give

a picture of the entire Cosmos; and he adds "We are astonished to see, within the compass of a poem of such small dimensions, the universe, the heavens, and the earth, drawn with a few grand strokes." Its touches are indeed few, rapid-but how comprehensive and sublime! Is it God? he is "clothed with light as with a garment," and when he takes his morning or his evening walk, it is on the "wings of the wind." The winds or lightnings ?—they are his messengers or angels: "Stop us not," they seem to say, "the King's business requireth haste." The waters?-the poet shows them in flood, covering the face of the earth, and then as they now lie, inclosed within their embankments, to break forth no more for ever. The springs?-he traces them by one inspired glance, as they run among the hills, as they drink to the wild and lonely creatures of the wilderness, as they nourish the boughs on which sing the birds, the grass on which feed the cattle, the herb, the corn, the olive-tree, and the vine, which fill the mouth, cheer the heart, and radiate round the face of man. Then he skims with bold wing all lufty objects—the trees of the Lord on Lebanon, "full of sap"-the fir-trees and the storks which are upon themthe high hills, with their wild goats and the rocks, with their conies. Then he soars up to the heavenly bodies-the sun and the moon. Then he spreads abroad his wings in the darkness of the night, which "hideth not from him," and hears the beasts of the forest creeping abroad to seek their prey, and the roar of the lions to God for meat, coming up, vast and hollow, like embodied sound, upon the winds of midnight. Then, as he sees the shades and the wild beasts fleeing together, in emulous haste, from the presence of the morning sun, and man, strong and calm in its light as in the smile of God, hieing to his labor, he exclaims, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all!" He casts next one look at the ocean-a look glancing at the ships which go there, at the leviathan which plays there; and then, piercing down to the innumerable creatures, small and great, which are found below its unlifted veil of waters. He sees, then, all the beings, peopling alike earth and sea, waiting for life and food around the table of their Divine Master -nor waiting in vain-till lo! he hides his face, and they are troubled, die, and disappear in chaos and night. A gleam, next, of the great resurrections of nature and of man comes

across his eye. "Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth." But a greater truth still succeeds, and forms the climax of the Psalm (a truth Humboldt, with all his admiration of it, notices not, and which gives a Christian tone to the whole)— “The Lord shall rejoice in his works." He contemplates a yet more perfect Cosmos. He is "to consume sinners" and sin "out of" this fair universe: and then, when man is wholly worthy of his dwelling, shall God say of both it and him, with a yet deeper emphasis than when he said it at first, and smiling, at the same time, a yet warmer and softer smile, "It is very good." And with an ascription of blessing to the Lord does the poet close this almost angelic descant upon the works of nature, the glory of God, and the prospects of It is not merely the unity of the Cosmos that he has displayed in it, but its progression, as connected with the parallel progress of man-its thorough dependence on one Infinite Mind-the "increasing purpose" which runs along it—and its final purification, when it shall blossom into the "bright consummate flower" of the new heavens and the new earth "wherein dwelleth righteousness;"-this is the real burden, and the peculiar glory of the 104th Psalm.

man.

We must not linger longer among those blessed Psalms, whether those of David, or those composed in later times, else we could have dilated with delight upon the noble 19th, where the sun of the world, and the law of God, his soul's sun, are bound together in a paneygyric, combining the glow of the one and the severe purity of the other; upon the 22d, which some suppose Christ to have chanted entire upon the cross; upon the 24th, describing the entrance of the King of Glory into his sanctuary; upon the Penitential Psalms, coming to a dreary climax in the 51st; upon such descriptive and poetic strains as the 65th; upon the prophetic power and insight of the 72d and the 2d; and on the searching selfcommunings, and the spirit of gentleness, humility, and love of God's word, which distinguish the whole of the 119th. But, perhaps, finer than all, are those little bursts of irrepressible praise, which we find at the close. During the course of the book, you had been conducted along very diversified scenes; now beside green pastures, now through dark glens, now by still waters, now by floods, and now by dismal swamps now through the silent wilderness, where the sun himself was

sleeping on his watch-tower-in sympathy with the sterile idleness below; and now through the bustle and blood of battlefields, where the elements seemed to become parties in the all-absorbing fury of the fray; but, at last, you stand beside the Psalmists, upon a clear, commanding eminence, whence, looking back on the way they had been led, forward to the future, and up to their God, now no longer hiding himself from his anointed ones, they break into pæans of praise; and not satisfied with their own orisons, call on all objects, above, around, and below, to join the hymn, become, and are worthy of becoming, the organs of a universal devotion. The last six or seven Psalms are the Beulah of the book; there the sun shineth night and day, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. From a reflection of their

fire, have sprung the hymn which Milton ascribes to our first parents, the hymn which closes the "Seasons," and the great psalm which swelled from the harp of Coleridge, as he struck it to the music of the Arveiron, and in the light of the morning star. And surely those bright gushes of song, occurring at the close, unconsciously typify the time when man, saved from all his wanderings, strengthened by his wrestlings, and recovered from his falls, shall, clothed in white robes, and standing in a regenerated earth, as in a temple, pour out floods of praise, harmonizing with the old songs of heaven— when the nations, as with one voice, shall sing—

