s not averse to a sober glee, a composed gaiety that,
although we cannot say it ever so far sparkles out as to deserve to be
called absolutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his lighter-toned
compositions, which it is peculiarly pleasant now and then to feel in
the writings of a man whose genius is naturally, and from the course of
life, not gloomy indeed, but pensive, and less disposed to indulge
itself in smiles than in tears.

SACRED POETRY.

CHAPTER III.

People nowadays will write, because they see so many writing; the
impulse comes upon them from without, not from within; loud voices from
streets and squares of cities call on them to join the throng, but the
still small voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute;
and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, or
linnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at the
worst an oratorio of ganders and bubbleys?

At this particular juncture or crisis, the disease would fain assume the
symptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious--all
smitten with sanctity--Christian all over--and crossing and jostling on
the Course of Time--as they think, on the high road to Heaven and
Immortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites.
Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shops, and, crowned with
foolscap, repeat to Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggrel to the
Deity! They bandy about the Bible as if it were an Album. They forget
that the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well as a set of
verses to be damned; they look forward to the First of the Month with
more fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and beseech a critic to be
merciful upon them with far more earnestness than they ever beseeched
their Maker. They pray through the press--vainly striving to give some
publicity to what must be private for evermore; and are seen wiping
away, at tea-parties, the tears of contrition and repentance for capital
crimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily,
that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it is
felt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowls
with their own unsaleable sheets. They are frequently so singed; yet
singeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed;
and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep still
gasping and shooting out their tongues, and