"See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Frail, but a work divine, With delicate spire and whorl, A miracle of design! "The tiny cell is forlorn, Void of the little living will "Slight, to be crush'd with a tap "For years, a measureless ill, For years, for ever, to part— "Strange, that the mind, when fraught With a passion so intense One would think that it well Might drown all life in the eye,— And now I remember, I, 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 “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, 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, "Tho' many a light shall darken, and many shall weep And the heart of a people beat with one desire; For the peace that I deemed no peace is over and done, 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! ARTICLE III. PARK'S LIFE OF EMMONS. Memoir of Nathaniel Emmons, with Sketches of his Friends and 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 |