"Praise ye the Lord. God's praise within
His sanctuary raise;

And to him in the firmament

Of his power give ye praise.
Because of all his mighty acts,
With praise him magnify:

O praise him as he doth excel
In glorious majesty.

Praise him with trumpet's sound; his praise

With psaltery advance:

With timbrel, harp, stringed istruments,

And organs in the dance.

Praise him on cymbals loud: him praise

On cymbals sounding high;

Let each thing breathing praise the Lord,
Praise to the Lord give ye."

CHAPTER VIII.

SOLOMON AND HIS POETRY.

WE have already glanced at some of the aspects of this great man's character; but that, both as a man, and as a writer, is far too magnificent and peculiar, not to demand a chapter to itself.

Magnificence is, indeed, the main quality of Israel's "Grand Monarque," as Coleridge calls him. The frequent sublimity, and the fluctuating interest, which surrounded his father's career, he possessed not. But the springtide of success which was his history, the abundance of his peace, his inexhaustible wealth, the pomp of his establishment, the splendor of the house and the temple which he built, the variety of his gifts and accomplishments, the richness and diversified character of his writings, and the manifold homage paid him by surrounding tribes and monarchs, all proclaimed him "every inch a king," and have rendered "Solomon and his glory," proverbial to this hour. He sat, too, in the centre of a wide-spread commerce, bringing in its yearly tribute of wealth to his treasury, and of fame to his name. Even when he sinned, it was with a high hand, on a large scale, and with a certain regal gusto; he did not, like common sinners, sip at the cup of corruption, but drank of it, "deep and large," emptying it to the dregs. When satiety invaded his spirit, that, too, was of a colossal character, and, for a season, darkened all objects with the shade of "vanity and vexation of spirit." And when he suffered, his groans seemed those of a demigod in torment; his head became waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears. Thus, on all his sides, bright or black, he was equally and roundly great. Like a pyramid, the shadow he cast in one direction, was as vast as the light he received on the other.

No monarch in history can be compared, on the whole, with Solomon. From the Nebuchadnezzars, the Tamerlanes, and similar" thunderbolts of war," he differs in kind, as well as in degree. He was the peaceful temple-they were the armed towers; his widom was greater than his strengththey were sceptred barbarians, strong in their military

prowess. In accomplishments, and in the combination of good sense with genius, he reminds us of Julius Cesar; but he, too, was a man of war from his youth, besides being guilty of crimes both against his country and his own person,* blacker far than any recorded of the proverbialist of Israel; a union, let us rather call him, of some of the qualities of the "good Haroun Alraschid," with some of those of our own Alfred the Great. To the oriental grandeur-the love of peace, poetry, and pleasure which distinguished the caliph he added the king's sense of justice, and homely, practical wisdom.

It was his first to prove to the world that peace has greater triumphs, and richer glories, than war. All the useful, as well as elegant arts found in him at once a pattern and a patron. He collected the floating wisdom of his country, after having intermingled it with his own, into compact shape. He framed a rude and stuttering science, beautiful, doubtless, in its simplicity, when he "spake of all manner of trees," from the cedar to the hyssop. He summoned into being the power of commerce, and its infant feats were mighty, and seemed, in that day, magical. He began to bind hostile countries together by the mild tie of barter-a lesson which might have been taught him, in the forest of Lebanon, by the interchange between the "gold clouds metropolitan" above, and the soft valleys of Eden below. He built palaces of new and noble architecture; and although no pictures adorned the gates of the temple, or shone above the altar of incense, or met the eyes of the thousands who worshipped within the court of the Gentiles, yet was not that temple itself—with its roof of marble and gold, its flights of steps, its altars of steaming incense, its cherubic shapes, its bulls and molten sea-one picture, painted on the canvas of the city of Jerusalem, with the aid of the hand which had painted long before the gallery of the heavens? In poetry, too, he excelled, without being so filled and transported by its power as his father; and, as with David, all his accomplishments and deeds were, during the greater part of his life, dedicated to, and accepted by, heaven.

Such is an outline of his efforts for the advancement of

*See Suetonius.