"Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun The combat deepens. On, ye brave, Few, few, shall part where many meet The Death of Gertrude. Clasp me a little longer on the brink And when this heart hath ceased to beat-oh! think, And let it mitigate thy woe's excess, That thou hast been to me all tenderness, And friend to more than human friendship just. Oh! by that retrospect of happiness, And by the hopes of an immortal trust, God shall assuage thy pangs-when I am laid in dust! ... Half could I bear, methinks, to leave this earth,— Of one dear pledge;-but shall there then be none In future times-no gentle little one, To clasp thy neck, and look, resembling me? Gertrude of Wyoming, pt. iii. st. 29, 31. "Tis distance lends enchantment to the view Pleasures of Hope, pt. i. l. 7. The world was sad-the garden was a wild; What though my winged hours of bliss have been, Ib., pt. ii. l. 375. 'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, To live in hearts we leave behind Lochiel's Warning. Hallowed Ground. The torrent's smoothness, ere it dash below. Gertrude, pt. ii. st. 5. 221. Thomas Brown, 1778-1820. (Handbook, pars. 425, 454.) Evidences of the Immortality of the Soul. The mind is a substance distinct from the bodily organ, simple and incapable of addition or subtraction: Nothing which we are capable of observing in the Universe has ceased to exist since the Universe began: These two propositions, as far as analogy can have weight, instead of leading by inference to the proposition, The mind, which existed as a substance before death, ceases wholly to exist after death, lead rather to the opposite proposition, The mind does not perish in the dissolution of the body. In judging according to the light of nature, it is on the immaterialism of the thinking principle that I consider the belief of its immortality to be most reasonably founded. . . . Besides God has formed mankind for progressive improvement: as is manifest from those susceptibilities of progress which are visible in the attainments of every individual mind; and still more in the wider contrast which the splendid results of science in whole nations, that may be considered almost as nations of phiCosophers, now exhibit, when we think at the same time of the rude arts of the savage, in his hut, or in the earlier cave, in which he seemed almost of the same race with the wild animal with which he struggled for his home. But if God love the progress of mankind, . . . is it possible for us to conceive that when the mind has made an advance which would render all future acquisitions even on earth far more easy, the very excellence of past attainments should seem a reason for suspending the progress altogether; and that He who could have no other wish than the happiness and general excellence of man in forming him what he is should destroy his own precious work, merely because man, if he were permitted to continue longer in being, would be more happy and excellent? ... If even we in such a moment abstracting from all selfish considerations, would feel it a sort of crime to destroy with no other view than that of mere destruction, what was more worthy of love than in years of earlier being, are we to believe that He who loves what is noble in man more than our frail heart can love it, will regard the improvement only as a signal of destruction. It may be only a slight presumption we are thus entitled to form, but at least whatever presumption we are entitled to form is not unfavourable to our hopes of immortality. There is another moral character in which the Deity may be considered at such a moment-the character of justice. . . . In this, too, may be found equal or still stronger presumptive evidence that the years of our earthly joy or sorrow are not the whole of our existence. The force of the argument consists in the unequal distribution of happiness on earth, as not proportioned to the virtues or vices of those to whom it is given. Virtue indeed cannot be very miserable, and vice cannot be very happy. But the virtuous may have sorrows from which the vicious are free, and the vicious have enjoyments not directly accompanied with vice. Increase of guilt even by stupefying the conscience may occasion less rather than more remorse; and the atrocious profligate be less miserable than the timid and almost penitent victim of passions which overpowers a reluctance of passions which is sincere, even when it is too feeble to make adequate resistance to the overwhelming force. It is to futurity therefore that we must look for the equalizing-if any equalizing there be-of the present disproportions. I am aware of an argument which may be adduced to obviate the force of the reasoning that is founded on the prospect of such moral retribution. If in the present state of things the virtuous are rewarded and the vicious punished, we do not need a future state for doing what has been done already; and if the virtuous are not rewarded, nor the vicious punished in that only scene of which we have any experience, what title have we to infer from this very disorder, qualities in the Supreme Governor of the world which the present scene of his government does not itself display. The argument would indeed be, I will readily admit, most forcible, if we had no mode of discovering the moral sentiments of the Sovereign of nature, unless in the pain or pleasure he bestows; and if no advantage were to flow from the unequal distribution of happiness on earth that could reconcile these with a high moral character of the Governor of the universe. But if such advantages do really arise from the temporary disproportion, as compensated afterwards by the distributions of another life; and if the moral character of God be discoverable by us in other ways, the argument which supposes us to have no other mode of inferring the divine character than the mere distribution of pleasure and pain must lose its weight. If the temporary disproportion be of advantage upon the whole, he who is benevolent cannot fail to win that very disproportion which is thus by supposition advantageous; and he who has all the sources of happiness in his power, through every future age, can have no difficulty in accommodating a temporary and necessary disproportion to justice the most exact. Lectures on the Philosophy of the Mind. Lect. xcvii. 222. William Hazlitt, 1778-1830. (Handbook, par. 430.) Influence of the Reformation on the Elizabethan Literature. The age of Elizabeth was distinguished, beyond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours,—statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. . . For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circum stances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character of men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach. I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the poetry of the country at the period of which I have to treat, independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, but which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the most important results. The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watchword; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back, with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermentation the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks. The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a |