In illustration of these remarks, we think it due to the writer to quote a passage or two from different parts of his volume. We shall select such as afford a specimen, as well of the brilliant eloquence, as of the religious fervour by which the work is marked. The following passage occurs in a very able chapter on the general peculiarities of Hebrew poetry:

"The Hebrew poet was nothing, if not sacred. To him the poetical and the religious were almost the same. Song was the form instinctively assumed by all the higher moods of his worship. He was not surprised into religious emotion and poetry by the influence of circumstances, nor stung into it by the pressure of remorse. He was not religious only when the organ was playing, nor most so-like Burns and Byron-on a sunshiny day. Religion was with him a habitual feeling, and from the joy or the agony of that feeling poetry broke out irrepressibly. To him, the question ‘Are you in a religious mood to-day?' had been as absurd as 'Are you alive today' for all his moods-whether high as heaven, or low as hell-whether wretched as the penitence of David, or triumphant as the rapture of Isaiah-were tinged with the religious element. From God he sank, or up to him he soared. The grand theocracy around ruled all the soul and all the song of the bard. Wherever he stoodunder the silent starry canopy, or in the congregation of the faithful-musing in solitary spots, or smiting with high, hot, rebounding hand, the loud cymbal-his feeling was, 'How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' In him, surrounded by sacred influences, haunted by sacred recollections, moving through a holy land, and overhung by a heavenly presence, religion became a passion, a patriotism, and a poetry. Hence, the sacred song of the Hebrews stands alone; and hence we may draw the deduction, that its equal we shall never see again, till again religion enshrine the earth with an atmosphere as it then enshrined Palestine-till poets are the organs, not only of their personal belief, but of the general sentiment around them, and have become but the high priests in a vast sanctuary, where all shall be worshippers, because all is felt to be divine. How this high and solemn reference to the Supreme Intelligence and Great Whole comes forth in all the varied forms of Hebrew poetry! Is it the pastoral?—The Lord is the shepherd. Is it elegy-It bewails his absence. Is it ode?-It cries aloud for his return, or shouts his praise. Is it the historical ballad ?—It recounts his deeds. Is it the penitential psalm ?-Its climax is, 'Against Thee only have I sinned.' Is it the didactic poem ?-Running down through the world, like a scythed chariot, and hewing down before it all things as vanity, it clears the way to the final conclusion, 'Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.' Is it a 'burden,' tossed, as from a midnight mountain, by the hand of lonely seer, toward the lands of Egypt and Babylon - It is the burden of the Lord; his the handful of devouring fire flung by the fierce prophet. Is it apologue, or emblem !—God's meaning lies in the hollow of the parable; God's eye glares the 'terrible crystal' over the rushing wheels. Even the love-canticle seems to rise above itself, and behold a greater than Solomon, and a fairer than his Egyptian spouse, are here. Thus, from their poetry, as from a thousand mirrors, flashes back the one awful face of their God."

In introducing his remarks on the poetry of Amos, Mr Gilfillan, in allusion to that prophet's want of literary culture, says " As Burns among the poets, is Amos among the prophets." The parallel is an obvious one so far; but, ere he closes, the author finds occasion to introduce a contrast between the two, which could have suggested itself

only to a sincerely religious mind, and which only a really honest. "preacher of righteousness" would have ventured to utter:

"Amos has had a singular destiny among his fellows. Many herdsmen tended cattle in Tekoah, or gathered fruit from its sycamore trees, but on him alone lighted the spirit of inspiration. It came to him as, like Elisha, he was employed in his peaceful toil; it hurried him to duty and to danger; it made him a power among the moral princes of the land; it gave his name and his prophecy a place in an immortal volume; and from gathering sycamore fruit, it promoted him to stand below the 'tree of life,' to pluck from it, and to distribute to after ages not a few clusters, as fair as they are nutritious, of its celestial fruit. All honour to the bold herdsman of Tekoah! Nor can we close, without alluding again to the unhappy poet whose name we coupled with his at the beginning-who left the plough, not at the voice of a divine, but of an earthly impulse-whose snatches of truth, and wisdom, and virtuous sentiment, were neutralised by counter strains of coarse and ribald debauchery-who struggled all his life between light, which amounted to noon, and darkness, which was midnight-who tore and tarnished with his own hand the garland of beauty he had woven for the brow of his native land-whose name, broader in his country's literature than that of Amos in his, is broadened by the blots which surrounded, as well as by the beauties which adorned it—and of whom, much as we admire his genius and the many manly qualities of his character, we are prone to say, Pity, for his own sake and his country's, that he had not tarried behind his plough upon the mountainside,' for then, if his 'glory' had been less, his 'joy' had been greater, or, if ruined, he at least had 'fallen alone in his iniquity.""

