s, misery, and madness of the sensual life; to prove the
superiority of the Christian to the man of the world, both in life and in
death, and the worthlessness of merely human friendship; to argue, from
nature and reason, the truth of man's immortality; to shew the
reasonableness of religion, and to inculcate the necessity of a divine
revelation, and of a propitiatory sacrifice. That this argument is always
steadily pursued, or logically pled, we do not pretend. It has its
flaws;--we particularly demur to many of its proofs of the immortality of
the soul, which seem to us very feeble and unsatisfactory; but, taking it
as a whole, it is unanswerable and overwhelming. Its links are of red-hot
iron; its appeals to the conscience are irresistible; and he who can read
it with indifference, or rise from it unimpressed and unawed, must be
either something worse or something less than man. It needs not to be
surrounded by panegyrics. Convinced, purified, elevated, saved Souls, are
the gems in its crown. We are inclined to believe that, in this aspect,
the "Night Thoughts" has effected more practical good than the "Paradise
Lost." The latter is a splendid picture; the former a searching, powerful
sermon. Now, although pictures with a strong moral contained in them have
often done much good, they want the point, emphasis, and effect of great
sermons. You may gaze long enough at Milton with no feeling besides
admiration of his genius; but in every page Young is grappling with your
conscience, and saying, "Don't look at me, but look to yourself." Foster,
one of the greatest of our practical reasoners on religion, has been much
indebted to Young, whom he resembled also in the sombre grandeur of his
genius.

Young's imagery is distinguished by its richness, originality, and
exceeding boldness. It was verily a new thing in that timid and
conventional age. Like the imagery of all highest poets, it is selected
alike from low and from lofty objects, from the gay and the gloomy, from
stars and dunghills. His mind moves along through the poem like a great
wheel, now descending and now ascending, easy to criticise, but
impossible to resist. You may question the taste of many of his figures,
such as that of the Sun--

"Rude drunkard, rising rosy from the main;"

or when he speaks of God as the "Great Philanthropist;" or calls the moon
"the Portland of the skies;" but you always feel yourself in contact with
a new, native, overflowing min