same in all. The basis of the Iliad is moral and religious. It inculcates the doctrine of a Providence, of a Witness, and Rewarder of men. Homer collects the armies of Greece before the walls of Troy to avenge an atrocious crime; and the reader when he sees that ancient city uprooted from its foundations, and its inhabitants scattered into slavery, cannot avoid receiving the great moral lesson which, it is intended to teach, the endless woes which may be occasioned by one act of moral misconduct. The Greek tragedians considered their plays rather as

solemn moral lectures, than as the means of mere public amusement.

Indeed, what was the whole fabric of heathen religion but the creation of the imagination, stimulated and guided by the moral sense? The chains and darkness of their Tartarian regions, the groans and tortures of that dread abode, were nothing other than the images excited in the imagination by the horrors of a guilty conscience. And Tantalus with his quenchless thirst, and Prometheus bound to the rock, while the vulture for ever gnawed his side, were merely the expression of the universal experience, that sin ever draws after it a long and severe retribution. The Elysian fields, where eternal sunshine reigned, where the flowers for ever bloomed, and spring for ever smiled, were nothing more than the symbols of that serenity and hope, which ever pervade the soul, when it has proved faithful to duty,

It has been complained of Shakspeare, that with his vast genius, he never attempted to make the world any better. It may be answered, that he has done more good than if such a design had been apparent. As it is, his testimony is unsuspected. He stands up

before the world as a disinterested and impartial witness. He looked deeper into the human soul than any other uninspired mind, and when he tells us what he finds there, we are more inclined to believe him than if we knew he made up his report for some ulterior purpose. Our disposition to believe him is the stronger, as we find there is almost an exact coincidence between poetic and Divine inspiration.

I know nothing out of the Sacred Scriptures, which makes a deeper moral impression than the play of Macbeth, nothing which represents more strongly and more truly the spiritual might of sin to destroy the soul. Macbeth and his lady, two strong and well balanced minds, are introduced to us, in the possession of wealth, rank and mutual love, surrounded with all the pleasures of refinement, added to the quiet satisfactions of a rural life. The very atmosphere about their castle is fragrant, and breathes of peace and contentment. On one sad night the devil of ambition steals into this paradise, and all is turned to misery and desolation. Macbeth, against the strugglings of his better nature, urged on by the fierce, indomitable, unscru