by its rising in its moral tone above the average height of the popular mind-the mind of those persons' who constitute the reading public of the current century. In fact, these poems are little likely to sail round our book-club circles, in the wake of Childe Harold and its applauded compeers. They will be valuable principally to those religious persons, whose views of life and manners have been the joint product of correct observation and experience. If, in addition to this, their own personal history is clouded by the painful remembrance of circumstances in which themselves or their former associates acted an erroneous, or equivocal, or criminal part, they will find in these pages a mirror which reflects the saddening recollection with useful fidelity. A performance thus characterized cannot fail to prove to those who really sympathise with its general sentiments, a profitable companion for a leisure hour. Miss Taylor's Essays are in number thirteen. Among the shorter ones, those called "A Fable," and "The Squire's Pew," may be se lected as the best. Another of intermediate length is entitled "Aims at Happiness." It reminds us of the character of Flatus, in Law's Serious Call, and is meant to describe the effects of ennui, and of the victim's abortive at tempts to banish them by the variations of busy idleness. The following lines from this tale shall be the reader's first introduction to the volume, and they seem to us to afford a fair specimen of Miss Taylor's powers. "How happy they whom poverty denies To exeente the projects they devise! But Felix, well supplied with evil's root, Endur'd the penance, while he pluck'd the fruit. He sold his house, relenting all the while, And built a cottage,quite in cottage style: The tasty trellis o'er the front is seen, With rose and woodbine woven in be tween: CHRIST, OBSERV. No. 194. We cannot spare room for noticing farther the minor Essays, some of which indicate considerable liveliness of fancy. Each of them, indeed, includes a useful moral; and, if this be amalgamated in the reader's mind with the amusement, even Felix himself will not lounge over them in vain. "Prejudice," the first as well as the most elaborate poem in the volume, has already been mentioned, with a notice of its comparative inferiority. It is, nevertheless, an essay not without force, and, in detached portions, will interest the reader. Its general design is to illustrate the universal influence of prejudice in mankind, particularly in regard to genuine Christianity. We shall leave this poem to the candid perusal of our readers, without any further remark than our sincere wish that it may be but with a desire of benefiting by read, not in the spirit of criticism, the perusal. From the next poem called "Experience," which is certainly entitled to higher praise than that R And 'tis a thing impossible, we find, Go where we will, to leave ourselves behind. Feeling that burden wearisome to hear, We seek to shift the scene, and change the air, From homespun cares commence our sanguine flight, And on some verdant, peaceful vale alight. Sweet is the scene, and sweet the tranquil hour; Heaven, pitying, hears the intemperate The harassed mind perceives its sooth appeal, And suits its answer to our truest weal. The self-sought idol, if at last bestow'd, Proves, what our wilfulness requir'da goad; But if witheld, in pity, from our prayer, We rave awhile of torment and despair, Refuse the proffered comfort with disdain, And slight the thousand blessings that remain. Meantime, Heaven bears the grievous wrong, and waits In patient pity till the storm abates; Applies with gentlest hand the healing balm, Or speaks the ruffled mind into a calm; Deigning, perhaps, to shew the mourner soon, "Twas special mercy that denied the boon. "Our blasted hopes, our aims and wishes crost, Are worth the tears and agonies they cost, ing power: For that short moment novelty can please, Imagines joy and health in every breeze. The moment past-the quick returning mood Spreads its own tinge on grove, and vale, and flood: The pearly heaven is tinctur'd with our pain, And casts its faint reflection on the main; The hills' bare outline seems to repre sent The very features of our discontent: The rock's fantastic fragments range as though Fresh shiver'd to the pattern of our woe: In vain we argue with ourselves, and prove The scene delightful, just the kind we love; In vain we nrge and strain the languid sense Tow'ring a drop of happiness from thence. When the poor mind, by fruitless efforts Yet charge not rocks and hills with thy spent, With food and raiment learns to be con tent. Bounding with youthful hope, the restless mind, Leaves that divine monition far behind; complaint: The scene is lovely, but the heart is faint. Invite sweet peace and charity to flow, And nature brightens to her purest glow." pp. 49-54. The remainder of this pensive and instructive piece is chiefly occupied by a story illustrating the nature of experience, which, though the language is frequently feeble and colloquial, abounds with so many just and striking delineations, and suggests so many use; ful recollections, as to give it a high place in Christian estimation, when compared with not a few of the admired poems of the present day. It has at least deepened our conviction, that the powers of our great poets, if they were exercised on Christian subjects, in a Christian spirit, would derive thence a superadded dignity and splendor far beyond any efforts we have yet witnessed even of their commanding genius. "Egotism," which might have borne, perhaps, the more English title of Selfishness, is constructed with much skill and knowledge of the human heart; and we should readily linger awhile among its subjects, but that we are desirous of contrasting with the citation last made a more lively extract from the piece called "Poetry and Reality." It must be premised, that the topic discussed under this title leads the author to delineate the devotional exercises of picturesque religion in the bosom of a sentimental poet. ""Tis Sabbath morning, and at early hour The poet seeks his own sequestered bower. views; Indulges languid wishes that mankind Were all poetical, and all refin'd'; Forms lofty schemes the flood of vice to stem, (But preaching Jesus, is not one of them;) And thus in waking dreams from day to day, He wears his tranquil, useless life away. storm." pp. 79, et seq. Across the church-yard where this refiner is indulging his wayward fancies hastens that most