at a moment of intense family bereavement, when he felt himself impelled to the relief herein suggested. In moments of affliction, we often shrink from the incompetence of those who, from their genuine kindliness of heart, obtrude their sympathy upon us. The commonplace generalities to which such persons resort, revolt us, as heartless and hackneyed; the human voice, even, assumes a dissonance, when it urges us to forget a grief over which the heart yearns with a devoted tenderness, feeling as if relief were a treason to the beloved object. Few can afford consolation in periods like these few should attempt it. But here the Poet comes in to fulfil his mission - to assert his divine ministry; and we are amazed to find every where scattered over his pages, like grave-strewn flowers, the truest offerings of affection. We weep over his words, relieved by a strange sympathy; he touches those mysterious chords of the human heart, so rarely harmoniously put in motion: "Few are the hearts where one same touch His sufferings have been greater than ours; therefore he is able to open the very secrets of our hearts-to penetrate to the depths of our emotions. He beguiles us from the things we are, by giving definiteness to our thoughts, and by his warm human nature. He has felt as we feel - he has thought as we think and has been able to give voice to thought and emotion. We are bound by a new bond to the heart of the Poet; "for, whereas we were before dumb, we now speak," through him. Impressed with sentiments such as these with emotions chastened by grief, and a heart tranquillized through the utterance of these expounders of the human heart-the Editor binds together these Gems of Consolation, assured they will be "words fitly spoken" to those who mourn. BROOKLYN, AUGUST, 1844. |