Almighty will show them no mercy. Often they look upon themselves as destined to be peculiar examples of divine indignation; and that, since hell is too good for them, some punishment, extra limites, is to be invented for them. Dr. Moore thinks, rightly enough we doubt not, that the worst cases of this class are found amongst such as had been taught to receive the doctrine of everlasting reprobation-certainly, the most terrible deduction that the wisdom or folly of man ever yet drew from human words.

This malady being connected with loss of energy in some part of the brain, and perhaps by a defect in the materials of the blood, there is a feeling of inability engendered which naturally produces unwillingness. The moral result of these physiological conditions is that the sensitive patient, who is ignorant of any such laws, condemns himself because he feels no lively sensations; and, as if this state was his crime, he fancies the Almighty has left him to judicial hardness of heart or set him forth before men and angels as an example of justice without mercy. In this tremendous gloom of soul the reasoning powers become obscured; and despair, working with blind instincts and terrors, leads many to self-destruction.

The proper cure for this is not those merely religious exercises which necessarily touch but a small part of the malady. What is wanted is regular bodily exercise, new objects of interest, and judicious medical treatment. The difficult point is to arouse the patient; and with what success this may be attended even in the worst cases, and how it may be accomplished, an ingenious device, related by Dr. Moore, will prove. An hypochondriacal student of Oxford, after a life of bodily indolence, imagined himself on the point of death, and ordered the passing bell to be tolled that he might hear it before he died. Bell-ringing had been one of his favourite amusements formerly; and, finding that the performance in the belfry on this occasion was most execrable, he leaped out of bed and ran to the church to show them how to toll properly, and then returned to his room to die decently, But the exercise had cured him; and, having been thus once diverted from one constant train of thought, he could now attend to other subjects than his own morbid impressions. From that time both reason and health began to return,

In our younger days we recollect an hallucination almost as powerful as this, though we do not recollect hearing how it was cured, A worthy Methodist preacher weighing somewhere about seventeen stone, who used to frequent in his duties the house of a friend of ours where he was freely indulged in his

favourite enjoyment of the pipe, declared that he was frequently afraid to leave his chair, having worked himself into the persuasion that his legs were no thicker than the stem of his tobacco pipe; and that, if he attempted to get up, they would break down under the weight of his body and let him down, though they were as big and solid as mill-posts.

We cannot refuse to add a more affecting example in the sad life of the poet Cowper. On one occasion he sat for six days, in a state of melancholy, as still as death. Nothing could arouse him. The medical attendant suggested one hope. Could Mrs. Unwin-(who had lost the use of one of her sides by paralysis)—be induced to say it would be agreeable to her to walk. "It is a fine morning (said Mrs. Unwin)-I should like to attempt to walk." Cowper instantly arose, took her by the arm, and thus the reverie was dissipated.

We should be glad to know that any recommendation of ours might induce others to study the book, from which we have so freely quoted, for themselves. It is the ripe fruit of the mind of an accomplished physician, a scholar,`and an enlightened Christian.

ART. VI. Lufra; or, the Convent of Algarve. A Poem in Eight Cantos. By the Rev. JAMES BANDINEL, M.A., of Wadham College. London: Rivingtons. 1851.

IT is a singular fact that there scarcely ever seems to have been an age in which the opinion did not prevail that the poets and literary celebrities of the time present were far inferior to those of time past, and that art was on the decline. In the very zenith of our most poetical era, when Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Moore, Shelley, Campbell, Crabbe, and Byron, were contemporaries, the latter could thus express himself: One of my notions is that the present is not a high age of English poetry. There are more poets (soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportionably less poetry." And again :"With regard to poetry in general, I am convinced that we are all upon a wrong revolutionary poetical system-not worth a straw in itself-and from which none but Rogers and Crabbe are free. I am the more confirmed in this by having lately gone over some of our classics, particularly Pope, whom I tried in this way I took Moore's poems and my own and some others, and went over them side by side with Pope's, and I was really astonished and mortified at the ineffable distance, in point

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of sense, learning, effect, and even imagination, passion, and invention, between the little Queen Aurismanes,' and us of the lower empire. Depend upon it, it is all Horace then, and Claudian now, among us; and, if I had to begin again, I would mould myself accordingly." Now, freely admitting that that common sense, which is the usual characteristic of Pope's verses, is too frequently absent from Moore's and Byron's passionate effusions, yet this sweeping condemnation of so brilliant an era in the world of poetry presents an apt confirmation of our assertion that men are wont to speak familiarly and lightly of their contemporaries, as though a living poet scarcely could be equal by any possibility to a great departed one. No doubt, Byron was passionately fond of contradiction, which might serve to account in some measure for his opinion; but on reference to the current criticisms of that day-the lucubrations, for instance, of a Gifford-we believe that the same assertion would be often found repeated or indicated under various forms, and pious regrets expressed that a glorious Dryden and a mighty Pope had found no legitimate successors.

