And Sol is high, and holds triumphant reign
Over the breezeless, noiseless earth. And yet
'Tis sweeter far, when fresh'ning breezes fly
Over the earth, to be abroad, and see
The sounding forest heave its million sprays
In the commotion; and to mark the grass
O'er all the landscape roll its verd'rous seas,
Now in broad billows stooping to the sod,

Now sweeping up elastic to the beam.' pp. 50-52.

1

We must make room for one more extract: it occurs towards the close of the tour.

⚫ Amid this region of enchantment stands
A pile stupendous, rising from the flood-
Abruptly; and though nature round its base
Has Aung her leafage, yet its sides are bare,
And verdureless, and shiver'd. On its top
A shape fantastic, wild, uncouth, appears,
Like some deserted wind worn turret which
Has borne the storms of ages! He who skims
The stream below looks up with reverence,
And quickly dips his oar, and hastens by
The frowning pinnacle; for Time has been
Most busy here, and has bestrewn the ground
With massive fragments. Round the hoary wreck
The hawk is sailing now: the tyrant loves
To build his nest where desolation holds
Her lonely reign; he seeks the crag, the rock,
The inaccessible and dreary height,

And there unscar'd, unsought, the prowler feeds
With bloodiest plunder his insatiate brood.

And well, bold rock, has Nature plac'd thee here,
Thus rugged, blasted, frowning, verdureless!
More lovely seem the groves with thee so near,
More fair, more fresh; thou rushest on the view
With front so wild and withering, that we turn
With eager eye to look on them,-array'd
In living, youthful beauty. But, farewell,
Dread chronicle of centuries! we haste
To moor our skiff, awhile, where on the ear
Delighted, falls the music of the WEIR.

And hark upon the eddying breeze of Eve
The rush sonorous. Now sweep we round
The point of that green island, there, disclos'd
At length, in graceful curve the river pours,
From bank to bank the liquid volumes down.

• There are no sweeter sounds on Earth than those

Of gently falling waters; but when loud
As thunder, from some height terrific breaks

The foaming torrent, leaping into gulfs

Profound and horrible, the offended ear
Listens dismay'd. The astonished eye surveys
The headlong cataract, plung'd far below
Upon the groaning rock; it views the whirls,
The foaming currents, wave on wave commix'd
In furious endless conflict, and declines
The appalling spectacle. Not thus descends
The gentle Tamar, Leading on his flood,
Swell'd by auxiliar streams, he strays awhile
Amid the lawns of Werrington, and laves
Thy ancient walls, Launceston. Thence, in deep
And silent course, he seeks thy leaf-clad bridge,
Romantic Greystone, murm'ring gently through
Thy ivied arches. With the Ocean tide,
Seeking proud union then, the tranquil flood
Rolls on, 'till smoothly, musically, leaps
The bright, descending river o'er the Wier,

'Tis o'er, the day declines, with sober step
Pale Evening comes; and every eye that saw
The cheerful morn, and glisten'd at the sight,
Looks westward, now, where sits the God of Day
Upon his burning throne; the glowing clouds.
Encircling him with hues no pencil dares
To emulate. In vain the floating pomp-
The golden blaze-the emerald tints-the seas
Of sapphire, and the islets blest that sail
The ethereal ocean; pensively we gaze
On that which should divinest pleasure yield;
And fain would Friendship, like the chief of old,
Arrest the course of yon departing Sun:
But, ah! in characters as true as grand
And beautiful, those evanescent streaks

Which now he scatters o'er the burning heav'n,
Foretell the rapid close of day! We seek

Reluctantly our bark, too soon to lose

Woods, rocks, and verdant hills, and smiling lawns,

In the deep shades of the relentless night." pp. 85–89.

If our readers have not long ere this found out, that the Banks of the Tamar is a poem worthy of the beautiful stream it celebrates, we fear that no epithets we might employ to cha racterize it, would instruct them. We are glad to notice a list of subscribers which testifies that the Author is not wholly without honour in his own country, to which he certainly does honour; such a man deserves, however, a better fate. The passages we have extracted, will bear a comparison with the best descriptive poetry in the language, and the whole poem is extremely pleasing. We consider both volumes we shall not attempt to settle the comparative merits of the Dove and the VOL. XIX. 2 N

Tamar, or of their respective champions—as an interesting accession to our library. We do not promise to say as much of the next river that may be presented to us: that will depend on the urn it may issue from.

J

Art. X. The Church in Canaan, or Heirs in Possession receiving the Promises. By William Seaton, Minister of Wandsworth Chapel, Author of "The Church in the Wilderness." In two Volumes. Vol. I. 12mo. pp. 364. Price 6s. London. 1823.

WE shall make the best amends to Mr. Seaton for passing by his former publication, by taking this early oppor tunity of recommending his present volume to the notice of our religious readers. Though nothing,' as he states in the Preface, is to be expected that would please a fastidious taste, or gratify such as are pleased with truth only as adorned with literary embellishments,' yet, the work is well adapted both to interest and to edify the class of readers for whose improvement it is designed. Perhaps, the true use of sacred history has been of late too much lost sight of. Some of the old writers carried much too far their mystical expositions of what they considered as typical in the events which befel the children of Israel; and in our own day, we have had expositors who have shewn their ingenuity in spiritualizing every item of the Levitical code, and every stone in Solomon's Temple, till the Bible has assumed the character of a riddle-book. There is, however, an opposite extreme; and the attention now paid to Biblical criticism and Oriental illustration, has a tendency to divert the mind from that spiritual use of the historical parts of the Old Testament, which is clearly included in their design. The tenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians sufficiently indicates what is the proper use to be made of the "figures" or "examples" which such things present to the believer. Such a work, then, as the one before us, we think well adapted to be useful as an assistance to the plain reader in deriving from the Old Testament history the lessons it is adapted to convey; and the execution of the present publication appears, so far as we have examined it, highly judicious, free from all violent accommodations of the literal meaning, and characteristically evangelical. We subjoin a few specimens.

