his august and dreadful majesty, but in the
wonders of His tender love:

'I trust in thee, Divine Mediator! I have chanted the canticle of
the new covenant; my race is run; Thou hast pardoned my tottering
steps! Sound! sound, quivering strings of my lyre! My heart is full
of the bliss of gratitude to my God! What recompense could I ask? I
have tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!'

Not less devout than the 'Messiah,' but far more beautiful, is Tasso's
exquisite 'Jerusalem Delivered.'

A complete system of theology may be found in the majestic pages of
Milton's sublime 'Paradise Lost.'

That which with the heathen poets was but an episode, the religious
element of the poem, as the 'Descent into Hades,' the 'Wanderings
through Elysium,' etc., etc., ends by absorbing the entire work after
the advent of Christianity. The 'Divine Comedy,' the 'Paradise Lost,'
and the 'Messiah,' form a magnificent Christian trilogy, of which the
scene is almost always in a supernatural sphere, and in which the
principal actor is--the Providence of God.

On this subject we have no further time to dilate, and the reader may
easily verify its truth for himself. If he would convince himself that
the deepest draughts of inspiration have ever been drawn by the highest
artists from religious ideas, let him add to the names above given,
those of Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Tintoret, Corregio, Murillo,
Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and, in our own days,
Overbeck; let him gaze into that divine face of godlike sorrow given us
by an untaught monk, Antonio Pesenti, in his marvellous crucifix of
ivory, let him listen to the pure ethereal strains of Palestrina,
Pergolese, Marcello, Stradella, and Cherubini, and thus be assured that
religion, the love of the Infinite, is the 'Soul of Art.'

THE BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA.

The most terrible name, perhaps, in the juvenile literature of England
and English America, during the last century and a half, has been that
of WILLIAM KIDD, the pirate. In the nursery legend, in story,
and in song, the name of Kidd has stood forth as the boldest and
bloodiest of buccaneers. The terror of the ocean when abroad, he
returned from his successive voyages to line our coasts with silver and
gold, and to renew with the devil a league, cemented with the blood of
victims shot down whenever fresh returns of the precious metals were to
be hidden. According to the su