other charm, they may still be poetical-poetical in their recollections, beyond what human nature can be in any other state or stage of its existence.

It is an unkind propensity that many writers have, to make old women poetical through the instrumentality of their passions, exaggerating them into witches and monsters of the most repulsive description, and that not so much "to point a moral," as "to adorn a tale;" but in such instances the writer is indebted to their recollections for all the interest which his unnatural exhibitions excite-to flashes of former tenderness shooting through the gloom of despair-to bright and glowing associations following in the wake of madness-and to once familiar images of love and beauty, re-animated by a strange paradox, at the touch of the wand of death, and bending in all their early loveliness over the brink of the grave.

Infinite indeed beyond the possibility of calculation, must be the recollections and associations of her, whose long life, from its earliest to its latest period, has been a life of feeling-whose experience has been that of impressions, rather than events-and whose sun goes down amidst the varied and innumerable tints which these impressions have given to its atmosphere. Endued with an inexhaustible power of multiplying relative ideas, how melancholy must be the situation of her who was once beloved and cherished, now despised and forsaken-who in her turn loved and cherished others, and is now neglected. If she be a mother-one of those fond mothers who expect that mere indulgence is to win the lasting regard of their children, what sad thoughts must crowd upon her at every fresh instance of unkindness, and every additional proof that she has fallen away from what she was, both in her own and others' estimation. Over the brow that now frowns upon her, she perhaps has watched with unutterable tenderness through the long night when every eye but hers' was sleeping. The lips that now speak to her coldly, or answer her with silence when she speaks, she has bathed with the welcome draught when they were parched and burning with contagious fever. The scorn with which her humble pretensions are looked down upon, arises in the hearts of those for

whose higher intellectual attainments she has made every sacrifice, and exerted every faculty. And what if she be unlearned in the literature of modern times, she understands deeply and feelingly the springs of affection, and tenderness and sorrow. She knows from what source flow the bitterest tears, and

now.

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child."

She sees the young glad creatures of another generation sporting around her, and her thoughts go back to the playmates of her childhood-some reduced to the lowest state of helplessness or suffering-some dead and some forgotten. She hears the reluctant answer when she asks a kindness of one of the merry group, and she thinks of the time when kindness was more freely granted her, though far less needed than She starts at the loud laugh, but cannot understand the jest, and no one explains it to her listening ear. She loses the thread of earnest conversation, and no one restores the clue. She sits within the social circle, but forms no link in the chain of social union. Her thoughts and feelings cannot harmonize with those of her juvenile companions, and she feels in all its bitterness, that least tolerable portion of human experience-what it is to be desolate in the midst of societysurrounded by kindred and friends, and yet alone,

In looking at the situation of woman merely as regards this life, we are struck with the system of unfair dealing by which her pliable, weak and dependent nature is subjected to an infinite variety of suffering, and we are ready to exclaim, that of all earthly creatures she is the most pitiable. And so unquestionably she is, when unenlightened by those higher views which lead her hopes away from the disappointments of the present world, to the anticipated fruition promised to the faithful in the world to come. But the whole life of woman, when studied with reference to eternity, presents a view of the great plan of moral discipline mercifully designed to assist her right conduct through the trials and temptations which surround her path. In childhood she is necessarily instructed in what

belongs to social and domestic duty, and here she learns the difficult but important task of submitting, and of making her own gratification give place to that of others. In youth she is plunged into a sphere of greater temptations, and of more intense enjoyments, where her experience, embracing the widest extremes of pain and pleasure, teaches her all the different means to be made use of in avoiding or palliating the one, and promoting the other. As a wife and a mother she has an opportunity of acting upon the knowledge thus acquired, and if her practice does honour to her theory, it is here that she obtains an importance, and derives a satisfaction, which might be dangerous even to a disciplined mind, did not age steal on and diffuse his sombre colouring over the pleasant pictures to which her affections had given too warm a glow, and which her happiness had persuaded her to be satisfied with contemplating. But this cold, blank medium intervening between life and eternity -between beauty and ashes-between love and death, comes to warn her that all she has been desiring, is but as the scattering of the harvest to be reaped in heaven; that all she has been trusting in, is but typical of that which endures for ever; and that all she has been enjoying, is but a foretaste of eternal felicity.

