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York Castle he wrote the verses published in 1797 as "Prison Amusements ;" and making Sheffield his home, as his judgment and power ripened, Montgomery not only made the Sheffield Iris one of the best journals in the provinces, but won more and more attention as a poet. After he had published other poems, The Ocean" in 1805, and The Wanderer in Switzerland” in 1806, the abolition of the African slave-trade in 1807 caused James Montgomery to write a poem in four parts on the "West Indies." The graves were there of his father and mother, who had died in the service of God; and while he painted in the first three books of this poem with generous sympathy the wrongs suffered by the negro in the rise and progress of the traffic that his country had put out her hand to stay, he opened the fourth book with lines that must come to the heart of those who remember what he knew of the devoted lives of the Moravian missionaries, to whom he thus paid honour :

MORAVIAN MISSIONS.

Was there no mercy, mother of the slave,
No friendly hand to succour and to save,
While commerce thus thy captive tribes oppressed,
And lowering vengeance linger'd o'er the west?
Yes, Africa! beneath the stranger's rod
They found the freedom of the sons of God.

When Europe languish'd in barbarian gloom,
Beneath the ghostly tyranny of Rome,
Whose second empire, cowled and mitred, burst
A phoenix from the ashes of the first;
From Persecution's piles, by bigots fired,
Among Bohemian mountains' truth retired;
There, 'midst rude rocks, in lonely glens obscure,
She found a people scattered, scorned, and poor,
A little flock through quiet valleys led,

A Christian Israel in the desert fed,

While ravening wolves, that scorned the shepherd's hand,
Laid waste God's heritage through every land.
With these the lovely exile sojourned long;
Soothed by her presence, solaced by her song,
They toiled through danger, trials, and distress,
A band of virgins in the wilderness,
With burning lamps, amid their secret bowers,
Counting the watches of the weary hours,
In patient hope the Bridegroom's voice to hear,
And see his banner in the clouds appear:
But when the morn returning chased the night,
These stars, that shone in darkness, sunk in light:
Luther, like Phosphor, led the conquering day,
His meek forerunners waned, and passed away.

Ages rolled by, the turf perennial bloomed O'er the lorn relics of those saints entombed;

1 The Moravian Brethren trace their descent from the Bohemian reformers of the time of Huss. They had since that time endured in their own country many persecutions before they were organised in 1722 by Count Zinzendorf at a settlement which they called Herrnhut (the Lord's Shelter), in Upper Lusatia. Since that date they have been re-organised as a society of Brethren who hold property in common, and seek to live only as servants of God. The charm of their religious peace and their unselfish energy is felt by all who come much into contact with them

No miracle proclaimed their power divine,
No kings adorned, no pilgrims kissed their shrine;
Cold and forgotten in the grave they slept :
But God remembered them:-their Father kept
A faithful remnant;-o'er their native clime
His Spirit moved in His appointed time,
The race revived at His almighty breath,

A seed to serve Him, from the dust of death.

"Go forth, my sons, through heathen realms proclaim Mercy to sinners in a Saviour's name:"

Thus spake the Lord; they heard and they obeyed;
Greenland lay wrapt in nature's heaviest shade;
Thither the ensign of the cross they bore;
The gaunt barbarians met them on the shore;
With joy and wonder hailing from afar,
Through polar storms, the light of Jacob's star.

Where roll Ohio's streams, Missouri's floods,
Beneath the umbrage of cternal woods,
The Red Man roamed, a hunter-warrior wild;
On him the everlasting Gospel smiled;

His heart was awed, confounded, pierced, subdued,
Divinely melted, moulded, and renewed;
The bold base savage, nature's harshest clod,
Rose from the dust the image of his God.
And thou, poor Negro! scorned of all mankind;
Thou dumb and impotent, and deaf and blind;
Thou dead in spirit! toil-degraded slave,
Crushed by the curse on Adam to the grave;
The messengers of peace, o'er land and sea,
That sought the sons of sorrow, stooped to thee.
The captive raised his slow and sullen eye;
He knew no friend, nor deemed a friend was nigh,
Till the sweet tones of Pity touched his cars,
And Mercy bathed his bosom with her tears;

Strange were those tones, to him those tears were strange,
He wept and wondered at the mighty change,
Felt the quick pang of keen compunction dart,
And heard a small still whisper in his heart,

A voice from heaven, that bade the outcast rise
From shame on earth to glory in the skies.

