And brighter grew, as nearer death approached:
As I have seen the gentle little flower

Look fairest in the silver beam, which fell
Reflected from the thunder cloud that soon

Came down, and o'er the desert scattered far
And wide its loveliness. She made a sign

To bring her babe-'twas brought, and by her placed.
She looked upon its face, that neither smiled

Nor wept, nor knew who gazed upon't, and laid
Her hand upon its little breast, and sought
For it, with look that seemed to penetrate
The heavens-unutterable blessings-such
As God to dying parents only granted,

For infants left behind them in the world.

"God keep my child," we heard her say, and heard
No more the Angel of the Covenant

Was come, and faithful to his promise stood

Prepared to walk with her thro' death's dark vale.
And now her eyes grew bright, and brighter still,
Too bright for ours to look upon, suffused
With many tears, and closed without a cloud.
They set as sets the morning star, which goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,

But melts away into the light of heaven.”—pp, 233–236.

The comparison at the close of the foregoing extract is inimitably beautiful.

The symptoms of the earth's approaching dissolution are powerfully pourtrayed.

"Meantime the earth gave symptoms of her end:

And all the scenery above proclaimed,

That the great last catastrophe was near.

The sun at rising staggered and fell back,

As one too early up, after a night

Of late debauch; then rose, and shone again,

Brighter than wont; and sickened again, and paused
In zenith attitude, as one fatigued;

And shed a feeble twilight ray at noon,

Rousing the wolf before his time to chace

The shepherd and his sheep, that sought for light,

And darkness found, astonished, terrified ;

Then out of course rolled furious down the west,
As chariot reined by awkward charioteer,

And waiting at the gate, he on the earth

Gazed, as he thought he ne'er might see't again.

The bow of mercy, heretofore so fair,
Ribbed with the native hues of heavenly love,
Disastrous colours showed, unseen till now;

Changing upon the watery gulph, from pale

To fiery red, and back again to pale;

And o'er it hovered wings of wrath. The moon,

Swaggered in midst of heaven, grew black, and dark,
Unclouded, uneclipsed. The stars fell down;
Tumbling from off their towers like drunken men ;
Or seemed to fall-and glimmered now; and now
Sprang out in sudden blaze; and dimmed again;
As lamp of foolish virgin lacking oil.

The heavens this moment looked serene; the next
Glowed like an oven with God's displeasure hot.

"Nor less below was intimation given,

Of some disaster great and ultimate.

The tree that bloomed, or hung with clustering fruit,
Untouched by visible calamity

Of frost or tempest, died and came again :

The flower, and herb, fell down as sick; then rose
And fell again the fowls of every hue,

Crowding together sailed on weary wing,

And hovering, oft they seemed about to light;
Then soared, as if they thought the earth unsafe :
The cattle looked with meaning face on man:

Dogs howled, and seemed to see more than their masters:
And there were sights that none had seen before;
And hollow, strange, unprecedented sounds:

And earnest whispering ran along the hills

At dead of night; and long, deep, endless sighs,
Came from the dreary vale; and from the waste
Came horrid shrieks, and fierce unearthly groans,
The wail of evil spirits, that now felt
The hour of utter vengeance near at hand,
The winds from every quarter blew at once,
With desperate violence, and whirling, took
The traveller up, and threw him down again,
At distance from his path, confounded, pale.

And shapes, strange shapes! in winding sheets were seen,
Gliding thro' night, and singing funeral songs,

And imitating sad sepulchral rites:

And voices talked among the clouds; and still

The words that men could catch, were spoken of them,

And seemed to be the words of wonder great,

And expectation of some vast event.

Earth shook, and swam, and reeled, and opened her jaws,

By earthquake tossed, and tumbled to and fro :

And louder than the ear of man had heard,

The thunder bellowed, and the ocean groaned."-Vol. II. pp. 27-30.

We think the following address to the ocean one of the finest passages not only in the poem but in English poetry.

"Great Ocean too, that morning, thou, the call

Of restitution heardst, and reverently

To the last trumpet's voice in silence listened!
Great Ocean! strongest of creation's sons!
Unconquerable, unreposed, untried;

That rolled the wild, profound, eternal bass,
In Nature's anthem, and made music, such
As pleased the ear of God. Original,
Unmarred, unfaded work of Deity;

And unburlesqued by mortal's puny skill.
From age to age enduring and unchanged:
Majestical, inimitable, vast,

Loud uttering satire day and night on each
Succeeding race, and little pompous work
Of man. Unfallen, religious, holy sea!

Thou bowedst thy glorious head to none, fearedst none,
Hearest none, to none didst honour, but to God

Thy maker-only worthy to receive

Thy great obeisance. Undiscovered sea!
Into thy dark, unknown, mysterious caves,
And secret haunts, unfathomably deep
Beneath all visible retired, none went,
And came again, to tell the wonders there.
Tremendous sea! what time thou lifted up

Thy waves on high, and with thy winds and storms
Strange pastime took, and shook thy mighty sides
Indignantly-the pride of navies fell;

Beyond the arm of help, unheard, unseen,

Sunk friend and foe, with all their wealth and war ;
And on thy shores, men of a thousand tribes,
Polite and barbarous, trembling stood, amazed,
Confounded, terrified, and though vast thoughts
Of ruin, boundlessness, omnipotence,

Infinitude, eternity: and thought

And wondered still, and grasped, and grasped, and grasped Again-beyond her reach exerting all

The soul to take thy great idea in,

To comprehend incomprehensible;

And wondered more, and felt their littleness.

