produce it; it is limpid as water, and the sentiment is seen through it as a medium of perfect transparency. It is so original and peculiar, so shaped to the thought to which it gives utterance, so impregnated with the warm and living spirit that glowed within him, that it seems not collected from the common vocabulary of the language, but the birth of occasion, and to be thrown out as a new creation from the omnipotence of his fancy.

In many respects Cowper was a contrast to Thomson, whose genius was certainly inclined to the French models. Thomson had more splendour, but less of that earnest sincerity that flows into the heart like a stream of liquid pathos. He has a more ambitious fancy, and while in Cowper you are absorbed by the beauty of the scenery, in him you think of the superlative elegance of the description. The one throws the riches of his fancy on the riches of nature; his heart leaps forth and colours with his passion the scene which his pencil is to draw; while in the descriptions of Cowper you have the naked and exact impress of the living beauty which caught his delicate and sensitive eye. There is more invention in Thomson, and more reality in Cowper. In Thomson you see the out-burstings of riotous and intoxicated power, the wide diffusion of a spirit so plastic and penetrating, that it moulds and fires every subject of the hardest and roughest materials. Cowper transfuses a sufficiency of fervour into every subject; and while there is no forced animation, there is no overflowing fulness; nothing wanting and nothing to spare.

Cowper was a Christian, and I doubt not, that often has the devout spirit risen from the perusal of his strains, and rapt in the holy elevation caught from this mingled flame

of genius and piety, poured out the ecstacies of his soul for such a gift to religion. It has been the reproach or misfortune of its friends, that they have cramped its energies by scholastic definitions; that instead of letting its native attractions shine through the medium of a rich and elevated diction, they have both from the pulpit and the press, disguised it by a quaint and pedantic phraseology; they have sullied its lustre by numerous and gross perversities of taste; they have chilled its generous and lofty spirit by narrow and spiritless and commonplace sentiment. This reproach can be, and it ought to be, wiped off. The separation between taste and devotion, is a most unnatural divorce. Cowper had a soul keenly alive to every beauty of nature and art; and religion, as invested with the charms of his poetry, never wore an earthly robe that shone so like its hue of original and celestial loveliness. Never dwelt there in a human being a temper that mingled so kindly with the bland spirit of Christianity. It touched with its hallowed fire all the springs of his elegant taste; it breathed its inspiring vi gour into all his innocent loves, till every element of his beautiful genius, like the scenes it described, wafted nothing but incense to heaven. What! shall man be attracted to every other of his interests by the forms of a seductive rhetoric, and the power of a brilliant and fascinating imagery! Shall genius pour forth its praises of nature till the stars above us twinkle down with new lustre, and the whole earth wake to new beauty, as when it burst fresh from the bosom of almighty love? Shall vice itself glitter in the magic of unwonted melody, and the heart be drunken with its sorceries? Shall the God of heaven be blasphemed in colours dipped in his own glory; and shall religion, the joy of angels, the dearest friend of humanity, the

size already begun; when we think in view of these scenes that Mercy now invites; and that even Justice utters her denunciations only to induce us to avoid them: why is it ah! why is it, that all this mighty influence is exercised in vain? The human heart is impudent-brutish -brass-marble-rock.

POLEMIC DIVINES.

When I hear two polemics making a great deal of noise on points very subtle, and therefore very worthless, I can compare them to nothing but two sour apples roasting before a kitchen fire;-there is a constant sputter between them; it seems as if they were debating about something, while all the noise proceeds from the same cause-acidity and heat.

RELIGION.

Religion can never be overthrown. I wonder that Infidels, as mere philosophers, did not see the hopeless task in which they were engaged. So long as man is miserable, so long as he is guilty, and so long as there is a suspicion in his mind that his misery is the result of his guilt, so long religion must stand. It is vain to reason here, the mind is borne away by a torrent of sensation. The efforts of infidels to disprove revelation, and the efforts of stoics to deny the existence of pain, are very similar. Nature rebels at every step they take.

RELIGION.

Religion must be shown to be a great interest. When we argue the cause of God we must show that something momentous is at stake. Man must be made to tremblefear-hope-love. Here is the great defect of Unitarianism.

Ev ery thing dwindles in their hands; they are always on the negative side. If a Unitarian stood at the foot of Sinai wrapt in fire and darkness and bending beneath an incumbent God, he would put an inverted

telescope into your hands and remove its terrors as far off as possible. But all this leads the people to say that religion is an unimportant interest; it is turning the tragedy into a farce. Hush! hush! hush! don't be excited; dont fear; all will turn out well at last. If Religion herself were to talk thus, she would be committing suicide.

PREACHING.

An earnest preacher, it is said, makes an attentive congregation ; may it not be added that an attentive congregation tends to make an earnest preacher?

THE CHOICE OF A WIFE.