From isle to isle the welcome tidings ran; The slave that heard them started into man: Like Peter, sleeping in his chains, he lay, The angel came, his night was turned to day : "Arise!" his fetters fall, his slumbers flee; He wakes to life, he springs to liberty.

A little later in the poem, after celebration of the men who had battled for the ending of this wrongGranville Sharp (who established against opposition the law of the Constitution that there are no slaves in England, and a negro found in England must, therefore, be free), Clarkson, Wilberforce, Pitt, and FoxMontgomery remembers the pure love of liberty in Cowper, and exclaims

Lamented Cowper! in thy path I tread;
O! that on me were thy meek spirit shed!
The woes that wring my bosom once were thine;
Be all thy virtues, all thy genius, mine!
Peace to thy soul thy God thy portion be;
And in His presence may I rest with thee!

James Montgomery's chief poem was "The World before the Flood," published in 1814. He died in April, 1854, his last work having been a volume of "Original Hymns."

Reginald Heber, who died in 1826, aged fortythree, is remembered among writers of a generation earlier than that with which some of the most vigorous of his contemporaries are associated. He was really three years younger than Dr. Chalmers, who lived more than twenty years longer, and seems, therefore, to us the younger man. Reginald Heber was born in April, 1783, at Malpas, in Cheshire. He was made familiar with the Bible from his earliest years, and it is said that he could, when five years old, generally tell where any passage quoted from it would be found. He was also from early years inquisitive for knowledge of all kinds, and was never seen in a passion. As a schoolboy, he found his chief recreation in books; but his liveliness and kindliness, and readiness as a teller of good stories, kept him always on the best terms with his schoolfellows. He was still studying the Bible daily, and at sixteen or seventeen considered Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" his favourite book. As a schoolboy, he was distinguished for his skill in composition. In 1800 he went to Oxford, and joined Brasenose College, where an elder brother was, as his father had been, a Fellow. In his first year he won the University prize for Latin verse with a "Carmen Seculare" upon the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Palestine was given as the subject for an extra prize in English verse. Heber worked so hard at it that he brought on an attack of illness, and was confined to his bed for a few days when the poem was only half done; but he finished it, and won the prize with one of the very best poems ever written by a young man upon such an inducement. Its quality, and the profound earnestness with which it was read by the young student in 1803-his age then being twenty-raised the audience to enthusiasm at the public recitation. This is the poem *

PALESTINE.

Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,
Mourn, widow'd Queen, forgotten Sion, mourn!
Is this thy place, sad City, this thy throne,
Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone?
While suns unblest their angry lustres fling,
And way-worn pilgrims seek the scanty spring?-
Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy view'd?
Where now thy might, which all those kings subdu d?
No martial myriads muster in thy gate;
No suppliant nations in thy Temple wait;
No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among,
Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song:
But lawless Force, and meagre Want is there,
And the quick-darting eye of restless Fear,
While cold Oblivion, 'mid thy ruins laid,
Folds his dank wing beneath the ivy shade.

Ye guardian saints! ye warrior sons of heaven,
To whose high care Judæa's state was given!
O wont of old your nightly watch to keep,
A host of gods, on Sion's towery steep!

