opinion, the other mounts proudly upon the tempest and rises to the sun.

In criticism which is not merely literary, but moral also, it will not seem inappropriate to refer to influences which create poetry such as Crabbe's, and to tendencies which it indicates.

The concerns of humble life are the principal topics on which our poet dwells; but, though in Crabbe they are distinctive, they have a prominent position in all the modern literature of English life. Sympathy is in others; reality in Crabbe. Goldsmith has idealized the rural village in his lambent fancy and his melodious verse; he deceives us into delight; and from childhood to old age, as Sir Walter Scott has said, we return to him with a new desire, to his gentle pathos, that moves the heart without storming the passions; to his happy style, that wins attention without solicitation, that never taxes, and that never tires. The description of a poor country girl in the metropolis, towards the close of "The Deserted Village," is a picture of lowly tragedy, which Crabbe might have conceived and painted.

Many others I might name, but I pass on to Cowper. Cowper, yet more than Goldsmith, had strong sympathies with the trials of the English poor. He was peculiarly fitted, by his simple habits and benignant genius, to take a strong interest in the concerns of

lowly life. The objects amidst which he lived, and of which he loved to write, were, for the most part, unpretending and retired; the shaded walk, the neat-trimmed garden, the sunny corner, the nest of flowers, the grassy valley and the woodland hill, the social parlor, the cheerful winter fire. From these, and such things. as these, the loving heart extracted a poetry which cannot fail of readers, while goodness has any place in letters, while the grace of purity can give comeliness to human speech. The poor man's labors and the poor man's cares, were with him in his familiar thoughts; he paints, with true hand and inspired eye, the poor. man's home, the virtues and the pleasures of his fireside, the sanctity of his domestic altar, the beauty of humble holiness, the griefs and the joys that lie along the path of laborious life. Of all writers, he is the most sinless in wit and humor. What others turn to ribaldry or gall, he " turns to prettiness; " in expression, polished and effective; in fancy, playful, chaste, rich; he stirs up mirth from the very bottom of the heart, until the shaking sides are tired and the laughing eyes are dim, yet in no word or hint does he leave a trace upon the soul which could shame the holiest memory in its holiest hour. Pungent but not envenomed, uncompromising but not uncharitable, grave in truth, gentle in ridicule, he makes nothing odious but sin, and nothing laughable but folly.

Poetry such as this, and such as Crabbe's, is the creation of Christianity. It is the result of interests which Christianity has developed, and of sympathies which it has inspired. Christianity has opened springs of joy and sorrow before untouched; it has called new and unimagined agencies into being. Man has received a redemption from contempt. It may not always save man from wrong, but it guards him from scorn; much he may be made even now to suffer, but he can never be as he was, despised. By the glory it gives the soul, the lowly and the poor have gained importance, and with importance they have risen to a history and a lite

rature.

The laboring classes of ancient nations afforded no scope for poetry, no materials for story. In the universal vassalage which brooded over Pagan States, no ideal interest could pertain to the unprivileged masses. There was nothing in the laughter or the tears of the multitude, to command attention or dignify description; nothing to give embellishment to the feast, or gain an audience at the games. What was it to the proud and mighty, what was it to the learned and the brave, what was it to the philosophers of academy or the philosophers of porch, where helots lived or how helots died? But Christianity, in its revelation of a spiritual and immortal being, has given man an infinite worth; it

has enriched him with an endowment independent of social distinctions, and transcendently superior to them. In restraining the passions, it has diversified and raised them; in exalting woman, it has created the poetry of domestic life; in ennobling every destiny, it has deepened and complicated all the tragic elements of our nature; it has sublimed the catastrophe, both of good and evil; the good with a holier joy, and the evil with a gloomier sadness.

In beauty of forms, in harmonies of language, in incidents of romance, our times certainly cannot compete with ages that are gone; but, assuredly, the poetry of those departed ages, is more desirable than their practice. Greece and Rome, in their classical period, present, to our retrospective imaginations, a vista of most wondrous glory. We behold them in remote and majestic serenity, with the sun of an enchanting loveliness lingering over them; we behold them in fragments of art, unapproachable and unrivalled; we behold them in a long array of statues, temples, columns, but, while we muse delighted, we recall not the butcheries of the circus; we are charmed with the music of noblest eloquence and divinest poetry, but while we are raptured with such harmonies, we hear not the groans of dying gladiators, we hear not the rabble-yells which drowned them, we come not in

contact with slaveries wide almost as the world, that called forth no pity, and knew no hope; we comprehend with no adequate conception, the wilderness of evil which the gloom of heathenism covered; the dark destinies which a ray from heaven scarcely pierced; the wretchedness unsolaced, and the sin unrebuked; which fancy shudders to paint, and faith is unwilling to believe.

Europe, in the middle ages, has its glory too; a glory that deludes us with many fascinations. A picturesque and romantic splendor overspreads these ages, but the obscurity which gives them mystic grandeur to our fancies, hides their evils from our disgust. Belted knight and baron bold, will be ever fine in story; we call them up in their strength and bravery; we not only reanimate them with a new life of resurrection, but we clothe them with a new light of transfiguration. In this, as in all things, the beautiful is immortal, the bad has perished. These men rise up before us in their chivalric and heroic deeds, but the witnesses of their crimes do not come so quickly; the serfs whom they trampled, are nameless and numberless in the dust of centuries; the cries of their midnight murders have passed to as deep a silence as the laughter of their midnight revels; the eyes which they caused to weep, have long closed in final slumber, and the hearts which