As a fitting pendant to the above, we may cite the following:

"Standing above the prospective wreck of all such abortive replies, the author of Job discloses that path which the 'vulture's eye hath not seen,' and the gates of which no golden key can open-' Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.' Simple the finger-post, but it points out the truth. Here, at last, we find that portion of the universal knowledge, truth, or wisdom, which satisfies without cloying the mind-which reflects the inner man of the heart as 'face, face in a glass'—which gives a feeling of firm ground below us, firm if there be terra firma in the universe-and on which have reposed, in death, the wisest of mankind. Newton laid not his dying head on his 'Principia,' but on his Bible; Cowper, not on his Task,' but on his Testament; Hall, not on his wide fame, but on his humble hope;' Michael Angelo, not on that pencil which alone coped with the grandeurs of the 'Judgment,' but on that grace which, for him, shore the judgment of its terrors; Coleridge, not on his limitless genius, but on 'Mercy for praise, to be forgiven for fame.' Often must the wanderer mid American forests lay his head upon a rude log, while above it is the abyss of stars. Thus the weary, heavy-laden, dying Christian leans upon the rugged and narrow Cross, but looks up the while to the beaming canopy of immortal life-to those things which are above.'"

One of the finest chapters in the volume is that on the poetry of the Gospels, in the course of which, the author is chiefly occupied in delineating the character, and describing the teaching, of our Lord. The chapter concludes thus:—

"Thus faintly have we sought to depict the character and eloquence of Jesus. Scripture writers did not, nor needed to do it. They never say, in so many words, Christ was very eloquent, very wise, very humble, very merciful, or very holy. But

they record his Sermon on the Mount; they show him taking the Pharisees in their own snare; they register his tears at the tomb of Lazarus; they paint the confusion of the witnesses, who came, but could not bear testimony against him; and they tell of his washing his disciples' feet. We have, alas! no new facts to record of him; and must say of that life so marvellous, yet humane, 'It is finished.' But even as the most splendid object in the sky is perpetually painted, yet always new, as the sun is unceasingly rendered back by the wave of the ocean, the dewdrop, and the eye of man, so let it be with the Sun of Righteousness. Let his blessed image be reflected from page to page, each catching more fully than another some aspect of his glory, till he shall himself stand before the trembling mirror of the earth, 'as he is,' and till 'every eye shall see him.' Then, probably, it may be found that all the proud portraits which the genius of Taylor, and Harris, and Rousseau, and Goethe, has drawn of him, are not comparable with that cherished likeness of his face and nature which lies in the bosom of the lowly Christian, like a star in a deep-sunken well, the more glorious that it is solitary and seldom seen, for ever trembling, but never passing away."

We could add largely to these extracts, but our space is rapidly contracting, and we must desist. They will, we trust, suffice to give our readers some idea of the interest and power of that work from which they have been taken.

We forbear any analysis of the volume, as none could be given within our allotted limits, such as our own judgment would approve, or such as would materially aid our readers in forming an idea of what they may expect from the work itself, supposing them yet to be personally unacquainted with it. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with saying, that Mr Gilfillan has treated the whole subject of Biblical poetry with unexampled fulness, and in a style which not only makes his work the best yet given to the world on that subject, but one of the noblest pieces of literary criticism, in any department, which our age has produced.

The author tells us, in his preface, that, " in order that his book may be tried by its own pretensions," he "deems it necessary to premise that, while containing much literary criticism, and a considerable proportion of biographical and religious matter, and while meant to develop indirectly a subsidiary argument for the truth and divinity of the Bible, its main ambition is to be a prose poem, or hymn, in honour of the poetry and poets of the inspired volume, although, as the reader will perceive, he has occasionally diverged into the analysis of Scripture characters, and more rarely into cognate fields of literature or of speculation." In these words, Mr Gilfillan very fairly describes his work. It is, perhaps, a poetic eulogy on the poetry of Scripture, quite as much as a critical analysis of it, and judgment upon it. To this, we suppose, few will object, assuming it to be competently executed; for, after all, the true office of literary criticism on such a subject is to catch the genuine spirit and utterance of the writers, and bring them home to the hearts and imaginations of others. This, Mr Gilfillan has, in our judgment, most successfully accomplished.

In the critical estimate he has formed of the different sacred writers, we, for the most part, concur. Some of his delineations strike us as singularly felicitous, especially where he strikes off, in a terse line or

two, the literary characteristics of those whose writings he is surveying, or the personal peculiarities of the individuals whom he notices. How graphic, for instance, is the following:

"The glory of Solomon' is a troubled and fearful glory: how different from the meek light of the life of Isaac-most blameless of patriarchs-whose history is that of a quiet, grey autumnal day, where, with no sun visible, all above and below seems diluted sunshine-a day as dear as it is beautiful, and which dies regretted, as it has lived enjoyed!"