If e'er your secret footsteps linger still

By Siloa's fount, or Tabor's echoing hill;

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If e'er your song on Salem's glories dwell,
And mourn the captive land you loved so well;
(For oft, 'tis said, in Kedron's palmy vale
Mysterious harpings swell the midnight gale,
And, blest as balmy dews that Hermon cheer,
Melt in soft cadence on the pilgrim's ear);
Forgive, blest spirits, if a theme so high
Mock the weak notes of mortal minstrelsy!
Yet, might your aid this anxious breast inspire
With one faint spark of Milton's seraph fire,
Then should my Muse ascend with bolder flight,
And wave her eagle-plumes exulting in the light.
O happy once in heaven's peculiar love,
Delight of men below, and saints above!
Though, Salem, now the spoiler's ruffian hand
Has loos'd his hell-hounds o'er thy wasted land;
Though weak, and whelm'd beneath the storms of fate,
Thy house is left unto thee desolate;
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Though thy proud stones in cumbrous ruin fall,
And seas of sand o'ertop thy mould'ring wall;
Yet shall the Muse to Fancy's ardent view
Each shadowy trace of faded pomp renew:
And as the seer on Pisgah's topmost brow
With glistening eye beheld the plain below,
With prescient ardour drank the scented gale,
And bade the opening glades of Canaan hail;
Her eagle eye shall scan the prospect wide,
From Carmel's cliffs to Almotana's tide
The flinty waste, the cedar-tufted hill,
The liquid health of smooth Ardeni's rill; 1
The grot, where, by the watch-fire's evening blaze,
The robber riots, or the hermit prays;
Or where the tempest rives the hoary stone,
The wintry top of giant Lebanon.

Fierce, hardy, proud, in conscious freedom bold,
Those stormy seats the warrior Druses hold;
From Norman blood their lofty line they trace,
Their lion courage proves their generous race.
They, only they, while all around them kneel
In sullen homage to the Thracian steel,
Teach their pale despot's waning moon to fear
The patriot terrors of the mountain spear.
Yes, valorous chiefs, while yet your sabres shine,
The native guard of feeble Palestine,
Oh, ever thus, by no vain boast dismay'd,
Defend the birthright of the cedar shade!
What though no more for you th' obedient gale
Swells the white bosom of the Tyrian sail;
Though now no more your glitt'ring marts unfold
Sidonian dyes and Lusitanian gold;
Though not for you the pale and sickly slave
Forgets the light in Ophir's wealthy cave;
Yet yours the lot, in proud contentment blest,
Where cheerful labour leads to tranquil rest.

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1 Ardeni's rill. In the days of poetic "diction," few geographical names escaped the disguise of false finery. If a man meant "Jordan" it did not follow that he would say "Jordan." The Hebrew letters "Yarden" would flow smoothly as Ardeni. Notes were in those days an essential part of the equipment of a published poem. The poet had, therefore, a place in which he informed the reader what he meant by "Almotana's tide" and "Ardeni's rill." Young Heber was only doing what the taste of the time required, and he could have quoted Aristotle on the elevating character of a few strange words in a composition. The old woman was of one mind with fine critics of her day when she found benefit to her soul from the mere hearing of "that blessed word 'Mesopotamia,'" which it was her good fortune not to understand.

No robber rage the ripening harvest knows;
And unrestrain'd the generous vintage flows:
Nor less your sons to manliest deeds aspire,
And Asia's mountains glow with Spartan fire.
So when, deep sinking in the rosy main,
The western Sun forsakes the Syrian plain,
His watery rays refracted lustre shed,
And pour their latest light on Carmel's head.
Yet shines your praise, amid surrounding gloom,
As the lone lamp that trembles in the tomb:
For few the souls that spurn a tyrant's chain,
And small the bounds of freedom's scanty reign.

My sorrowing Fancy quits the happier height,
And southward throws her half-averted sight.
For sad the scenes Judæa's plains disclose,
A dreary waste of undistinguish'd woes:
See War untir'd his crimson pinions spread,
And foul Revenge that tramples on the dead!
Lo, where from far the guarded fountains shine,
Thy tents, Nebaioth, rise, and Kedar, thine!
"Tis yours the boast to mark the stranger's way,
And spur your headlong chargers on the prey,
Or rouse your nightly numbers from afar,
And on the hamlet pour the waste of war;
Nor spare the hoary head, nor bid your eye
Revere the sacred smile of infancy.

