at once ludicrously and
lamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthful
creatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins of
shameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and by
persons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to that
vulgar altitude--the gallows. The darker--the stronger passions,
forsooth! And what hast thou to do--my dove-eyed Margaret, with the
darker and stronger passions? Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still,
serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and the
weaker passions thine--brighter indeed--yet say not _weaker_, for they
are strong as death;--Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, and
Sorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears--be these all thy own--and
sometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imagination
be spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescence--a Lunar
Rainbow.

There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christian Year"--such perfect
sincerity, and consequently such simplicity--that though the production
of a fine and finished scholar, we cannot doubt that it will some day or
other find its way into many of the dwellings of humble life. Such
descent, if descent it be, must be of all receptions the most delightful
to the heart of a Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more widely
over the land, why fear that it will deaden religion? Let us believe
that it will rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time true poetry,
such as this, of a character somewhat higher than probably can be yet
felt, understood, and appreciated by the people, will come to be easy
and familiar, and blended with all the other benign influences breathed
over their common existence by books. Meanwhile the "Christian Year"
will be finding its way into many houses where the inmates read from the
love of reading--not for mere amusement only, but for instruction and a
deeper delight; and we shall be happy if our recommendation causes its
pages to be illumined by the gleams of a few more peaceful hearths, and
to be rehearsed by a few more happy voices in the "parlour twilight."

We cannot help expressing the pleasure it has given us to see so much,
true poetry coming from Oxford. It is delightful to see that classical
literature, which sometimes, we know not how, certainly has a chilling
effect on poetical feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, and
causing it to produce itself in so