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"See what a lovely shell,

Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,

Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well

With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,

A miracle of design!

"The tiny cell is forlorn,

Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world?

"Slight, to be crush'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,
Small, but a work divine,
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract-seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock,
Here on the Breton strand!

"For years, a measureless ill,

For years, for ever, to part—
But she, she would love me still;
And as long, O God, as she
Have a grain of love for me,
So long, no doubt, no doubt,
Shall I nurse in my dark heart,
However weary, a spark of will
Not to be trampled out.

"Strange, that the mind, when fraught

With a passion so intense

One would think that it well

Might drown all life in the eye,—
That it should, by being so overwrought,
Suddenly strike on a sharper sense
For a shell, or a flower, little things
Which else would have been past by!

And now I remember, I,
When he lay dying there,

I noticed one of his many rings

(For he had many, poor worm) and thought

It is his mother's hair."

The yearning of memory and affection for its lost treasure makes the heart ache with the vividness of its delineation.

"A shadow flits before me,

Not thou, but like to thee;

Ah Christ, that it were possible

For one short hour to see

The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.

“It leads me forth at evening,

It lightly winds and steals

In a cold white robe before me,

When all my spirit reels

At the shouts, the leagues of lights,

And the roaring of the wheels.”

We pass stanza after stanza of exquisite pencilling of this agitating, agonizing soul-life, until, in very wretchedness of sympathy, we wish this boon might be granted one for whom earth has nothing more of promise:

"Would the happy spirit descend,
From the realms of light and song,
In the chamber or the street,
As she looks among the blest,
Should I fear to greet my friend
Or to say, 'forgive the wrong,'
Or to ask her, 'take me, sweet,

To the regions of thy rest?""

But the desolation deepens; and few of the great masters of human nature have ever laid open, with a more terrible accuracy, the interior of a spirit blasted by the curse of a life-failure like this. A tinge of insanity mingles with his moaning, reason hunted out of his brain by the blood-hounds of memory and despair that are ever on his track, although he is one "more sinned against than sinning." A hope flickers over his soul, like a torch blown in the strong wind, that the world may find a medicine and a tonic for its disordered, debilitated

condition in the "coming wars;" a salvation for its weary children from such mischance as now sows broadcast its seeds of anguish. We fear the hope is built too far beneath the sky for a deliverance so devoutly to be desired. Something may thus come to the relief of our common humanity, however; we will expect it, even if our anticipation do not find a complete fulfilment.

"And it was but a dream, yet it lighten'd my despair

When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,
That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,
The glory of manhood stand on its ancient height,
Nor Britain's one sole God be the millionnaire :
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note,
And watch her harvest ripen, her herd increase,
Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore,
And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat
Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no more.

"Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crush'd in the clash of jarring claims,
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,

And the heart of a people beat with one desire;

For the peace that I deemed no peace is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And dreadful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood red blossom of war with a heart of fire.

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,

We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,

And myself have awaked, as it seems, to a better mind;

It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill."

Not along "the Black and the Baltic deep" is this experiment of reviving the heroism of an imperilled land now on trial; but along our own coasts and island borders farther to the Northward too, before it is over

possibly much than most of

us have anticipated. But if it is to be so, and with yet more formidable foes than thus far embattled, then so be it: and God save the right!

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ARTICLE III.

PARK'S LIFE OF EMMONS.

Memoir of Nathaniel Emmons, with Sketches of his Friends and
Pupils. By EDWARDS A. PARK. Boston: Congregational
Board of Publication. 1861.
1861. 8vo. pp. xx., 468.

Ir the subject of this memoir does not live among our descendants, it will not be for the want of a vates to spread his achievements and sound his praises. Seldom does departed greatness, in any line of activity, find a more painstaking and exhaustive chronicler. We suspect the erect little pastor of that quiet country charge would wonder at the development he is here made to present, were he within the reach of mortal wonderings; and that, if he could have looked over the manuscript — as he is said to have listened to his own funeral discourse several times before its delivery - he would have drawn his severe pen through some of these paragraphs, possibly pages. Besides his individual record, the author has packed together a regular omnibus-load of adherents and disciples of the central personage, with others not even thus remotely related to him, who, in small type or larger, according, we infer, to their comparative importance, seem to be enjoying themselves very pleasantly, at the public expense, all along this route, much in the mood of a Mutual Admiration Society. It may be all right for a Publication Board, sustained by the benefactions of the churches, to issue books of a much larger size and cost than legitimately called for, to furnish thus a medium for the advocacy of some pet theological theory; but the rightness would be more apparent were the Christian public frankly apprised that such use would be made of their subscriptions to its treasury. If the institution in question shall revive to active operations from its present comatose condition, some attention to this hint would gratify many of its helpers and constituents. We candidly think that a more appropriate title for this portly and miscellaneous book would be-"The Life and Times of Hopkinsian

ism, by an admiring descendant." That it is not even more portly and miscellaneous, we have the best reasons for knowing, was not owing to the want of additional copy.

The volume opens with one of the Professor's characteristically elaborated and subdivided tables of contents, for which, if intended to facilitate his reviewers' labors, we sincerely thank him. It reminds one of the main courses and side-dishes of the bill of fare of a first-class table d'hôte. You see at a glance that the market has been well gleaned of substantial and lighter viands. You can have almost anything to order; although, when it comes to the proverbial proof, the promise of the programme sometimes falls much below the stimulated expectation. To change the figure— the house here constructed is extensive, but the portico is immense. The excessive amplification of the whole affair would indeed surprise us did we not recollect that the present theological incumbent at Andover qualified himself for that chair by first filling the post of rhetorician in the seminary which is set on an hill. His logical acuteness is well known to the churches. But the severer practice of the polemic has not clipped the wings of his earlier fancy — witness the discovery, in the minister of a New England farming town, of that distinguished Oriental sage,

“Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)"

whom we should have looked for anywhere as soon as among such plain and puritan folk. But the last line of the literally far-fetched quotation could not be spared:

"And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." (p. 381.)

Certainly we intend no disrespect to the living or the dead: we directly disclaim such a construction. The author has given us a valuable contribution to the ecclesiastical history of our country. We can testify that it is a very readable book. This, under the circumstances, is a sufficient compliment to the ability with which it has been prepared. But the profuse panegyric, which, like the vine of Joseph, runs over these walls, has tempted us beyond what we were able to bear. We venture to say that the accomplished biographer has committed a literary error, which the substantial and conceded merits of his subject ren

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