The whole secret of choosing well in matrimony may be taught in three words-explore the character. A violent love-fit is always the result of ignorance; for there is not a daughter of Eve that has merit enough to justify romantic love, though thousands and thousands may reasonably inspire that gentle esteem, which is infinitely better. A woman-worshipper and a woman-hater both derive their mistakes from ignorance of the female world; for, if the characters of women were thoroughly understood, they would be found toe good to be hated and yet not good enough to be idolized.

BOSWELL.

Boswell's life of Johnson is a most singular piece of biography. You always despise the author, and yet you are pleased with the book. The picture there presented is a novel one,-a great mind in dishabille. The interest of the work is from Johnson himself. As for Boswell, he is a mass of nonsense, vanity, affectation, and pride. He has no merit but that of keeping a careful record. We pronounce the name of SAMUEL JOHNSON with respect; but, as for his biographer, we are inclined to say,

O Jemmy Boswell! Jemmy Boswell O!

The two following epigrams are good in their kind, especially the last. It is well known that when the house of Hanover was placed on the British throne, the tories were in a state little short of rebellion. -Oxford, in opposing the new dynasty, led the way; Cambridge was more liberal. To the former of these universities the king sent a troop of horse, to the latter a present of books; which occasioned the two following epigrams, the first by an Oxford, the last by a Cambridge man. The wit of the whig epigram called forth the praise of Johnson himself.

That living throne before whose blaze,

The strongest spirit shrinks and faints; There shall they see Him glorious sit, But glorious chiefly in his Saints.

There as the angelic armies crowd,

With awe around the Crucified,
In loudest notes of praise they speak,

The grace that spared, the love that died.
And there as all the toils of earth,
Whose snow-white temples, columns
proud,

The miracles of ancient Art,

And breathing statues thrill the heart;

All that our earliest years adored,

Athena's pride, the world's despair; The page where deathless Genius spoke, Or Learning pour'd her treasures rare;

The spot where patriot Valour died

And triumph'd 'neath the tyrant's stroke; The halls where, waked in stern debate, Indignant Freedom's thunder broke;

When these, and all that earth adorns,

At that dread inquest shall appear, Calmly before the throne shall stand, The Few despised, forgotton here. Their silent prayer for other's woe, Their spirit struggling with the load Of inward sin-submission meek, That smiled through tears and kiss'd the rod;

Love's ardent gaze, attemper'd sweet By awe and self-abasement low; The heaving bosom's load of grief.

nd joys which God alone can know A As thus they stand, by grace prepared For all that boundless love design'd,

Earth's brightest glories fade, before
These finished Temples of the Mind.

Yes! and when Earth itself shall fade,
And sink in the devouring flame,
Still brighter shall they shine, and bring
Fresh honour to the Saviour's name.
C. A. G.

Essays on the Nature and Uses of the various Evidences of Revealed Religion. By GULIAN C. VERPLANCK, Esq. New-York: 1824.

A Brief Outline of the Evidences of the Christian Religion. By ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER, Professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J. Princeton

1825.

THE free discussion which the truth of Christianity has undergone, has raised up for it a host of defenders, and produced a multitude of books, particularly in our own language. In no department of Theology, have more talent and learning been displayed; and in none, perhaps, have the effects of thorough investigation been more apparent, or more useful. A succession of able writers have by degrees improved and multiplied its arguments; have checked the attacks of infidels; and given sway to public opinion. A century since, it was thought a service to Christianity, after explaining the historical evidence, to defend the reasonableness of every doctrine and fact, in which the mind did not at once acquiesce, or which could be converted into an objection against the truth. In this way, the attention was directed from the main evidence to a number of trivial objections; which gathered strength and magnitude, from being so formally refuted; and the advocate of Christianity seemed

to triumph, in being able to reduce a miracle, or mysterious doctrine, into an ordinary occurrence, or a truth which reason would have anticipated. Since that time, and especially since Butler's Analogy appeared, there has been a gradual improvement in the method of defending revealed religion. The favourite position of infidels, that the Bible contains weak and incomprehensible doctrines, has been shown to be untenable: the true evidences have been exhibited in their simplicity and force; and the internal evidences have received a continually increased attention. Infidels, also, have become more modest in their pretensions, and find that Christianity is a thing not to be overthrown by ridicule, or the claim of superior intelligence, but to be assaulted by manly argument. The higher classes of society refuse to hear the objections, to which, in the age of Collins and Morgan, they eagerly listened; and it is only among the most ignorant, that the insinuations and ridicule of modern infidels can circulate. The number has greatly increased of those who believe in the Bible upon rational grounds, and are able to defend its truth. That there will, after all this full investigation and display of evidence, be objectors to revealed religion, is, indeed, a thing to be expected, as long as the principles of infidelity lie deep in the nature and condition of man. But the tendency of free inquiry on this