unpoetical personage, an itinerant preacher (p. 88), to whose object and character the writer allows every claim of sincerity and truth. In this place it may be proper to apprize the reader, that Miss Taylor is a Non conformist, and that her present interest:-and she is perfectly able publication indicates, in various to analyse the fact, that an archplaces, the tone and tact of dissent. bishop in his palace may be poor But though evidently labouring in spirit, while a mendicant sectary, under no small measure of preju- in the neighbouring cottage, thanks dice from this source, she has no God that he is not as other men need to be informed that the pat- are, or even as this prelate. Her tern itinerant described in her consciousness indeed, of the depages, cannot, in an age of obtru- pressed and earthly condition of sive and questionable zeal, be re- the religious world is strikingly de. ceived as a fair average specimen veloped in the last two poems in of the mass. Pattern preachers her volume called "The World in may doubtless be found in the the Heart," and "The World in the lower circles of religionists; but House." These Essays are likely it is only common caution, in the to be the most generally beneficial existing circumstances of the Chris- in the collection. They are more tian world, to balance the ecclesi- intelligible than their predecessors. astical account, by describing also The reader may enjoy them with those preachers who, whether sta- an inferior share of the qualificationary or ambulatory, kindle the tions derived from experience, fires of the pulpit at the altar of and long familiarity with the prethe world. If Miss Taylor will ceding subjects. They speak of draw from the stores of her mind, things visible, audible, domestic, an essay under the title of "The and of daily occurrence in the World in the Christian Church," middle and commercial classes of she may, as we anticipate, paint society. The former of the two with vivid colours, the form and poems opens with a picture of an pressure of the time, as they are affluent professor of religion reposseen in the mere sectarians of every ing in the noon day beams of pros. communion. She could tell of the perity; surrounded by expensive consequences of half-knowledge luxuries, enjoyed by himself and grafted upon native ignorance; of family; without cards, dancing, a change of opinions mistaken for and the theatre; and with a methe possession of principle; of in- chanical routine of religious exter. dividuals who display, in a licensed nals. He is, of course, a patron barn, the airs of a lord cardinal; of the magnificent Christian instiof a partisan's fiery attachment to tutions which mark the present age. the theology of one individual, and The latter circumstance is thus his refusal to read the refutation of amplified :such theology by another; of an orator's self-idolatry on the bustings of a charitable society; and of a thousand other matters which demonstrate the existence of the polluted nature of man, in the very situations from which, as the unwary might calculate, ambition and vanity would flee away. Miss Taylor must be well aware, that the identity of the human character accounts equally for the conduct of the intolerant and intrigue ing Dissenter, and the stiff and poli. tic Churchman ; and that these men are different, merely by the acci. dents of education and worldly "Besides, our fair professor's name On neat esquir'd committee-lists enroll'd, mite; Duly proclaiming every right-hand deed, away: Perhaps, his pious zeal may even reach To every titled Christian in the throng. For lady charities and Sunday-schools Set down their names, their fair com mittees call; Busy and pleas'd, if they may ma nage all. Meantime, the pious bustle, prais'd and told, Has cost them nothing but their father's gold." pp. 144, 145. Most persons, we suppose, have seen or heard of the originals of the above sketch; and, as the general subject conducts us once more to the interminable discussion con cerning the Bible Society, we may observe in passing, that its opulent patrons, as well as all who patronize it by their eloquence or activity, will do well to remember the caution administered by a revered prelate at a recent anniversary; namely, that "the enemies of the institution are very apt to measure its pretensions by the lives of its friends;" and we recollect, that the late lamented Mr. Henry Thornton inculcated a similar lesson, when, at a public meeting in Southwark, he reminded the members of an auxiliary society, that, by circulating the Scriptures among others, "they had given a bond for their own good behaviour." If any reader feel disposed to blame our recurrence to these monitory speeches, he may find our apology in the following lines. Let each grant credit to his neighbour's share, But analyze his own with utmost care.That thus the scale is turn'd, the praise is due To Him, who hears and owns the righteous few ; Whose silent prayers and labour Heaven employs To do the good while others make the noise." pp. 145, 146. Willingly, did the limits of the article permit, could we transcribe, page after page, from the conclud. ing Essay. Our next extract, which the reader will probably consider as taking an awful range on the limits of eternity, may, with every propriety, be the last, "Are there not portions of the sacred word So often preach'd and quoted, read and heard, That, though of deepest import, and design'd With joy or fear to penetrate the mind, They pass away with notice cold and brief, Like drops of rain upon a glossy leaf? Such as the final sentence on that day When all distinctions shall be done away, But that the righteous Judge shall bring "How customs and opinions changé If we sustain'd a place on Zion's hill, their place! Religion, now, is scarcely in disgrace : Her outward signs, at least, will even raise Your credit high in these convenient days. And call'd him Lord-but if we did his will. What, if the stranger, sick, and captive lie Naked and hungry, and we pass him by! Or do but some extorted pittance throw, Fashion, herself, the cause of Virtue To save our credit, not to ease his woe! Or, strangers to the charity whence springs pleads, Becomes chief patroness of pious deeds, And lets us e'en pursue, without restraint, What once had stamp'd us puritan and saint. The good is done,-let fashion bear her part, And claim the praise, with all the Christian's heart: Motives are all in Heaven's impartial eye, But 'tis not ours to doubt and give the |