JAMES MONTGOMERY.

JAMES MONTGOMERY was born at Irvine, in Ayrshire, in 1771. His father was a Moravian missionary, who died whilst laboring for the propagation of Christianity in the island of Tobago. In 1792 he established. himself in Sheffield (where he still resides) as an assistant in a newspaper office. In a few years the paper became his own property, and he continued to conduct it up to 1825.

Mr. Montgomery's first volume of poetry appeared in 1806, and was entitled the Wanderer of Switzerland, and other poems. The Edinburgh Review of January, 1807, denounced the unfortunate volume in a style of such authoritative reprobation as no mortal verse could be expected to survive. Notwithstanding this, within eighteen months of its first issue, the fourth edition (1500 copies each) was printed. The next work of the poet was The West Indies, a poem in four parts, written in honor of the abolition of the African slave trade by the British legislature, in 1807. Shortly after this Mr. Montgomery published a volume entitled Prison Amusements. In 1813 he came forward with a more elaborate performance, The World before the Flood, a poem in the heroic couplet, and extending to ten short cantos. Thoughts on Wheels, The Climbing Boy's Soliloquy, The Pelican Island, Greenland, and his Songs of Zion, which have cheered many a Christian heart, constitute his remaining works.

From his long residence in England, he has generally been viewed as an Englishman, but there can be no doubt that much of his inspiration has been drawn from the romantic scenery and poetical associations of his boyhood, spent as it was amid Scotia's rugged hills.

THE CONNOY LOT.

ONCE in the flight of ages past,

There lived a man! and who was he?

Mortal! howe'er thy lot be cast,
That man resembled thee.

Unknown the region of his birth,

The land in which he died unknown: His name has perished from the earth, This truth survives alone!

That joy, and grief, and hope, and fear,
Alternate triumphed in his breast;
His bless and woe-a smile, a tear!
Oblivion hides the rest.

The bounding pulse, the languid limb, The changing spirits' rise and fall; We know that these were felt by him, For these are felt by all.

He suffered-but his pangs are o'er;

Enjoyed-but his delights are fled;

Had friends his friends are now no more, And foes-his foes are dead.

He loved-but whom he loved the grave
Hath lost in its unconscious womb:
O, she was fair! but nought could save
Her beauty from the tomb.

He saw whatever thou hast seen;
Encountered all that troubles thee;

He was whatever thou hast been;

He is what thou shalt be.

The rolling seasons, day and night,

Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main,

Erewhile his portion, life and light,

To him exist in vain.

The clouds and sunbeams o'er his eye

That once their shades and glory threw,

Have left in yonder silent sky

No vestige where they flew.

The annals of the human race,

Their ruins, since the world began,

Of him afford no other trace

Than this there lived a man.

LOVE OF COUNTRY AUD HOME.

THERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;-
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend

The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend;-
"Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?"
Art thou a man?-a patriot ?-look around!
O, thou shalt find, howe'er, thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home!
On Greenland's rocks, o'er rude Kamschatka's plains,
In pale Siberia's desolate domains;

When the wild hunter takes his lonely way,
Tracks through tempestuous snows his savage prey,
Or, wrestling with the might of raging seas,
Where round the Pole the eternal billows freeze,
Plucks from their jaws the stricken whale, in vain.
Plunging down headlong through the whirling main,