of arrangement, a moral end and design, and be censureable for the want of it? Aristotle, indeed, that direst foeman to modern genius, does not, that we are aware of, give any direct rules for the manage ment of the moral. But we need not inform the scholar, that he gives a whole section to his observations on the morals of the poem. And whilst in the most direct manner he censures any overcharged portraiture of vice beyond what the circumstances of the case actually require, he adds a most important hint to the poets of the present day, in advising them to imitate good painters; who always, he observes, choose the fairest forms and most inviting subjects of description. But we are conscious, in making these observations on the execution of the poetry in question, we are but ineffectually hewing at the branches. We must trace the evil to the root. We must graft there what shall hereafter appear to advantage in the form and fruit of the tree. We must call upon the writer for that which we ever wish to instil into the reader of poetry, a predominant love and heartfelt admiration, in the habits of his own mind, for the fair and the beautiful; and, above all, for the First Fair, and the Source of all beauty. We demand of him, what we see in all those poets who have stood highest; we were going to say, who have stood at all, in the permanent, esteeth and veneration of mankind; an unquestioned regard for those best standards and purest models of exellence, whether real or feigned, which their countries have afforded them in their respective objects of religious faith. It is by a close adherence, by an enthusiastic devotion to these lofty standards, that great poets have been formed. This has been the leaven, or rather let us call it, the vivifying principle, with which the hand of plastic Nature has been able, at an auspicious moment, to mould into being the majestic spirits of a Homer, a Virgil, a Milton, a Spenser, a Tasso, a Camoens; and, if the French must have their boast, a Fenelon. Or, if examples less dazzling, if heights of excellence less inaccessible, if instances more in point to the pourtrayer of lesser actions and " living manners" be required; let us turn even to the drama. Whom do we find, in that department, inscribed on the marbles of an honest fame, but the high-principled Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Seneca, of older times; the Racine, the Corneille, the Shakespeare perhaps, in some points, it might be said, the theological Shakespeare-of later days ?— Would the lyre direct us to a con clusion different to that for which we contend? If so, is it the lyre of Pindar; or of Callimachus; or of Horace; or of Gray; or of Ossian; or of Calidasa? Is it the lyre of the East, or the West, or the South, or the North? What stripling in literature but will answer the question as it should be answered? Who but must own the sublimest flights of poetry, of whatever kind, to have been made on the wings of Religion; and the Muse, in her highest station, to have been most aptly symbolized by the king of birds, resting on the sceptre of the Father of gods and men? The true, the most highly-favoured poet of nature or of man must be conversant with the Creator of both. He must be a firm believer in those illimitable attributes of Divinity which form the only horizon worthy of his aspiring mind. His "eye in fine frenzy rolling," as it "darts from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," must not behold that heaven without a God, that earth without a former; it must see them, each instinct with its appropriate life; and must catch a glance of the stupendous relations and mysterious intercourse existing between a present Deity, and this his Himself how wondrous then! universal frame so wondrous fair, Who, with the spirit of a poet, would forsake these boundless fields of light, to wander along the barren strand of atheistical research, with none but the wretched Lucretius for his guide? Who would forsake the Deity of the Universe for that deity of the Roman, the base philosophy of Epicurus? Forsaking Thee, what shipwreck have we made Of honour, dignity, and fair renown! apply itself to every want and every In all our remarks on this interesting subject, we feel ourselves elevated by remembering that we are Christians: and that, as such, we possess, in our own religion, a source of the sublime and the beautiful infinitely beyond all others, and such as Truth alone can offer. We pity that man, even were present feelings only to be consulted, that cannot lay his hand upon his heart, and with the same constancy, the same honest exultation as that Roman Soldier going to execution for his profession, declare, "I am a Christian." And where is the foundation of the Christian's hope, where is the depositary of his treasure, the rich and inexhaustible fountain of his pleasures and sublimest emotions to be found? We answer in one word in the pages of his Bible. We must not be deterred by the smile of superficial ignorance, the only class, even of foes, who "see no beauty" in that Sacred Volume, from giving an opinion of its contents. "Our Rock is not as their rock, even our enemies themselves being judges." We could force into our service the testimony of the heathen Longinus, and even of the impious Voltaire. But we reject such a questionable appeal. Our appeal takes a deeper stretch, to the hidden sources of human intelligence, and to the firm, indestructible, and unalterable properties of our common nature, as exemplified in daily experience; and there we establish our proof of the exquisite and inestimable value of the Book of Inspiration. We see in it, that which is calculated by turns to frequent songs throughout the Law and Prophets, beyond all these, not in their divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, may be easily made appear, over all the kinds of lyric poesy, to. be incomparable. These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestow ed; but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation; and are of power, besides the office of a pul pit, to inbreed and cherish in a great people, the seeds