Good Providence, on no harsh purpose bent, Has brought thee there, to lead thee back again. No other bondage is upon thee cast Save that wrought out by thine own erring hand; By thine own act, alone, thine image placed Poorest or President choose thou to stand." We have not yet reached that degree of social perfection. Many a weary day's work for the friends of philanthropy lies between. Much work of the poor man has that blessed steamengine to do yet before he can walk erect in Heaven's open air. The Scholar gets little sympathy, with his "dull dead books." If they are to him "dull dead books," he cer tainly deserves none. In the Scholar, our author fails entirely. He evidently takes the word in a sense altogether narrow and mean. We pass to the Preacher-a prolific topic-on which we are tempted to pause for a few words, though we can barely allow our pen to touch glancingly on it as we pass. Religion, does she catch her spirit from the living man, or in inglorious content mumble idly the lesson she has learnt by rote of the past With what are our pulpits filled? What are the words that come to us from the sacred place? We worship in splendid houses -but Holy Writ has taught us we may gild the tombs of the prophets whom our fathers slew, and yet be the sons, in the very likeness of those destroyers. Is the Christianity of the present day true to the Christianity of the Bible? We read in the sacred volume that it is a religion of sacrifice, that the fate of its followers is suffering and martyrdom, that its spirit is REFORM, uncompromising hatred to all wrong, love and ardent pursuit of all good; and what is its practice now? Why it misinterprets its lesson; it quibbles even in the sacred desk; it tells us that its suffering is not for good in battle with evil, but it is the acquiescence of evil; that its quiet is not the quiet of man vexed by social wrong and injustice, the quiet poured over the troubled soul crying out for knowledge ;-no, the quiet is for rich men, sitting on well-stuffed velvet cushions, not to vex their righteous souls over-much for the disquiet of their fellows. It tells us that we are to cultivate reason and test our faith by her laws-not that we may in all sincerity build up a pure temple to truth in the soul, but that we may learn to distinguish the shibboleth of one sect from the shibboleth of another sect. Reli gion, as it is taught, is thus a matter of grammar, or history, or chronology, or the art of dress-anything but a matter of philosophy. Man ceases to be a practical man when he enters his church. In his counting-house he is inquisitive of all that is new, and can detect a false bale of goods from a genuine one; he does not keep up this juggle of appearances with his lawyer or his physician. He falls into conventionalisms enough, but in no other instance within our knowledge does he so voluntarily run into them as in some spiritual matters. His soul is not educated, his charity is not sincere, his judgment is enfeebled, his tastes are low, the heart and head are divorced. Whence comes this evil, this difference? External life, the relations of man with the laws of space and matter, the necessities of the new century, have outrun his spiritual condition. It is true, we believe, that the Church has adapted herself in different periods to the actual condition of the people. In an illiterate age, when the popular mind was uneducated and sluggish, she arrested the attention of peasants and laborers by simple and ingenious stories that are to us now mere romances and jest books. Such, in the thirteenth century, were the fables of the Gesta Romanorum, the text book of monkish serion-writing. A period of increasing light came, and Erasmus laughed at these childish legends. They were not ridiculous when they were first spoken. Christianity subsequently embraced learning, till the fine-spun logic of casuists and doctors of cases of conscience dwindled into the division of texts to the very letters of the alphabet. The humorous Echard, in his treatise on the Contempt of the Clergy, brushed away these cobwebs with his cap of bells. Ease and elegant periods afterward occupied the pulpit, but these grew too light for the awakening seriousness of the public mind, and Methodism brought forward the evangelical school, of whose sermons it has been remarked there is but one type. With trifling variations, this school now with this life; for the clergy too, are men, as well as the laity, and will demand sincerity. We cheerfully adopt our author's appeal to them: Withered be he, the false one of the brood, Who, husbandman of evil, scatters strife, Brambling and harsh upon the field of life: But deeper cursed whose secret hand Freedom, and civil forms and sacred That conscience owns: he, conscience- His voice 'gainst these, should sheer-down From off the glory of the temple-wall, And man beneath a withered Paul, fills the pulpit. But it preaches no longer with its old authority. Its terrors are neglected or enforced with lukewarmness. Happy