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Such now the clans, whose fiery coursers feed
Where waves on Kishon's bank the whisp'ring reed;
And theirs the soil, where, curling to the skies,
Smokes on Samaria's mount her scanty sacrifice; 110
While Israel's sons, by scorpion curses driven,
Outcasts of earth, and reprobate of heaven,
Through the wide world in friendless exile stray,
Remorse and shame sole comrades of their way,
With dumb despair their country's wrongs behold,
And, dead to glory, only burn for gold.

O Thou, their Guide, their Father, and their Lord,
Lov'd for Thy mercies, for Thy power adored!
If at Thy name the waves forgot their force,

And refluent Jordan sought his trembling source; 120
If at Thy Name like sheep the mountains fled,
And haughty Sirion bow'd his marble head;-
To Israel's woes a pitying car incline,
And raise from earth Thy long-neglected vine!
Her rifled fruits behold the heathen bear,
And wild-wood boars her mangled clusters tear.
Was it for this she stretched her peopled reign
From far Euphrates to the western main?
For this o'er many a hill her boughs she threw,
And her wide arms like goodly cedars grew?
For this, proud Edom slept beneath her shade,
And o'er th' Arabian deep her branches play'd?

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Nor, when five monarchs led to Gibeon's fight,
In rude array, the harness'd Amorite :
Yes-in that hour by mortal accents stay'd,
The lingering Sun his fiery wheels delay'd;
The Moon, obedient, trembled at the sound,
Curb'd her pale car, and check'd her mazy round!
Let Sinai tell-for she beheld His might,
And God's own darkness veiled her mystic height;
(He, cherub-borne, upon the whirlwind rode,
And the red mountain like a furnace glow'd):
Let Sinai tell-but who shall dare recite
His praise, His power, eternal, infinite?—
Awe-struck I cease; nor bid my strains aspire,
Or serve His altar with unhallow'd fire.

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In heaven's own strength, high towering o'er her foes, Victorious Salem's lion banner rose:

Before her footstool prostrate nations lay,

And vassal tyrants crouch'd beneath her sway.
-And he, the kingly sage, whose restless mind
Through nature's mazes wander'd unconfin'd;
Who ev'ry bird, and beast, and insect knew,
And spake of every plant that quaffs the dew;
To him were known-so Hagar's offspring tell—
The powerful sigil and the starry spell,
The midnight call, hell's shadowy legions dread,
And sounds that burst the slumbers of the dead.
Hence all his might; for who could these oppose?
And Tadmor thus, and Syrian Balbec rose.

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Yet c'en the works of toiling Genii fall, And vain was Estakhar's enchanted wall. In frantic converse with the mournful wind, There oft the houseless Santon rests reclin'd; Strange shapes he views, and drinks with wond'ring

ears

The voices of the dead, and songs of other years.

Such, the faint echo of departed praise,

Still sound Arabia's legendary lays;

And thus their fabling bards delight to tell

How lovely were thy tents, O Israel!

For thee his iv'ry load Behemoth bore, And far Sofala teem'd with golden ore; Thine all the arts that wait on wealth's increase, Or bask and wanton in the beam of peace. When Tyber slept beneath the cypress gloom, And silence held the lonely woods of Rome; Or ere to Greece the builder's skill was known, Or the light chisel brush'd the Parian stone; Yet here fair Science nurs'd her infant fire, Fann'd by the artist aid of friendly Tyre. Then tower'd the palace, then in awful state The Temple rear'd its everlasting gate.1

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1 Walter Scott, after the poem was finished, heard Heber read it, and enjoyed it greatly, but called attention to the omission of a point in the original narrative of the building of the Temple that was strikingly poetical: "There was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building" (1 Kings vi. 7). Heber at once added the next reference to "majestic silence."

