the Romans, and lust hard by hate,' the common historical features of his character,--come out, no doubt, palpably enough; but we should have looked for some attempt to make us more distinctly understand and sympathize with the man. The other characters, we are constrained to say, are little more than sketches. None of them are dwelt upon with sufficient detail to enable us to think of them as actual existences. They come like shadows and depart; and, with the exception of the venerable Leo, to whom a more important part in the action is assigned, can scarcely be said to influence the action of the poem in the least degree. Mycoltha, in particular (who, if the poem has a heroine, is probably entitled to that character, since it is by her hand that the enemy of Christianity falls), is never brought forward, with the exception of the allusion to her in the Third Book, after the sacrifice of the Christians, till her attempt to escape from the mountain-fastnesses of Attila in company with her lover, in the Tenth; and this incident, coupled with the nuptial tragedy in the Twelfth, are the only adventures in which the Bactrian Princess is concerned. We regret that more prominence was not given to this character, and would willingly have parted with Hilda and all that pertains to her, to have made way for its more detailed developement.

Looking to the poem as a whole, we must say also, that the descriptions bear an undue proportion to the action. This is, indeed, one of the besetting sins of modern poetry; and Mr Herbert has not been able to resist the temptation. More than once the descriptions are so detailed-as in Satan's Vision of Europe, the Story of Cyprian, the Pageant of the Italian Campaignthat the reader almost forgets the state of the story, and the precise bearing of these collateral matters upon the main action. The picture of the field of Chalons, after the battle, occupies nearly one hundred and fifty lines; nay, even the sword of Attila has a page of description and allusion devoted to it. We quote the passage both as illustrative of this tendency to prolixity, and as a striking example of that over-imitation of Milton which pervades the poem, and which must have been already, in some degree, obvi ous from the extracts we have made. Milton is a noble model, no doubt, and perhaps the safest which an English epic poet could prescribe to himself; but there is a difference between admiration and adoration; and Mr Herbert has not unfrequently imitated Milton in points where that great poet has been least successful. We readily grant that Milton has a high power of rendering his learning picturesque, and of using mere names in such a manner as to call up classical associations or romantic

pictures. But even in Milton, we doubt whether any critic, who candidly owns the truth, would not be disposed to admit that the poet sometimes abuses his privilege, and prolongs these passages of learned allusion, to the detriment of the general effect of his poem. Will it not be owned that Mr Herbert has fallen into a similar mistake in the passage we are about to quote?

< That steel upraised

Myriads adore, to Britons known erewhile,
What time the phantom monarch* they revered,
Son of Pendragon hight, whose wizard life.
Was wedded to Excalibar, that thrice
Waved its strange summons on the flood, and he
Evanish'd; but still viewless oft at night,
Like that terrific hunter, who first wore
The charmed sword in Nineveh, with horns
Rousing each savage from his lair, he sweeps
The darksome covert, and shakes Albion's cots
With midnight awe; and still, midst Ætna's wilds
Precipitous, where blasted Typhon writhes
Stretch'd under huge Pelorus, secret rise

Her fairy halls, embower'd in changeless spring;
Where, scaped from Modred's strife, he yearly mourns
The recrudescent wound.'

This, be it observed, is but half the description, which extends through nineteen lines more of allusions to classic and romantic traditions; and, indeed, it is not possible to take up a single book of the poem without being reminded, frequently, we admit, of Milton's best points,-his sublimity and his purity,-but frequently also of his least agreeable peculiarities. We are satisfied that in Mr Herbert's case the systematic imitation of Milton, both in expression, and in the strain of allusion, has been seriously injurious to the originality, and may be seriously prejudicial to the success of his poem.

While we say this, let us at the same time bear testimony to the remarkable success with which, in many of his similes, he has caught the happiest manner of Milton, without any servile adoption of his language. The following examples are selected at random :-

From that tremendous altitude, and straight
Lies in the trough becalm'd, as if the grave
Had swallow'd her; nathless undaunted sets
His fixt regard upon the starry vault,

And notes the hour, and frequent calculates
Distance and bearings, and with skill corrects
The errors of his course. So darkling steer'd'
Aëtius through the shoals and fearful blasts
Of his tempestuous time.'

The effect of sudden surprise on Alberon, when he hears the voice of his ravished bride, is thus expressed :

As when in act to spring

The serpent, charm'd by spells of potent sound,
Stands riveted; its fearful crest erect

Sinks slowly, and the coiled folds relax;
So sudden stood in mad career of rage
Astonied Alberon.'

