but Moscow and other cities having been selected for this gentleman's unrivalled pencillings. We call them unrivalled, for they are so in respect of liveliness as well as minuteness, of their obvious and exquisite truthfulness as well as healthy tone and honest feeling. Having been reading of frozen regions, let us have a humorous and living piece of humanity, in the shape of an eloquent ice-vender, who is labouring in his calling on the morning of Easter-day.

"Moje potschienie !" (most obedient servant, sir,) he called out, with the politeness of a gentleman, to a person passing him at some distance, who at first had not noticed him, and was not thinking of ice. "Do you choose an ice? I will make one for you in a moment. Oh! it is very hot to-day. People need something to cool them. Would you like vanilla? What, nothing? nothing at all? Oh, I am very sorry!--Moroschnije! moroschnije! ssami sswäscheje! (Ice! ice! the freshest and the coolest!) Chocolate, vanilla, coffee, rose-ice, and, best of all, flower-blossom! Who will taste my delicious ice, flower-blossom!" These names he had invented himself for the different sorts of ice. "Yes, my ice has a blossom like a poppy. Come, my pretty dear, will you have a poppy-blossom ice?" In spring the girls of Little Russia wear a number of showy poppy flowers in their hair. “Here, taste; you will like it better than a kiss from your sweetheart. You would rather have a mixed one? Well, my love, I will mix you one of white and red, as your cheeks are mixed." In a trice he had mixed white and red in a glass, above which rose a tall head of the two alluring colours. The girl was embarrassed, but could not help taking hold and using the little wooden spoon, which he slipt into her right hand. "Zwätui zwetot. Flower-blossom, poppy-blossom, vanilla-blossom, coffeeblossom, chocolate-blossom! Who will taste my delicious ice? Look, father, red, red as roses; yellow, yellow as gold. Silly man, buy my gold with your copper." Putting out a little as a specimen into a glass, he held up to the sun. "Splendid! How I should like to eat it myself. But I am too poor. I cannot afford it. Take one, father, and then I shall have money to treat myself to a glass of flower-blossom. Lay hold, father, and much good may it do you! One for your son too?—Moroschnije, moroschnije. Who buys my beautiful ice? Pooh! how excessively hot it is today! I am almost melted. No, I must have an ice." For Easter Sunday in Russia, this, as the reader may conceive, was a pretty bold poetical exaggeration. He then tasted a morsel, rolled his eyes, and raised his shoulders, as if ambrosia was melting in his mouth. Now, mother, what are you looking for? Does it not make you long? Upon my word I cannot bear to see you melting here before my face in the sun. Just taste!" At the same time he held out a morsel to her at the tip of the wooden spoon. Unable to get out of the scrape, she could not help laughing and taking the bait, nor did she get off for less than eight copecks.-"Moroschnije ssami ssladkija moroschnije," (Ice, the sweetest ice in the world!) and with that he commenced chain of fresh drolleries, which was not broken till

it

sunset.

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Having started from Moscow with Mr. Cottrell for Siberia, we cannot be far wrong if, on returning, we take for our cicerone, while

in that mighty capital, the author of "Russia." This is his picture of the unparalleled resurrection after the memorable burning sacrifice, identified with the history of Moscow:

Nowhere is there a sufficient length of street to form a perspective. The greater number of the streets wind like the paths of an English park, or like rivers meandering through fields. We always fancy ourselves coming to the end; and in every part where the ground is level, we appear to be in a small city. Fortunately the site of Moscow is in general hilly. The streets undulate continually, and thus offer from time to time points of view, whence the eye is able to range over the vast ocean of house-tops. The Kremlin is best viewed from the south side, and from the bridge of Moskva Rekoi. From the river that bathes its base, the hill of the Kremlin rises, picturesquely adorned with turf and shrubs. The buildings appear set in a rich frame of water, verdant foliage and snowy wall; the majestic column of Ivan Wilikoi rearing itself high above all, like the axis round which the whole moves. The colours are everywhere most lively, red, white, green, gold, and silver. Amidst the confusion of the numerous small, antique edifices, the Belshoi Dvorez (the large palace built by Alexander) has an imposing aspect. It looks like one large mass of white rock, amidst a multitude of fragments. The churches and palaces stand on the plateau of the Kremlin as on a mighty salver; the little red and gold castle church of the czars coquetting near the border like some pretty little maiden, and the paler coloured cupolas of the Michaelis and Uspenski churches representing the broad corpulence of a merchant's wife. The Maloi Dvorez (little palace), and the convent of the Miracle, draw modestly back, as beseems hermits and little people. All these buildings stand on the summit of the Kremlin like its crown, themselves again crowned with a multitude of cupolas, of which every church has at least five, and one has sixteen, glittering in gold and silver."

ART. IV.-Nature a Parable: A Poem in Seven Books. By the Rev. J. B. MORRIS, A.M., Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Rivington.

It

THERE are three principal reasons, by one of which we are usually induced to give any newly published book a place in our pages. may contain information on some new or otherwise sufficiently interesting subject;-or its intrinsic excellence may make us wish to call public attention to its merits with as little delay as possible;—or it may be altogether so bad as to render it our duty to caution our readers against wasting their time or money in its perusal or purchase. It is by the last of these species of tenure that "Nature a Parable" holds its present position. We have done what we venture to say none of our readers will be able to accomplish-we almost fear those who have looked into the book will disbelieve us, but it is a fact we have read the poem through; and a feat more nearly

approaching to the impossible we never performed; nothing but a strong sense of duty could have carried us through the task; and from this herculean labour we have risen without having been able to form one single idea as to the general scope and intention of the work. It cannot therefore in common fairness be expected of us, that we should attempt to furnish any general account of that which we at once own to be entirely and absolutely beyond our comprehension. We cannot communicate to others ideas that we do not possess ourselves. Fortunately, the author has relieved us from this awkward necessity by means of a preface,―to us rather more unintelligible than the poem itself; part of which, though we cannot understand, we can transcribe, and thus give others their fair chance of discovering the writer's meaning, veiled though it has been to ourselves in a more than stygian gloom. We give the opening, and one other, passage of the preface.

The present work was originally undertaken as a relief from engagements of a more laborious kind. It struck me that in all writers not of the very driest class, there are some things of an imaginative hue, and that I might therefore not disadvantageously employ my leisure hours in correcting and chastening whatever amount of imaginative tendencies I had myself, by noticing things of the kind in the works of the Fathers. I went to them in this, as in other respects, with a desire to consult them as oracles, not to judge of them as authors. As for a blind reverence for them, I can

not believe that such a thing exists, or was ever even talked of except by sch as were either ignorant of their writings, or, with some knowledge of these, made no effort to follow their stern holiness and patient gentleness. The graciousness of our Lord's promise reaches even to the effort to do His Father's will.

I hope that whatever defects of style, or judgment, or doctrine, there may be in this work, I have throughout it expressed a conviction that stern living is the way to understand the subjects of which it makes a feeble attempt to treat. If in expressing that conviction I have anywhere seemed deficient in gentleness, I have little doubt myself that it is to be attributed to my own want of sternness to myself. Still any one may make an effort to attain the two, though he succeed but ill in attaining them.

Soon afterwards we are told that the work will in its own structure bear witness to its having been written as a "relief on Sundays and saints'-days from more laborious occupations:" and then comes the explanation of the whole design.

The whole subject of the typical meaning of Nature, is but a continuation, or rather an instance and illustration, of the subject of Bishop Butler's Analogy. For, assuming that the church system and the system of nature proceed from the same author, there arises, upon the principle of that great divine, an immediate probability that there will be a similarity in the two. Thus the cleansing, and refreshing, and invigorating powers of water, are analogous to correlative powers of Baptism. For the other sacrament we VOL. I. (1843.) No. I.