Though possession was as large as the promise, and nothing was wanting to confirm the truth of its description; though every where the beauty and richness of their inheritance bespoke its value, and their own felicity, yet there is, in the best earthly condition conceiva

290

ble, that which may convince us that the designs of his goodness lie much beyond any thing that is seen and enjoyed here. The most pleasurable scenes of life, and the most prosperous condition of an individual family or nation, has, if nothing else, the humbling limit of mortality to check the thought of permanency, and to admonish the heart to desire more satisfying good, more extended prospects, more lasting possessions. It could never be the design of God, in the profusion of his goodness, to cherish in his own people the earthly, selfish, and sensual desires of corrupt nature, that clinging to things temporal which ever unfits for the contemplation and hope of things eternal. Had this been the end of all, the ultimatum of providence, none of his children would be long left in a state of outward need and trial; whereas they are often found poor and afflicted, persecuted and forsaken, nor ever realize a better condition in this life. And as such could never accord with the designs of the covenant, so neither with the hope of the fathers. The grace of God and the faith of his people were full of the glory and grandeur of an immortal state, and are both to be regarded as holding in subserviency all the revolutions and events of time. The Apostle expresses the elevation of their views, and the influence of the governing principles of their life. In the perception of the great realities of the promise, the persuasion of their truth, and an inward realization of personal interest, they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. "And they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country. And, truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have re turned: but now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city." Heb. xi. 14.

The very circumstances that attended the possession of the promised land seemed to say it was far short of what was to be the hope of man. Though a rest and an inheritance much the desire of those who had been long wandering, and, in possession, yielding the amplest reward to expectation, yet the conflicts that attended their settlement, and the limited triumphs of Joshua, indicated something beyond, another rest which remained for the people of God. For as Paul reasons, "If Joshua had given them that rest, then would not David after so long a time have spoken of another rest.” The Canaanites were still in the land, and purposely left to try their faith and hope, so that while the difficulties they met with were doubtless disappointing to the hopes of the carnal, the views of the spiritual were kept alive by sublimer prospects. And as long as life lasts, occasions will not be wanting to the heirs of promise to induce hopes of a better world, to wean the heart from all that is seen or possessed here, and win its best attachments to higher claims. The voice of heaven is, "Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest because it is polluted." The heart of a good man cannot rest in earthly satisfactions, nor in the wanderings of his eye say of any sublunary spot, that would be all my hope and all my desire. His views are above the fulness of any earthly condition, for "risen with Christ, he has been taught to set

his affections on things above, and not on things on the earth." The faith of the Church in Canaan was strictly the same as had animated the pious fathers of the nation, who despised earth, and walked with God. pp. xvi.-xviii.

This passage occurs in the Introductory Observations. The same idea, a most important one, is strikingly illustrated in reviewing the death of Joshua.

After all we have seen in Canaan, let us visit the sepulchre of Joshua. The short record given may be viewed as a simple, unvarnished memento, or monumental inscription. Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old, and they buried him in the border of his inheritance, in Timnath-serah, which is in mount Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. The place of his interment was in the lot of his inheritance, and may remind us how soon the seat of life becomes the repository of death. Short had been the date of his settlement: a hundred years before he obtained rest, and then but ten before he must lie down in his grave, not again to rise till the heavens be no more. What can be a greater or more convincing proof of still higher and nobler ends of Providence than any contained within the limits of this life, when even the most distinguished of God's family, the most exemplary and useful of his children, are not suffered to continue by reason of death, but are early removed from the happiest scenes on earth! It bespeaks the greatness of man, and the more exalted provisions of glory the infinite goodness of God has secured in another world. The designs of his grace are too exalted, and the displays of his power too wondrous, to centre in any earthly lot, though equal in beauty and richness to Eden, when as yet the seat of innocence, perfection, and love. The plans of God are extending and perfecting in the openings of another world, even when his people's views are cut short, and their purposes as it were prematurely broken up in this. Regret may be expressed by survivors involved in the mysteries of providence, on witnessing the intrusions of death, and pausing over the marred inheritances of once distinguished owners; but none can be felt by themselves for whom God in the riches of his goodness has provided some better thing.

• Timnath-serah was still the portion of his lot, even in death. Where he lived in possession, there he lay in pessession, nor left any commandment, as Jacob and Joseph, for removal. It is remarkable how much this was the desire of the faithful, and of what moment, though not in itself, yet in its typical regards, they viewed a burying-place in the promised land. It was as if they thought upon the interests of their sleeping dust, as well as the felicity of their undying spirits, and in still retaining their inheritance, even in a state of death, would claim for their bodies a share in the life to come: for he who had so richly provided for the one as well as for the other, in an inheritance entirely typical, would not have so essential a part of our redeemed nature for ever the prey of worms. As Daniel and other saints, so Joshua rested in mortality," and would stand in his