he themes of his muse; and in his long
poem, designated in its second title "Intellect without God," he has set
that personage a-reasoning in a style which, I fear, more completely
demonstrates the absence of God than the presence of intellect. It has,
however, sometimes occurred to me, that a poet of the larger calibre,
who to the Divine faculty and vision added such a knowledge of geologic
science as that which Virgil possessed of the Natural History of his
time, or as that which Milton possessed of the general learning of
_his_, might find, in a somewhat similar subject, the materials of a
poem which "posterity would not willingly let die." There is one of the
satirists justly severe on a class of critics

"Who, drily plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made."

But at some risk of rendering myself obnoxious to his censure, I shall
attempt indicating at least the general scope and character of what the
schoolmen might term a _possible_ poem; which, if vivified by the genius
of some of the higher masters of the lyre, broad of faculty, and at once
great poets and great men, might prove one precious boon more to the
world, suited, conformably to the special demands of these latter times,
to

"assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man."

There has been war among the intelligences of God's spiritual creation.
Lucifer, son of the morning, has fallen like fire from heaven; and our
present earth, existing as a half-extinguished hell, has received him
and his angels. Dead matter exists, and in the unembodied spirits
vitality exists; but not yet in all the universe of God has the vitality
been united to the matter; animal life, to even the profound
apprehension of the fallen angel, is an inconceivable idea. Meanwhile,
as the scarce reckoned centuries roll by, vacantly and dull, like the
cheerless days and nights over the head of some unhappy captive, the
miserable prisoners of our planet become aware that there is a slow
change taking place in the condition of their prison-house. Where a low,
dark archipelago of islands raise their flat backs over the thermal
waters, the heat glows less intensely than of old; the red fire bursts
forth less frequently; the dread earthquake shakes more rarely; save in
a few centres of intenser action, the great deep no longer boils like a
pot; and though the heavens are still shut out by a gray ceiling of
thick vapor, through