The following passage describes the terrors of the Aquileian soldiers, who had ventured during the night-attack to assail Attila in a subterraneous sewer, through which he is endeavouring to force a way into the town :

As he who journeying at dead of night

*

Through dark Hercynia's wood, when popular dread

Fills every glen with strange unholy shapes,

Or-seen, or fancied, at the perilous hour

When such have might, oft looks behind, and oft

Turns nothing less affrighted to his course,

Till full before him glares the dreaded form
Too horrible for mortal vision; thus
Awe-stricken they into that miry stream
Returned precipitate, and stole by flight
A few more miserable hours of life.'

We now take leave of Mr Herbert, having candidly stated certain defects which we think calculated in some degree to interfere with the popularity of his poem, but with the highest respect for the talent it displays, and the pure and masculine taste which it indicates; and with the sincere hope that in the appeal which he has here made to the lovers of elevating and intellectual poesy, in a noble and classic form, he may not find himself disappointed.

*The Black Forest.

ART. II.-1. A few Historical Remarks upon the supposed Antiquity of Church Rates, and on the Threefold Division of Tithes. By a Lay Member of the Church of England. 12mo: 1837. 2. The Antiquity of the Church Rate System considered, in Reply to a Pamphlet entitled A few Historical Remarks,' &c. By the Rev. WILLIAM HALE HALE. 8vo: 1837.

3. Letter to Lord Stanley on the Law of Church Rates. By Sir JOHN CAMPBell. Svo: 1837.

4. Observations on the Attorney-General's Letter to Lord Stanley. By JOHN NICHOLL, LL.D. 8vo: 1837.

5. The Origin of Church Rates. By the Hon. and Rev. A. P. PERCEVAL. 8vo: 1837.

I may be mortifying to the dignity of the clergy, and fatal to their pretension of an inherent Divine Right in the possessions they enjoy, but it cannot be denied, that for ages they were maintained by the voluntary contributions of the laity. In the infancy of the Church it could not have been otherwise, unless a miracle had been wrought in their favour. The Apostles and their immediate successors had no funds of their own to supply their wants and defray the expense of religious worship; and deriving no pecuniary profit from their spiritual services, they had no resource for subsistence but in the liberality of the faithful. Such, however, was the fervour of the early converts to Christianity, that they not only contributed their goods for the benefit of the Church, but sold their possessions and laid the price at the feet of their spiritual instructors. Funds thus amply provided and freely bestowed, after supplying the necessary wants of the Church, were distributed among the more indigent of her members in acts of charity and beneficence. Alms were given to the poor and destitute, succours administered to the aged and infirm, and relief afforded to widows and orphans who were in want. Captives, who had been reduced to slavery, were redeemed; exiles and convicts, doomed to the mines or other servile works on account of their religion, had their sufferings mitigated; and the miseries inflicted by war, pestilence, or famine, were alleviated by the bounty of the Church. Among the secondary causes that promoted the diffusion and success of the gospel, none were more efficacious than these continual and ex

tensive acts of beneficence; and it was the boast of the Christian apologists that means for them were furnished, not from the bitter fruits of taxation, but by the spontaneous collections and voluntary offerings of the faithful.

Such was the ardent zeal, and so munificent the liberality of the early Christians, that even in the second century we hear of many churches contributing largely to the relief of their indigent brethren in distant and remote provinces; and in the third century, if not earlier, donations of land had placed the churches of Rome, and of the other great cities of the empire, above a precarious and uncertain dependence on the monthly or weekly oblations of the pious. It is unnecessary to add, the relaxation of morals and discipline, the contentions for power, and other disorders inseparable from wealth, followed in its train; and though other pretexts might be used, it is no improbable conjecture of a great ecclesiastical historian, that it was to her riches and to the rapacity of the Pagan emperors, rather than to her doctrines, that the Church owed many of the persecutions she under

went.

It was still on the Voluntary principle, as it is called, that the Church depended for her support. The donations of land to particular churches or communities were invalid in law, and could only be enjoyed by the connivance or tacit permission of the magistrate. Accordingly, when Diocletian and Galerius made their last vain effort to extinguish the Christian faith, the first measure they adopted was to seize on the temples and confiscate the lands of the Church; alleging, in their justification, the ancient laws of the empire, which permitted no donation or bequest of land to communities not authorized by the state.

On the accession of Constantine to power, the edicts of Diocletian were repealed, the confiscated possessions restored, new and ample donations added, and regular allowances made by the government to assist in defraying the expenses of worship, and continuing the customary charities of the Church. Permission was at the same time given to all the churches of the empire to receive gifts or bequests in land or money from the faithful. For the first time since the introduction of Christianity, the Church became legally independent of the voluntary support of her votaries. The possessions thus acquired, though in their origin the free offerings of the faithful, when once bestowed, became the irrevocable property of the churches to which they were given, and could not be resumed by the donor or his heirs, nor confiscated by any authority short of the supreme legislature of the state, which had conferred on these churches a legal exist ence and corporate capacity.