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No workman steel, no pond'rous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!—then the harp awoke,
The cymbal clang'd, the deep-voic'd trumpet spoke;
And Salem spread her suppliant arms abroad,

View'd the descending flame, and bless'd the present
God.

Nor shrunk she then, when, raging deep and loud, Beat o'er her soul the billows of the proud. E'en they who, dragg'd to Shinar's fiery sand, Till'd with reluctant strength the stranger's land; Who sadly told the slow-revolving years,

Nor vain their hope:-Bright beaming through the sky,

Burst in full blaze the Day-spring from on high; 220
Earth's utmost isles exulted at the sight,
And crowding nations drank the orient light.
Lo, star-led chiefs Assyrian odours bring,
And bending Magi seek their infant King!
Mark'd ye, where, hov'ring o'er His radiant head,
The dove's white wings celestial glory shed?
Daughter of Sion! virgin queen! rejoice!
Clap the glad hand, and lift th' exulting voice!
He comes, but not in regal splendour drest,
The haughty diadem, the Tyrian vest;
Not arm'd in flame, all-glorious from afar,
Of hosts the chieftain, and the lord of war:
Messiah comes :-let furious discord cease;
Be peace on earth before the Prince of Peace!
Disease and anguish feel His blest controul,
And howling fiends release the tortured soul;
The beams of gladness hell's dark caves illume,
And Mercy broods above the distant gloom.

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Thou palsied earth, with noonday night o'erspread! Thou sick'ning sun, so dark, so deep, so red! 240 Ye hov'ring ghosts, that throng the starless air, Why shakes the earth? why fades the light? declare! Are those His limbs, with ruthless scourges torn? His brows, all bleeding with the twisted thorn? His the pale form, the meek forgiving eye Raised from the cross in patient agony? -Be dark, thou sun,-thou noonday night arise, And hide, oh hide, the dreadful sacrifice!

Ye faithful few, by bold affection led,

Who round the Saviour's cross your sorrows shed, 250
Not for His sake your tearful vigils keep;—
Weep for your country, for your children weep!

Wide-wasting Plague, gaunt Famine, mad Despair,
And dire Debate, and clamorous Strife was there:
Love, strong as Death, retained his might no more,
And the pale parent drank her children's gore.
Yet they, who wont to roam th' ensanguined plain,
And spurn with fell delight their kindred slain;
E'en they, when, high above the dusty fight,
Their burning Temple rose in lurid light,
To their loved altars paid a parting groan,
And in their country's woes forgot their own.
As 'mid the cedar courts, and gates of gold,
The trampled ranks in miry carnage roll'd,
To save their Temple every hand essay'd,
And with cold fingers grasp'd the feeble blade:
Through their torn veins reviving fury ran,
And life's last anger warmed the dying man!
But heavier far the fetter'd captive's doom!
To glut with sighs the iron ear of Rome:
To swell, slow-pacing by the car's tall side,
The stoic tyrant's philosophic pride;
To flesh the lion's rav'nous jaws, or feel
The sportive fury of the fencer's steel;
Or pant, deep plung'd beneath the sultry mine,
For the light gales of balmy Palestine.

Ah! fruitful now no more,-an empty coast, She mourned her sons enslaved, her glories lost : In her wide streets the lonely raven bred, There barked the wolf, and dire hyænas fed. Yet midst her towery fanes, in ruin laid, The pilgrim saint his murmuring vespers paid; 'Twas his to climb the tufted rocks, and rove The chequered twilight of the olive grove; 'Twas his to bend beneath the sacred gloom, And wear with many a kiss Messiah's tomb : While forms celestial filled his tranced eye, The day-light dreams of pensive piety, O'er his still breast a tearful fervour stole, And softer sorrows charmed the mourner's soul. Oh, lives there one, who mocks his artless zeal? Too proud to worship, and too wise to feel? Be his the soul with wintry Reason blest, The dull, lethargic sovereign of the breast! Be his the life that creeps in dead repose, No joy that sparkles, and no tear that flows!