of virtue and public civility; to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns, the throne and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations doing valiantly, through faith, against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within;-all these things to paint out and describe, teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not look so much upon Truth herself except they see her elegantly dressed: that whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they will then appear to all men both easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed*." Why should we wish We by no means send our young poets to Milton's prose works on Church, Government. His mischievous lectures of a political nature belonged to the tires; and, to add the feeble alliance of our comment to this sublime effusion of the prince of poets. What a contrast this to those strains which "flow at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite!" With what a charm does this" divine philosophy" burst upon the mind, after the lowborn minstrelsy too frequent in these degenerate days! How "musical, as is Apollo's lute," and lovely, as a seraph's face, after the "harsh and crabbed" exhibitions of our modern modish masters! We revert, with ineffable delight and all the feelings of youthful enthusiasm, to the mo ral Lycidases, Comuses, Sampsons, of elder times; and we find a refuge in the yet-unrifled stores of more than one Christian poet of the past age, glorying in his religion, from the shallow morals, unsettled faith, and unholy inspiration of the present race. We speak with every desire to make all fair exceptions. Were we to mention one exception in particular, as giving some rising promise of the "mens divinior" in future, and, we trust, meditated lays, our readers, perhaps, will an ticipate an allusion to the name of Southey. But till a brighter dawn shall diffuse itself over our yet darkened sky; till the Sun of righteous. ness shall arise with a more unquestioned influence and more "healing ray," in our poetical hemisphere; in plainer words, till Christians shall begin to talk as Christians; or, at least, "tell us plainly whether they believe in Christ or no;" we feel a duty incumbent upon us to retire and invite as many of our readers as will retire with us, to a more favoured clime and happier poetical soil. Whilst to Christians the surly genius of his own mind, they if they owed their birth, in a degree, also to' afford, at least, this additional instruction to the poet, that no temperament of mind, however baughty or untamed, need be suffered to interfere with the business of the muse, or will tinge with gall the pen of a true poet, when he takes it up for the improvement and refreshment of mankind. “the fortunate isles" of divine poesy have more than an imaginary existence, we must warn them that life is too short to be spent in visiting rude and barbarous shores, in search of accidental beauties and those "strange plants" which are always barren and often poisonous, We feel a satisfaction, we trust of no narrow or selfish kind, in contemplating the ground still left to us when every thing not moral in its tendency, not calculated to improve the manners, exalt the mind, and purify the heart, shall have been marked off from the range of our more retired hours. And if in those more select, those more sacred and elevated plains, the "locos lætos et amæna vireta," where breathes a purer air, and shines a brighter beam, it should even be our happiness to meet with the noble author whose works we have been canvassing, we assure him, with no unfriendly feeling;-if we should find him, with a sympathetic genius, the melancholy Collins, bearing the sacred treasure, the records of Eternal Truth near to his heart, and "wisely deeming the book of God the best;" if we should find him framed anew upon the first of models, and sedately emulating those brightest mortal examples to whom, in common with himself, he would disco. ver the models of Scripture to he most dear ;-if, with the poet of Paradise, we should find him ruminating over some Divine song "choosing long and beginning late,' drawing deep from the stores of Divine learning, having no end before him" but the service of God and truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours advance the good of mankind*;"-how should we then rejoice to meet our renovated friend! With what unmixed satisfaction should we present him to our readers, not, as now, a negative, but a positive, example and instructor in good! We should go rejoicing with a more than usual lightness on our way, illuminated by the rays, and directed by the judgment, of our doubly noble poet. We should view him as some winged intelligence, moulting his feathers and renewing his mighty youth;" we should bail him as a phoenix of these later days, rising from the ruins of a too hasty and ill-directed imagination, and with his eye fixed right onward on the Fountain of ethereal light, soaring to those regions, where, with kindred spirits, he would at length be lost in visions of eternal day. * Milton's Areopagitica. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE, GREAT BRITAIN. &c. &c. In the Press: Tactica, or the System of the Wars of the Grecians; by Count Dillon ;Mr. Nichols' Continuation of his Literary Anecdotes, to 1800;-A Description of the Collection of Marbles in the British Museum; -Elements of political Science by Mr. John Craig, in 3 vols. ;-Tracts statistical and historical on India, by Dr. B. Heyne ;-1813, A Poem by Mrs. Grant ;-Letters from Edinbargh, giving an Account of the State of Society, Manners, &c;-The History of Fiction, by John Dunlop, in 3 vols.;-And Sermons, in 2 vols. 8vo by the late Rev. John Venn, Rector of Clapham. Preparing for Publication: A cheap Commentary on the New Testament, price only 2s. 6d. by the Rev. T. D. Fosbrooke, M. A. F.A.S. ;—History of the Island of Guernsey, by Mr. W. Berry ;-An Essay on the Diseases of the Chest, by Dr. Badham. Proposals have been issued for printing by Subscription, in 2 vols. 8vo. price 17.1s. 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