indeed if it thus abandon its reign of terror; hap-« pier yet if it would embrace in all its extent the law of love. Its old missionary arguments are somewhat weakened upon the ear. We even hear 'from orthodox divines of the salvability of the heathen. Christianity is not the living principle of the state. Where is Puritanism? What is Puseyism but the admission of the need of a new element? But the world does not go back or seek in the wardrobe of the past save for an occasional masquerade. Nulla vestigia retrorsum, is its motto. Society asks and obtains in its minor literature, in the tale and the song, a recognition of its new ideas. The lightest miscellanies are full of thoughts of man and his social relations, of the economy of the state, of the welfare of sick and poor brethren, of man's infinite hopes and energies, of his earnest world-work-what does he hear of these things in our orthodox pulpits? Think you, Christianity, such as we have as yet had it, has received into its preaching all that Christ taught? Why, it will tell you of the divine right of almost every wrong the devil has ever sent upon the earth, and offer up thanksgiving for the bloody triumphs of war. . Its motto on its banner is "the field is the world," and it will give thanks for a victory and the destruction of the sheep of its fold. With short-sighted weakness it will decide irrevocably upon the error of man, and taking to itself the power of God alone over human life, will stand by the executioner and bid him tighten the rope about the neck of a living human being. There is nothing destructive in these views, nought by which Christianity may be impaired. Heaven forbid. It remains the same to-day, and forever -the one final deliverance of the human race; but in arguing for the admission of a new preaching that shall welcome the sound humanitarian philosophy of the day, (Christianity, we may be sure, can never be at variance with such,) we ask only that this preaching may have more life, be more freely received and glorified in the hearts and lives of men. And the world will have Christianity preached "Rather with blessings and the bonds of life, Let Heaven's good workmen bind together The house that roofs us on this dear, dear plot of earth, An arbor in the genial sun, Kindly and loving brethren every one, All equal-all alike who thither tend, end And as our course must be, so let it be begun. "But shrink not, therefore, from the coward age, That shows, in mockery shows, its hideous face at times, And crosses with its cursed din the very sabbath-chimes; O, smite and buffet with a holy rage ness Dash and confound it with the stormcloud's boldness That frowns and speaks till every houseroof trembles, And face to face no more dissembles The God-fear coiled within the crusted heart! Brandish the truth and let its fouredged dart Cut to the quick, and, cut through every armor. Unbosom to the light the Satan-charmer! "Ye holy Voices sphered in middle air! Lower than angels, nor as they so fair, Yet quiring God's behest with truth and power Pitch your blest speech, or high or low, Through the round Heaven to which it And ever on the earth may fall in glad surprizes, The spring-sweet music of a su shower. dden Heaven shall bless thee and the earth shall bless, And up through the close, dark deathhour thou shalt spring With fragrant parting, and heaven-cleaving wing To ask, nor ask in vain, thy Christ's caress !" The Poet is the subject of the concluding poem in the volume before us -(but why has he omitted all allusion to Womankind?)—as concentrating in himself the representation and embodiment of all the manifold phases of humanity of which it treats-as "The mighty heart that holds the world at full, Lodging in one embrace the father and The toiler, reaper, sufferer, rough or mild, And he is thus apostrophized: "Gather all kindreds of this boundless realm To speak a common tongue in thee! Heart, pulse and voice, whether pent hate The stormy speech or young love whisper low. Cheer them, immitigable battle-drum!` And lure them gently to a laurelled home, Closing their lids, bestow a dirge-like death!" We have now run over each of the topics of Mr. Mathews's volume, and set fairly forth a general view of its contents. As it is very uniform in its style and strain, the liberal extracts we have made will suffice to enable every reader to form his own judgment alike of its merits and its faults. It is on the whole one that deserves to be welcomed with favor and friendly encouragement, by the public to which the nationality of its appeal peculiarly addresses itself. It has in every respect raised our appreciation of its auis by far the most complete and satisthor's literary powers and promise. It factory book he has yet produced. It is the most under the control of his judgment. The fetters of rhyme have proved a wholesome restraint upon an exuberance that has often with him outrun, in grotesque and incomplete irregularity of movement, the minds of his readers; and there is much