Self-purifying, unpolluted sea!

Lover unchangeable! thy faithful breast
For ever heaving to the lovely moon,
That like a shy and holy virgin, robed

In saintly white, walked nightly in the heavens,
And to thy everlasting serenade

Gave gracious audience; nor was wooed in vain.
That morning, thou, that slumbered not before,
Nor slept, great Ocean! laid thy waves to rest,
And hushed thy mighty minstrelsy. No breath
Thy deep composure stirred, no fin, nor oar;
Like beauty newly dead, so calm, so still,
So lovely, thou, beneath the light that fell
From angel-chariots sentineled on high,

Reposed, and listened, and saw thy living change,

Thy dead arise.-Vol. II. pp. 82-85.

We close our selection with the following account of the silence of the universe which immediately preceded the pronouncing of the last judgment.

"This done, the Omnipotent, Omniscient Judge,

Rose infinite, the sentence to pronounce ;

The sentence of eternal wo or bliss!

All glory heretofore seen or conceived;
All majesty, annihilated, dropped

That moment, from remembrance, and was lost;
And silence, deepest hitherto esteemed,
Seemed noisy to the stillness of this hour.
Comparisons I seek not; nor should I find,
If sought that silence, which all being held,
When God's Almighty Son, from off the walls
Of heaven the rebel angels threw, accursed,
So still, that all creation heard their fall
Distinctly, in the lake of burning fire,
Was now forgotten, and every silence else.
All being rational, created then,

Around the judgment seat, intensely listened;
No creature breathed: man, angel, devil stood,
And listened; the sphere stood still, and every star
Stood still and listened; and every particle

Remotest in the womb of matter stood,

Bending to hear, devotional and still.-- Vol. II. 246-7.

We cannot close this article without giving our Readers some information, however limited it may be, concerning the author of this splendid and truly Christian poem: Ayrshire, the country of Robert Burns, gave him birth; he was a minister of the seceders from the Church of Scotland. In his 25th year, he conceived the idea of writing a poem in which the Gospel plan of redemption should be unfolded, and his Lord and Saviour exalted-and he chose for his subject the Resurrection: but, as he proceeded in his subject, his matter encreased, his views enlarged-and, amidst the doubts and fears, the joys and depression that are so peculiar to the workings of a poet's mind, he at last fixed on and matured his plan, and gave to the world his Course of Time. In eighteen months from his first conception of it, the work was finished as the public now have it. But the mighty effort was too much, it overpowered the poet's constitution, and in September 1827, he died at Southbury, on his way to France, of a pulmonary consumption. And who will doubt after reading this glorious memorial he has left of fervid and exalted piety, that he has finished "his course" with joy.

An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. By Thomas H. Horne, A.M. Sixth Edition. London, Cadell, 1828. 4 vols.

The laborious and indefatigable Author of the above well known work, which we do not hesitate to pronounce one of the most useful and indispensable to the clergyman and the student that the whole range of English theological literature contains, has just brought out a SIXTH edition, with such additions and improvements as cannot but increase very materially the strong claims to public patronage which it has hitherto most eminently possessed. By enlarging the pages, and abridging such parts as admitted condensation, as well as by transferring to the Appendix certain articles that in former editions had formed part of the body of the work, the Author has been enabled to introduce a considerable quantity of new and important matter, without much enlarging its size, or at all increasing its price; so that this work is not only in itself a library of Biblical information, admirably arranged and well digested, but is decidedly the cheapest book ever offered to the public.

It is not our intention, however, to attempt any thing in the shape of a critique upon a work so extensively circulated, and whose merits have been so well appreciated; we shall content ourselves with briefly noticing the principal improvements which Mr. Horne has introduced into this edition. In the first volume we do not observe any very important alteration from the preceding edition; the second volume has undergone a considerable change,-it is divided into two parts, the second of which, consisting of upwards of 300 pages, is occupied altogether by a copious Bibliographical Catalogue of the principal editions of the Scriptures, Commentators, Philologers, and others who have written on the text, history, and antiquity of the Bible. The first part comprehends the two parts into which, in the former editions, this volume was divided. Materials which have become accessible since the preceding edition, by the appearance of new works, both on the Continent and in England, have been employed by Mr. Horne in the introduction of considerable alterations and additions, which our limits forbid us to particularize; very material and important improvements have been made in the arrangement of the various chapters and appendixes of this volume. We pass on to the third volume, on Scripture Geography and Antiquities, in which Mr. Horne has availed himself of the researches of the best modern travellers, and other late publications connected with the geography and antiquities of Palestine, to introduce numerous additions and minor alterations. Among the appendixes also, in addition to those that appeared in the former edition, he has very considerably enlarged the Biographical, Historical, and Geographical Index of the principal persons, nations, countries and places mentioned in the Scriptures; this Index now comprises the substance of the geographical and historical information contained in many expensive works written expressly on those subjects, together with what is to be found incidentally in