is matter of experience. It is not that we doubt the
tenor of the Scripture, regarding the final conversion of the whole
world, or that we close our eyes to the wonderful arrangements, if the
expression may be used, which Divine Providence seems everywhere
making, with a view to that great consummation. One circumstance, in
particular, arrests our attention, as pervading the whole of modern
history, but gradually standing out in a stronger light as the view
draws nearer our own times: we mean the rapid increase of colonization
_from Christian nations only_. So that the larger half of the globe,
and what in the nature of things will soon become the more populous,
is already, in profession, Christian. The event, therefore, is
unquestionable: but experience, we fear, will hardly warrant the
exulting anticipations, which our author, in common with many of whose
sincerity there is no reason to doubt, has raised upon it. It is but
too conceivable that the whole world may become nominally Christian,
yet the face of things may be very little changed for the better. And
any view of the progress of the gospel, whether in verse or in prose,
which leaves out this possibility, is so far wanting in truth, and in
that depth of thought which is as necessary to the higher kinds of
poetical beauty as to philosophy or theology itself.

This, however, is too solemn and comprehensive a subject to be lightly
or hastily spoken of. It is enough to have glanced at it, as
accounting, in some measure, for the general failure of modern poets
in their attempts to describe the predicted triumph of the gospel in
the latter days.

To return to the sacred and domestic poems, thus advantageously
distinguished from that which gives name to the volume. Affection,
whether heavenly or earthly, is the simplest idea that can be; and in
the graceful and harmonious expression of it lies the principal beauty
of these poems. In the descriptive parts, and in the development of
abstract sentiment, there is more of effort, and occasionally
something very like affectation: approaching, in one instance (the
_Nightingale_,) far nearer than we could wish, to the most vicious of
all styles, the style of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his miserable followers.

Now, these are just the sort of merit and the sort of defect, which
one might naturally expect to find united; the very simplicity of
attachment, which qualifies the mind for sacred or domestic poetry,
making its movements