less that jars upon the tasteful sense of the intelligent reader. It must be confessed, indeed, that Mr. Mathews wears these same fetters of rhyme and rhythm very loosely and impatiently, shaking them about him sometimes with rather harsh discord of sound, in a very re-bellious fashion to those laws of verse which have not been disdained by some tolerable poets who have not disgraced well pleased if he had worn them with the language. We should have been would the poetry of the volume have a little more respect and docility; nor suffered by the lengthened labor and more studied care, which might have been thus required of him. Had we indeed seen them before their appearance in print, we should have advised many a morning hour, to the duty of the author to devote many a midnight, improvement and polish. They have a great deal of excellent, sweet, and nutritive saccharine matter, but the process of clarification is yet incomplete. Mr. Mathews takes more liberties with his reader and with his language than so young a writer-than any writer-is entitled to take. evident that most of the poems have been struck off in very rapid and offhand haste; so that we see great beauties left disfigured with great defects.. thoughts, set, like apples of gold in Side by side with rich and noble vessels of silver, in fine passages of ties, forced and far-fetched exprespoetical language, obscurities, turgidisions, taxing the mind of the reader who endeavors to comprehend their meaning and bearing, to efforts not always adequately rewarded-are far more frequent than they ought to be; to say nothing of metrical sins, sins of extreme carelessness, though they It is sometimes have a less pardonable air of design, which would then make them affectations, deserving less gentle rebuke. A young poet should not for get that iron requires to be hammered hard and long, as well as simply heated in the glowing furnace of excited thought, or else it is apt to be full of cracks and flaws, and particles of worthless dust. This lesson is the more necessary to a temperament of sanguine, impetuous exuberance, such as we conceive to be that of the author of the present volume. It is not everything we write that we ought to print; or even to keep, for any other purpose than the periodical bonfires which most young men who know how to write have to kindle now-a-days. To borrow a very unpoetical illustration from a process we have had frequent occasion to watch during the rustication of the past summer, (on whose grave we beg to be allowed to drop a passing tear)-when the oysterrake is struck down and then brought up to the surface, however rich the bed may be, it is not all the contents of its capacious prongs that are worth keeping-nay, sometimes there will be little else than the mud, stones and seaweed. The boat will soon be loaded indeed, if these are all taken in, but the most experienced fishermen prefer to drop them quietly back again. We are speaking now for the benefit of several of our younger poets, and not of Mr. Mathews in particular-Hear ye! hear ye! hear ye! Do not so partake of the universal national hurry. Do not be so impatient, young gentlemen, to wake up the next morning and find yourselves famous. Testinate lente. More haste, less speed. Beware of the monthly temptation of the Magazines, even though it be the Democratic. Nor is the publication of a collected volume necessarily ipso facto a sure passport to the summit of"The height where Fame's proud temple shines afar." Bryant, we may hint in passing, writes slowly and little. Like the process of distillation, it comes by drops, but they are drops of diamond light, any one of which will far outvalue an ocean of that muddy fluency which is so easy. And there have been penmen who could transcribe within the surface of a thumb-nail all that Halleck has ever published. It is our very appreciation of Mr. Mathews's capabilities that prompts us to urge upon him with a friendly frankness and earnestness, a special attention to the general hint thus addressed to several of our young friends, whom it is unnecessary to go out of our way to specify. He can, and yet will, do fine things-but he must use the inverted end of his stylus far more freely than he has hitherto done. He must not shrink from the maternal bear's labor of licking her own young into improved shape-nor even from Saturn's still more severe treatment of his progeny. We have no doubt that this was the process performed by the Sibyl upon the nine books which she brought back, first in six, and then in three volumes she was re-writing them in the interval; and this we take to be the true moral of the legend, or at least its best. Her only mistake was in not charging a triple price with the triple condensation. THE WIDOWER. Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed, Henry King, on the death of his wife. SHE sleeps beneath the sod, Watched by the eyes of God, My heart is under ground. • Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, 1591-1669. |