Take also the following picture of Isaiah:

"He was a prince amid a generation of princes-a Titan among a tribe of Titans ; and of all the prophets who rose on aspiring pinion to meet the Sun of Righteousness, it was his-the Evangelical Eagle-to mount highest, and to catch on his wing the richest anticipation of his rising."

Speaking of the occasional streaks of delicate loveliness which vein the dark marble of Ezekiel's sculpture, he says:—

"In this point of his genius, Ezekiel resembles Dante. Like Dante, he loves the terrible; but, like Dante too, the beautiful seems to love him."

From some, however, of these apophthegmatical judgments, we feel constrained to dissent. It does not appear to us an absolutely certain matter that, "be the author of the book of Job who he may, he was not Moses;" we think, both external and internal evidence conspire very strongly to support the ancient opinion, which Mr Gilfillan thus oracularly sets aside. We can by no means regard Moses as "the Homer of his country;" saving the one element of antiquity, we can trace no special affinity between the serene, stately, cultivated, and princely leader and lawgiver of the Jews, the "king in Jeshurun;" and the simple, ardent, many-sided rhapsodist of Chios, who looked on nature and man with the eye of an inspired child, and wandered about, singing his ballads of love and war, from palace to cottage, alike welcome in either. What Mr Gilfillan means by saying of St Paul, that "his system is a dark but rounded orb," we cannot well conceive, having always regarded dialectical clearness and method as among that apostle's most conspicuous qualities. And when Mr Gilfillan describes the Apostle Peter-the main instrument of the triumphs of Pentecost, the acknowledged president among the apostles, a recognised pillar in the church, and for many years one of its chief directive minds-describes him as "the Oliver Goldsmith of the New Testament," we feel as if something worse than an error in judgment and a violation of good taste had been committed. We should relish Mr Gilfillan's writing more, if there were a little more of repose in it-if it were less bustling and strained. But, let him write as he likes, we shall be glad to receive another such volume from his pen-only we would rather he should not " develop further his views of the reconciliation of man in another, and probably a fictitious form." He will commit a great mistake if he does.

94

CARLINGTON CASTLE: A TALE OF THE JESUITS.

CHAP. IV.

THE long-expected period arrived at last; and Dora opened her eyes on the day that gave her independence. There was somewhat, perhaps, of proud exultation in her heart, as she gazed from her window over the wide scene, reposing in the soft light of the early dawn, which henceforth was to own no rule but hers; but there was more of a strong, loving nature's desire untrammelled to fulfil its vocation; and her heart swelled at the thought of the happiness it would now be in her power to confer on that grateful and devoted people. Dora had ere now received visits from nearly all the neighbouring families, and returned some of them. She was not, however, aware, that, in despite of her commands, and notwithstanding all O'Brien's convenient failures of memory, several of their Protestant neighbours had been excluded, and the very names she would least have wished excluded, omitted in the list of invitations to the fete with which her birthday was to be celebrated. The morning was brilliant, the air soft and warm, and Dora's heart, revelling in the consciousness of a liberty her late annoyances had rendered more valuable, and radiant with anticipations of future happiness, was unclouded as the sky above her. The guests arrived early. Dora welcomed many of them in the park, where the festivities had already begun; and the greater part of the morning was spent in wandering from one gay group to another, listening to the national melodies, and watching the merry dances of the peasantry. Wherever Dora appeared, she was hailed with acclamations; and shouts of "long live your ladyship," "many happy days may ye see," "great be yer honour and glory," resounded around her.

Late in the afternoon, a carriage drove up. Two ladies and a gentleman alighted from it, and were introduced to Dora by Mr Mowbray, as Sir Eustace, Lady, and Miss Fitzgerald. She was too much interested by the appearance of the group, to observe the scowl upon the brow of the priest; but she could not avoid remarking it, when Lady Fitzgerald regretted having missed her when she had called a few days before.

"I did not know of your visit," she said; "how careless you must have thought me."

"Nay," replied Lady Fitzgerald, "I only regret that we have not sooner enjoyed the pleasure of meeting you; but I trust we shall often see you at Ballyrowan. Indeed, I must prefer my claim as a relation to an early visit."

"A relation!" said Dora, involuntarily; then suddenly checked herself, from a mingled feeling of surprise at her own ignorance of this, and dread of giving pain by acknowledging it. But Lady Fitzgerald's quick eye had already marked her embarrassment, and but too easily divined the cause.

"You did not know how near a kindred I claim, Miss Mowbray," she said, while an expression of sadness crossed her features. "I am the sister of your mother, by a former marriage; but, whilst still young, I