Elegy on the Enclosure of Honington Green, he would have had a right to be considered a poet of no mean excellence. The heart which can read passages like the following without sympathetic emotion, must be dead to every feeling of sensibility. STANZA VI. The proud city's gay wealthy train, VII. That no more upon Honington Green Dwells the matron whom most I revere, I e'en now could indulge a fond tear. VIII. Her parents with plenty were blest, (Early clos'd the blest days he had seen,) In the churchyard on Honington Green. XXI. Dear to me was the wild thorny hill, Though he rove not on common or green, * XXII. So happily flexile man's make, And bliss in each circumstance find. The youths of a more polish'd age Shall not wish these rude commons to see; It would not be bliss to be free. There is a sweet and tender melancholy pervades the elegiac ballad efforts of Mr. Bloomfield, which has the most indescribable effects on the heart. Were the versification a little more polished, in some instances, they would be read with unmixed delight. It is to be hoped that he will cultivate this engaging species of composition, and, (if I may venture to throw out the hint,) if judgment may be formed from the poems he has published, he would excel in sacred poetry. Most heartily do I recommend the lyre of David to this engaging bard. Divine topics have seldom been touched upon with success by our modern Muses: they afford a field in which he would have few competitors, and it is a field worthy of his abilities. W. MELANCHOLY HOURS. (No. VII.*) If the situation of man, in the present life be considered in all its relations and dependencies, a striking inconsistency will be apparent to a very cursory ob * My predecessor, the Spectator, considering that the seventh part of our time is set apart for religious purposes, devoted every seventh lucubration to matters connected with Christianity, and the severer part of morals: I trust none of my readers will regret that, in this instance, I follow so good an example. server. We have sure warrant for believing that our abode here is to form a comparative insignificant part of our existence, and that on our conduct in this life will depend the happiness of the life to come; yet our actions daily give the lie to this proposition, inasmuch as we commonly act like men who have no thought but for the present scene, and to whom the grave is the boundary of anticipation. But this is not the only paradox which humanity furnishes to the eye of a thinking man. It is very generally the case, that we spend our whole lives in the pursuit of objects, which common experience informs us are not capable of conferring that pleasure and satisfaction which we expect from their enjoyment. Our views are uniformly directed to one point:--happiness in whatever garb it be clad, and under whatever figure shadowed, is the great aim of the busy multitudes, whom we behold toiling through the vale of life, in such an infinite diversity of occupation, and disparity of views. But the misfortune is, that we seek for happiness where she is not to be found, and the cause of wonder, that the experience of ages should not have guarded us against so fatal and so universal an ΕΙΤΟΥ. It would be an amusing speculation to consider the various points after which our fellow-mortals are incessantly straining, and in the possession of which they have placed that imaginary chief good which we are all doomed to covet, but which, perhaps, none of us, in this sublunary state, can attain. At present, however, we are led to considerations of a more important nature. We turn from the inconsistencies observable in the prosecution of our subordinate pursuits, from the partial follies of individuals, to the general delusion which seems to envelope the whole human race---the delusion under whose influence they lost sight of the chief end of their being, and cut down the sphere of their hopes and enjoyments to a few rolling years, and that too, in a scene where they know there is neither perfect fruition nor pernianent delight. The faculty of contemplating mankind in the abstract, apart from those prepossessions which, both by nature and the power of habitual associations, would intervene to cloud our view, is only to be obtained by a life of virtue and constant meditation, by temperance, and purity of thought. Whenever it is attained, it must greatly tend to correct our motives---to simplify our desires---and to excite a spirit of contentment and pious resignation. We then, at length, are enabled to contemplate our being in all its bearings, and in its full extent, and the result is, that superiority to common views and indifference to the things of this life, which should be the fruit of all true philosophy, and which, therefore, are the more peculiar fruits of that system of philosophy which is called the Christian. To a mind thus sublimed, the great mass of mankind will appear like men led astray by the workings of wild and distempered imaginations---visionaries who are wandering after the phantoms of their own teeming brains, and their anxious solicitude for mere matters of worldly accommodation and ease will seem more like the effects of insanity than of prudent foresight, as they are esteemed. To the awful importance of futurity he will observe them utterly insensible; and he will see with astonishment the few allotted years of human life wasted in providing abundance they will never enjoy, while the eternity they are placed here to prepare for, scarcely employs a moment's consideration. And yet the mass of these poor wanderers in the ways of error have the light of truth shining on their very foreheads. They have the revelation of Almighty God himself to declare to them the folly of worldly cares, and the necessity for providing for a future state of existence. They know by the experience of every preceding generation, that a very small portion of joy is allowed to the poor sojourners in this vale of tears, and that, too, embittered with much pain and fear; and yet every one is willing to flatter himself that he shall fare better than his predecessor in the same path, and that happiness will sunile on him which hath frowned on all his progenitors. Still it would be wrong to deny the human race all claim to temporal felicity. There may be comparative, although very little positive, happiness;-whoever is more exempt from the cares of the world and the calamities incident to humanity-whoever enjoys more contentment of mind, and is more resigned to the dispensations of Divine Providence---in a word, whoever possesses more of the true spirit of Christianity than his neighbours, is comparatively happy But the number of these, it is to be feared, is very small. Were all men equally enlightened by the illuminations of truth, as emanating from the spirit of Jehovah himself, they would all concur in the pursuit of virtuous ends by virtuous means---as there would be no vice, there would be very little infelicity. Every pain would be met with fortitude, every affliction with resignation. We should then all look back to the past with complacency, and to the future with hope. Even this unstable state of being would have many exquisite enjoyments-the principal of which would be the anticipation of that approaching state of beatitude to which we might then look with confidence, through the medium of that atonement of which we should be partakers, and our acceptance, by virtue of which, would be sealed by that purity of mind of which human nature is, of itself, incapable. But it is from the mistakes and miscalculations of mankind, to which their fallen natures are continually prone, that arises that flood of misery which overwhelms the whole race, and resounds wherever the footsteps of man have penetrated. It is the lamentable error of placing happiness in vicious indulgences, or thinking to pursue it by vicious means. It is the blind folly of sacrificing the welfare of the future to the opportunity of immediate guilty gratification, which destroys the harmony of society, and poisons the peace, not only of the immediate procreators of the errors--not only of the identical actors of the vices themselves, but of all those of their fellows who |