Now, it is not to be contended that the present era can rival the Georgian for the brilliancy and the beauty of its poetical productions. Humoristic fiction of the highest order is, perhaps, the more distinctive and peculiar representative of the present age among its peers; boasting as it does the possession of a Dickens and a Thackeray. Coruscations of wit's brilliant sunshine have supplied the place of the wilder, purer, deeper, starbeams of the Muse. Yet we, too, have our poets, and poets of no mean order; though certainly, with two or three exceptions, they have not secured any very extensive popularity. But the popularity of the time is an ill test of the merit of true poetry. While Byron's certainly exaggerated strains commanded almost all their millions of adorers, we know that for a long time the far less powerful, but also more truthful and morally delightful Wordsworth, was utterly neglected by his contemporaries. We are not seeking, as it is now the fashion to do, to raise Wordsworth to an equality with, perhaps, the most intense and passionate of bards; but still the public contempt remains to be accounted for and justified. And again Southey-the author of "Roderick, Last of the Goths"-that most chivalric and glorious of epics-remains unacknowledged as a mighty poet till this hour!

The very beauties of our most eminent purely secular poet now living we mean of course Tennyson-are of such an etherial and delicate nature as to present a great obstacle to his general acceptation by the public; added to which, he is so

eminently dramatic in almost all his minor poems, and indeed we may say in all his compositions, that a reader, not possessed of the dramatic faculty, will find it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to understand him. But for calm grandeur and quiet beauty, as exemplified in his "Ulysses" and "Mort d' Arthur"—for irresistible pathos and deep tenderness, such as speak to the heart in "The Gardener's Daughter," "The May Queen," "The Lord of Burleigh," and that most wonderful of quietly passionate elegies "In Memoriam "-or again for playful grace, for happy ease, for felicity of epithet, we really scarcely know where to look for his fellow amongst living or departed bards. After all the great poets that have gone before him, he has the merit of being purely and distinctively original -not possessing the lyric sweep of song, the irresistible impulse, which is Byron's most marked prerogative-but stealing gently over us, like the South upon a bed of violets (as Shakespeare says)-eschewing all the best emotions of the heart, at once yielding and drawing forth the calm fragrance of delight] Yet Tennyson, it is true, is not universally popular, not having advanced as yet beyond a sixth or seventh edition. And Robert Browning-whose intense dramatic power and passion are so conspicuous in several of his dramas, and whose "Paracelsus" contains so much magnificent poetry of the highest order-is still less known to the general public. His gifted wife, the late Miss Barrett, is probably more generally read than he; and, for our own part, we must aver that we are acquainted with no female poetry which is to be compared to hers for pathos and passionate beauty. Still, certain peculiarities of style in her case also, and especially the same strong tendency to the dramatic which is conspicuous in Tennyson, and which reaches probably its highest possible point in Robert Browning, seem to have as yet prevented her name becoming a well-known household chattel, and have probably deterred the majority of our readers from becoming acquainted with her writings.

Longfellow, our American contemporary, is more popular with the public-indeed, he is very popular: not because his poetry is more beautiful-though it has much calm, still, beauty of its own-but because it is less dramatic, and makes therefore, upon the whole, less demands on the reader's powers of comprehension. Longfellow presents us with something of Tennyson's grace and pathos; but fainter and paler in line and colouring, as it were reflected in a dim yet not a distorting mirror.

If, however, we would ask for the popular poets of the present day, we must turn to our more directly religious bards; and

here two or three names will meet us at once, which, judging from the circulation of their works, fully equal in popularity the most illustrious bards even of the Georgian era. First, we have the spiritual and mystical Keble, whose thoughts are so often redolent of the very essence of poetry, though he lacks the impulse of spontaneous song. Often his compositions remind us of a pure starlight night, in which all the orbs of heaven look down on earth with loving and mysterious glances-in which, as the eye gazes on their silver galaxy, deep seems to open beyond deep, hushing the soul to awed devotion. There is true beauty-there is sublimity-but it is a beauty of heaven rather than of earth: the air is chill, or even cold: the warmth of sunshine is wholly absent from the scene. But, if we are told that the present is an age which does not appreciate poetry, we can point triumphantly to the forty editions of the "Christian Year," and ask if any other era can produce a parallel to this success. It is true that the popular poetry of the present day is directly religious and devotional; but it is not the less poetry on this account. After the passionate strains of Byron and the sickly sentimentalities of his lady-followers-L. E. L., "et hoc genus omne"-the public taste longed for something purer, higher, deeper, less eminently earthly; and to this we attribute in no small measure the enormous circulation of the "Christian Year."

Then next in order comes the mild, the tender, the devotional, Isaac Williams, who raised so great an outcry against himself, not unnaturally, by his unguarded and injudicious exposition of the value of reserve in Christianity, totally opposed as it is to his own practice, we should say, both in preaching and in poetry. His "Cathedral" has also reached its seventh or eighth edition, and his "Thoughts in Past Years" are scarcely less popular, and deserves we think, as poetry, to be far more so; combining much of the wild fire and irregular genius of Shelley with the sweet spirit of Christian devotion; free from powerfully and sternly ascetic tendencies, and most firmly opposed, as we are happy to be able to say, to the antichristian pretensions and usurpations of the Ker of the "Seven States."

Again an exceedingly and deservedly popular poet is Robert Montgomery, numbering editions by twenties and by thirties! His "Christian Life" has been commented on at length in this Review and duly lauded. It forms, on the whole, a truly magnificent collection of lyric poems, many of which are in the highest strain of sublimity; whilst others are replete with warm human affection, and in so far calculated to excite more human sympathy than the chaster and oftentimes