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need no further statement of the analogy than that which we are familiar with in the Catechism. And the thing assumed in this book is that such analogies are not accidental, but designed; and that the church system will clear up the meaning of Nature in the same way that Christianity clears up the meaning of Prophecy. "Facilius Prophetiæ credas discipulus naturæ," said Tertullian.

Truly we live in an age of miracles! Milton, we will answer for it, found Paradise Lost a tolerably serious occupation; and we doubt if Bishop Butler considered writing his Analogy as exactly child's play: but in the present day, up rises Mr. Morris, and with the greatest facility-as a mere nothing-performs both tasks at once! He re-writes and extends the greatest masterpiece of metaphysical argument the earth has ever seen,-throws the whole into the form of an elaborate poem of seven or eight thousand lines,-and then, with the modesty inseparable from true genius, gives it to the world as the unlaboured, almost spontaneous production of his leisure moments, a toy with which he contrived to amuse himself as a relief from serious study!

If we interpret aright the second sentence, (we confess it to be a most difficult passage,) the reverend gentleman thought it a necessary preparative to his undertaking to "correct and chasten" his "imaginative tendencies;" which, considering that a poet is "of imagination all compact," seems no less extraordinary than his choice of a poetical subject, or his apparent estimate of the difficulties of the undertaking. However, there may be "too much of a good thing;" and if the author really was by nature troubled with a surplus of the "forward and delusive faculty," he cannot be too warmly congratulated on the success of his "correcting and chastening endeavours;" for so effectual has been the clearing process in this instance, that we defy the most microscopic eye to detect one iota of the prohibited article throughout the whole seven books.

Thus, then, relieving ourselves from the burden of endeavouring at any analysis of the entire book, by owning it to be beyond our powers to furnish one; and devoutly hoping that the explanatory account we have taken from the preface may be more useful to others than it has to us, we may mention our objections to particular parts in detail.

Our first protest is to be entered against the introduction by Mr. Morris of words, and forms of words, not existing in the English language. Writers, by far his superiors, have usually been hitherto content with the language as they found it,-and many of them have managed to render it tolerably efficient; why, then, should Mr. Morris venture upon such innovations as these ?

"In which we pass our fleet existency."

"Lest man's impatiency should miss reproof."

"Be it mine to find

Light's remanent conversings with the soul."

"Such, in the dreary winter of misfare

Shall oft remember."

"As though there were in this vastidity

Of boundless worlds."

Another perpetually-recurring fault consists in the absurdity and impropriety, often stretching into downright indecency, of much of the phraseology:

these

"Memory

Might haply not indecently be said

To have a personality distinct."

"What time he kills and eats the Gentile World."

"The scheme

Of Pagan darkness wink'd at by our God."

"But God upon such times of ignorance

Yet wink'd."

"Heathen bards

This as the resting time for all the Gods
By no unreasoning instinct have described."

"When cloven tongues descended on the Twelve
And they were drunken with chaste drunkenness,
And filled with new wine in bottles new."

"We darkly see eternal things of Heaven
Writ with a sunbeam."

"Till we have cast all odious self-trust

Aside as menstruous cloths."

"Within

The soul that image of the Trinity

Shall live and move uncumbered by the dog
Of sense and lust."

Would any one short of a lunatic imagine such expressions as proper to be used in a sacred poem? What in the wide world is the meaning of "reasoning instinct?" Reason and instinct are generally opposed to each other; and their union as here given must be a strange compound indeed. Or what possibly can we understand by being "drunken with chaste drunkenness ?" Or who, save the impious scoffers mentioned in the Acts, ever before thought of applying the term in any sense-however limited and qualified-to the inspired raptures of the holy Twelve, when the mighty rushing wind had heralded with appropriate grandeur the descending Deity, and

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