Far other they who rear'd yon pompous shrine, And bade the rock with Parian marble shine. Then hallow'd Peace renewed her wealthy reign, Then altars smoked, and Sion smiled again. There sculptured gold and costly gems were seen, And all the bounties of the British queen; There barb'rous kings their sandal'd nations led, And steel-clad champions bowed the crested head. There, when her fiery race the desert pour'd, And pale Byzantium fear'd Medina's sword, When coward Asia shook in trembling woe, And bent appalled before the Bactrian bow; From the moist regions of the western star The wand'ring hermit waked the storm of war. Their limbs all iron, and their souls all flame, A countless host, the red-cross warriors came: E'en hoary priests the sacred combat wage, And clothe in steel the palsied arm of age; While beardless youths and tender maids assume The weighty motion and the glancing plume.

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In sportive pride the warrior damsels wield The pond'rous falchion and the sun-like shield, And start to see their armour's iron gleam Dance with blue lustre in Tabaria's stream.

The blood-red banner floating o'er their van, All madly blithe the mingled myriads ran : Impatient Death beheld his destin'd food, And hov'ring vultures snuff'd the scent of blood. Not such the numbers, nor the host so dread, By northern Brenn or Scythian Timur led, Nor such the heart-inspiring zeal that bore United Greece to Phrygia's reedy shore!

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Yet shall she rise ;-but not by war restor'd,
Not built in murder, planted by the sword.
Yes, Salem, thou shalt rise: thy Father's aid
Shall heal the wound His chastening hand has made;
Shall judge the proud oppressor's ruthless sway,
And burst his brazen bonds, and cast his cords away.

Then on your tops shall deathless verdure spring.
Break forth, ye mountains, and ye valleys, sing!
No more your thirsty rocks shall frown forlorn,
The unbeliever's jest, the heathen's scorn;
The sultry sands shall tenfold harvests yield,
And a new Eden deck the thorny field.
E'en now, perchance, wide-waving o'er the land,
That mighty Angel lifts his golden wand,
Courts the bright vision of descending power,
Tells every gate, and measures every tower;
And chides the tardy seals that yet detain
Thy Lion, Judah, from his destined reign.

And who is He? the vast, the awful form, Girt with the whirlwind, sandal'd with the storm? A western cloud around His limbs is spread, His crown a rainbow, and a sun His head. To highest heaven He lifts His kingly hand, And treads at once the ocean and the land; And, hark! His voice amid the thunder's roar, His dreadful voice, that Time shall be no more!

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And shall not Israel's sons exulting come,

Hail the glad beam, and claim their ancient home?
On David's throne shall David's offspring reign,
And the dry bones be warm with life again.
Hark! white-robed crowds their deep hosannas raise,
And the hoarse flood repeats the sound of praise; 420
Ten thousand harps attune the mystic song,
Ten thousand thousand saints the strain prolong :-
"Worthy the Lamb! omnipotent to save,

Who died, who lives, triumphant o'er the grave!

As

Two years later, in 1805, Reginald Heber graduated, and obtained a Fellowship at All Souls'. Next year he obtained the prize for an English essay on "The Sense of Honour." Then he extended his education by a period of travel in Germany and Russia, took orders in 1807, and was made rector of Hodnet, Shropshire, to which living his brother (for his father died in 1804) had the presentation. Rector of Hodnet, Reginald Heber married in 1809, published a short poem on the war in Europe, and among other writings, began in 1811 the publication of his Hymns for the Sundays and chief Holidays of the Year in the Christian Observer. He became, about 1817, a prebendary of St. Asaph, where his wife's father was dean. It was in 1817 that Dr. Thomas Chalmers published his series of Discourses on "The Christian Revelation, viewed in connection with the modern Astronomy." Heber was delighted with them, and wrote to a friend: "Have you read Chalmers' Sermons! I can at present read little