Let then the aged woman be no longer an object of contempt. She is helpless as a child; but as a child she may be learning the last awful lesson from her Heavenly Father. Her feeble step is trembling on the brink of the grave; but her hopes may be firmly planted on the better shore which lies beyond. Her eye is dim with suffering and tears; but her spiritual vision may be contemplating the gradual unfolding of the gates of eternal rest. Beauty has faded from her form; but angels in the world of light may be weaving a wreath of glory for her brow. Her lip is silent; but it may be only waiting to pour forth celestial strains of gratitude and praise. Lowly, and fallen, and sad, she sits amongst the living; but exalted, purified, and happy, she may arise from the dead. Then turn if thou wilt from the aged woman in her loneliness, but remember she is not forsaken of her God!

THE POETRY OF THE BIBLE.

IN tracing the connexion of poetry with subjects most frequently and naturally presented to our contemplation, we observe how it may be associated with our pursuits, so as to give interest to what is familiar, to refine what is material, and to heighten what is sublime. We now open the Bible, and find that poetry as a principle of intellectual enjoyment derived from association, is also diffused through every page of the sacred volume, and so diffused, that the simplest child, as well as the profoundest sage, may feel its presence. This in fact, is the great merit of poetry, (a merit which in no other volume but the Bible, can be found in perfection,) that it addresses itself so immediately to the principles of feeling inherent in our nature, as to be intelligible to those who have made but little progress in the paths of learning, at the same time that it presents a source of the highest gratification to the scholar and the philosopher. Let us refer as an example, to the first chapter of Genesis:

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.

A child but just grown familiar with the words contained in these verses, not only understands their meaning here, but feels something of their sublimity-something of the power and the majesty of the God who could create this wonderful world, whose Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and who said, Let there be light: and there was light! While learned men of all ages have agreed, that no possible combination of words, could express more clearly and powerfully than these, the potency of the first operations of almighty power of which mankind have any record.

We have more than once observed that poetry must have some reference, either uniformly or partially, to our own circumstances, situation, or experience, as well as to the more remote and varied conceptions of the imagination; and in the Scriptures,

he built there an altar to the Lord, our thoughts are led on by a natural transition to our own experience, to ask what record we have left, or could leave in the past, to prove that the same divine presence was with us in our journey through life.

The story of Hagar is one of great poetical interest. We pursue the destitute mother and her helpless child into the solitude of the wilderness, and behold a picture which has become proverbial for the utter desolation which it represents. Compelled by a stern necessity, with the ultimate good of which she was wholly unacquainted, the mother goes forth as she believes, unfriended and alone, to trust herself and the treasure of her affections to the mercy of the elements, and the shelter of the pathless wilds, unconscious that her peculiar situation is made the especial care of the Father of the fatherless, and the Protector of the forlorn.

And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.

And she went, and sat her down over against him a

that we see and feel the poetry even of the historical parts of the Bible. The separate accounts of the creation and the deluge, handed down to us in language the most intelligible and unadorned, present to the imagination pictures of sublimity so awful and impressive, that it seems not improbable we may in some measure have derived our ideas of sublimity and power, from impressions made by our first reading of the Bible. Beside which, we find descriptions of the desert, and the wilderness, the wells of water, and the goodly pastures, of the intercourse of angels with the children of men, and of the visitations of the Supreme Intelligence, if not personally, in the different manifestations of his power and his love-as a voice, and an impulse-all conveyed to us in language as simple as if a shepherd spoke of his flocks upon the mountain-as sublime as if an angel wrote the record of the world.

Nor is the poetry of the Bible by any means confined to those passages in which

me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice and wept.

And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? Fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.

operating upon the infant world. The same influence extending over the passions and affections of human nature, is described with the most touching pathos, and the most im

I will make him a great nation.

And in the following chapter, where Abraham, faithful, even to the resigning his dearest treasure, goes forth with his son, prepared to render him up if the Lord should require it at his hand;

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father and said, My father and he said, Here am I, my son: and he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

How strong must have been the faith of the patriarch at that moment; or if not, how agonizing his feelings as a father! But if there were any of the natural struggles of humanity between his faith and his love, they are sealed to us, by the simple and beautiful conclusion,-so they went both of them together.

Yet it is not merely in particular instances, such as may be singled out for examples,

ing influence, so frequently spoken of as the word of the Lord coming with irresistible power upon the instruments of his will, is nowhere set before us in a stronger light, than in the character of Balaam, when he declared that if Balak would give him his

house full of silver and gold, he could not go beyond the word of the Lord his God to do less or more. Not even when he stood upon the high place amidst the seven altars with the burning sacrifice, and all the princes of Moab around him, and knew that the express object of his calling was to curse the people whom the most high had blessed; yet here, before the multitudes assembled to hear the confirmation of their hopes, he was compelled to acknowledge how those hopes were defeated, saying,

Balak, the king of Moab, hath brought me from

Aram, out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come,

curse me Jacob, and come, defy me Israel. How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied? For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the