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To Heaven's high city I direct my journey, Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye, Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney, Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky. But what is Heaven, great God, compared with Thee?

Without Thy presence, Heaven's no Heaven to me.

Without Thy presence, wealth are bags of cares; Wisdom but folly, joy, disquiet, sadness; Friendship is treason, and delights are snares; Pleasures but pains, and mirth but pleasing madness. Without thee, Lord, things be not what they be, Nor have their being when compared with Thee.

In having all things, and not Thee, what have I? Not having Thee, what have my labours got? Let me enjoy but Thee, what farther crave I? And having Thee alone, what have I not? I wish nor sea, nor land, nor would I be Possess'd of Heaven, Heaven unpossess'd of Thee.

GEORGE HERBERT.
BORN 1593-died 1632,

GEORGE HERBERT, a distinguished sacred poet-" Holy George Herbert," as he has often been reverently called, was born on the 3d of April, 1593, in the Castle of Montgomery, near the town of that name. He was of an ancient and honourable family, being descended of William

Herbert, who was Earl of Pembroke, in the reign of Edward IV.

George was the fifth son of the family; the third was the celebrated Lord Herbert of Cherbury. "George spent much of his childhood," says his simple and affectionate biographer, Isaac Walton, “in a sweet content under the eye and care of his prudent mother, and the tuition of a chaplain or tutor," and afterwards" at Westminster, where the beauties of his pretty behaviour and wit shined and became so eminent and lovely in this his innocent age, that he seemed to be marked out for piety, and to become the care of Heaven, and of a particular good angel to guard and guide him." In his seventeenth year we find Herbert writing to his mother," For my own part my meaning (dear mother), is, in these sonnets, to declare my resolution to be, that my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory; and I beg you to receive this as one testimony;" and then follows the religious poem,

"My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee,

Wherewith whole shoals of martyrs once did burn." Herbert was a close student, his only relaxation, while at Cambridge, being music, of which he continued all his life exceedingly fond, and in which he became a considerable proficient. He said, "It did relieve his drooping spirits, compose his distracted thoughts, and raised his weary soul so far above earth, that it gave him an earnest of the joys of heaven before he possessed them." During a good many of the following years this really worthy and pious man appears to have sought court favour with an anxiety which overrated the object; but, on the death of James I. and his powerful patrons, the Duke of Richmond and the Marquis of Hamilton, he abandoned all hopes of worldly elevation, and, after a painful struggle between ambition and better feelings, entered on the study of divinity. Ellis says of Herbert, "Nature in

tended him for a knight-errant; but disappointed ambition made him a saint." These are severe strictures; for Herbert still possessed youth, birth, friends, and excellent talents to promote his worldly advancement. His answer to a court friend who dissuaded him from going into the church, as below his birth and hopes, was:-" It hath been formerly judged, that the domestic servants of the King of Heaven should be of the noblest families on earth. And though the iniquity of the late times has made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest contemptible, yet I will labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my learning and all my poor abilities to advance the glory of that God that gave them; knowing that I never can do too much for him that hath done so much for me as to make me a Christian." These resolutions he kept inviolate. In the meantime his mother died, and he married, after, if we may trust his poetical biographer, a very romantic courtship. "He was for his person," says honest Isaac, "of a stature inclining towards tallness; his body was very straight, and so far from being encumbered with too much flesh, that he was lean to an extremity. His aspect was cheerful, and his speech and motion did both declare him a gentleman, for they were all so meek and obliging that they purchased love and respect from all that knew him. "These, and his other visible virtues, begot him much love from a gentleman of a noble fortune, and a near kinsman to his friend the Earl of Danby, namely, from Charles Danvers of Bainton, in the county of Wilts, Esq. This Mr Danvers having known him long and familiarly, did so much affect him, that he often and publicly declared a desire that Mr Herbert would marry any of his nine daughters (for he had so many), but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because Jane was his beloved daughter. And he had often said the same to Mr ..Herbert himself; and that if he could like her for a wife,

and she him for a husband, Jane should have a double blessing; and Mr Danvers had so often said the like to Jane, and so much commended Mr Herbert to her, that Jane became so much a platonic as to fall in love with Mr Herbert unseen.

"This was a fair preparation for a marriage; but, alas! her father died before Mr Herbert's retirement to Dantsey; yet some friends to both parties procured their meeting; at which time a mutual affection entered into both their hearts, as a conqueror enters into a surprised city; and love, having got such a possession, governed, and made there such laws and resolutions as neither party were able to resist; insomuch that she changed her name into Herbert the third day after this first interview." So much for Isaac, who goes on with the epithalamium of the young couple. This marriage was another proof of the truth of the adage, "Happy the wooing that is not long doing" for, in Isaac's own words, "The Eternal Lover of mankind made them happy in each other's mutual and equal affections and compliance."

Very shortly after his marriage, Mr Herbert was presented to the rectory of Bemerton near Salisbury, "changed his sword and silk clothes for a canonical coat," and told his wife," you are now a minister's wife, and must so far forget your father's house as not to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners; for you are to know that a priest's wife can challenge no precedence in place but that which she purchases by her obliging humility, and I am sure a place so purchased does best become her."

Mr Herbert, from the energy and enthusiasm of his natural character, as well as from nobler motives, was a most zealous and faithful priest, and in his private life strict and exemplary. He and his household attended prayers every day at the canonical hours of ten and four in the chapel of the rectory." "The meaner sort of his parish," says his faithful biographer, "did so love and reverence

Mr Herbert, that they would let their ploughs rest when Mr Herbert's saints-bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotions to God with him, and would then return back to their plough. And his holy life was such that it begot such reverence to God and to him, that they thought themselves the happier when they carried Mr Herbert's blessing back with them to their labour." Mr Herbert sang his own hymns to the lute or viol, of which instruments he was a master; and, though fond of retirement, he attended twice a week at the cathedral of Salisbury, saying, that "the time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was his heaven upon earth:" and, to justify his practice, he would often say, that religion does not banish mirth, but only moderates and sets rules to it." Many anecdotes are told of his piety and charity; and indeed, from the period that he took orders, his life seems to have been one of unreserved dedication to God. He died of a consumptive disorder in 1632.

Of THE TEMPLE, or Sacred Poems, Walton says, twenty thousand copies were sold in a few years after their publication. It is worthy of notice, that this volume was the only companion of Cowper during his first melancholy eclipse. Herbert's prose work, "THE COUNTRY PARSON, HIS CHARACTER AND RULE OF HOLY LIFE," is an inestimable little treatise.

VIRTUE.

SWEET Day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ;-
For thou must die.

Sweet Rose! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;

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