ARTICLE, LIV.

Charlotte Elizabeth.

By T. B. HUDSON,

Professor of Languages in O. C. Institute.

READER, you have traveled by night, and watched the changes the approach of morning has wrought in the aspect of the scenery around you. But a few hours since, the earth was wrapt in gloom and silence. Dim outlines of rock and precipice of hill and plain lay half hid beneath the darkness. Music was dumb. The only sounds that reached you were the foot-fall of the beasts that walk in darkness and the screach of the night-bird-or perhaps the rustling of a momentary breeze in the wood that skirted your way, or, it may be, the sound of some far away water-fall that wailed monotonously through, the live-long night.

But morning comes. The change seems magical-a flood of glory covers every thing-from the pearls of dew that hang on every leaf to the lofty mountain peak that rises above the clouds-all reflects the radiance that has burst from above Day seems to have created every thing anew. Those dim outlines have started forth into a landscape of rich loveliness. The prowlers of night have vanished with the darkness that shrouded them-and sweet music from early birds-from bleating flocks and lowing herds-and from the mingled shout of multitudinous human voices-rises in an anthem of gladness to heaven.

Such is the result of benevolence-of the love of God shed abroad in the heart of man. The gloomy chaos into which sin has thrown the soul is changed into a world of happy order. Birds of ill omen flee at the approach of spiritual day-all the powers of mind pour forth a rich music whose burden and whose notes are borrowed from above-a light rests on the whole domain of the spiritual being-a light the more rich and blessed because it is a reflection of our Father's smile.

These thoughts are suggested to our minds, by the history of almost every marked case of conversion with which we

have become familiar, by none perhaps more forcibly than by that of the gifted authoress whose name stands at the head of this article.

No one can read the "Personal Recollections of Charlotte Elizabeth" without being convinced that personal religion was in more than one sense the day-spring of joy to her soul.The beautiful lines of Coleridge seem to have, in her experience, an exemplification of uncommon point:

"Thus from the Elect, regenerate through faith,
Pass the dark Passions and what thirsty Cares
Drink up the spirit and the dim regards,
Self-centre. Lo they vanish! or acquire
New names, new features-by supernal grace
Enrobed with light, and naturalized in Heaven.
As when a shepherd on a vernal morn

Through some thick fog creeps timorous with slow foot,
Darkling he fixes on the immediate road

His downward eye, all else of fairest kind

Hid or deform'd. But lo! the bursting Sun!

Touch'd by the enchantment of that sudden beam,
Straight the black vapor melteth, and in globes
Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree;
On every leaf, on every blade it hangs!
Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays,

And wide around the landscape streams with glory!"

We will own that we feel great pleasue in meeting, among the crowd of gifted persons whose productions amuse or dazzle the present generation, one who is not ashamed to make religion every thing; who though largely endowed with those brilliant powers which the world loves to idolizeand though tempted by the most flattering proposals to engage in those departments of writing which might have brought her a rich harvest of fame and gold, still maintained her steadfastness, and who with her eye on "the mark of the prize of her high calling," patiently ran the race that was set before her, and who perpetually looked to Jesus the Author and Finisher of her faith, undazzled by the glittering prizes that lay around her path, and unseduced by the powerful temptations before which so many mighty have fallen.

We wish to speak in praise of Charlotte Elizabeth; and though we may be compelled to dissent in many cases from the opinions she expresses, and to confess that some blemishes stand forth with striking prominence on her pages, we feel little disposition to pass a stern judgment on her imperfecThe nobleness of her aim, and the devotion with which she pursued it, almost sanctify even her errors. Her life was in many respects, a life of extraordinary trials, and

tions.

some thing must be pardoned to the occasional bitterness of an overtasked soul. The grave too has but just closed over all of her that was mortal, and we cannot select the moment when the funeral train is passing, when the stifled sobs of many whose hearts are wrung by this sad bereavement still fill our ears, to mete out that exact critical justice which, in other cases and in different circumstances, might be permitted.

Be it ours for the present to perform the more grateful and perhaps more useful office of recording some of her excellences.

Her intellectual endowments were manifestly of a rare order. But it is not our purpose to dwell minutely on the analysis of her mental character. A few specifications must suffice.

Her imagination—we use the word in its popular senseis among her most striking gifts. "There is nothing which she touches that she does not beautify." Whatever be her theme, whether the abstractions of theological discussion, or the incidents of a day-school, she makes all to live and glow beneath the radiance which her own bright mind throws upon it. And yet one does not commonly feel in reading her works, what so often pains one in the perusal of authors endowed with a rich fancy, that she is the slave of her own gifts. Indeed her power of painting seems to us eminently under the control of her judgment. Her thoughts are not buried or overborne by the drapery with which she invests them. To produce a brilliant impression, to parade her jewelry so that all eyes shall be duly dazzled by its splendor, seems no part of her object. Women are said to be very fond of display. But in respect to this sort of display, our authoress has set an example to some of the other sex which they might copy with great advantage.

It may strike some of our readers as a little singular that after speaking of the imagination of Charlotte Elizabeth as we have done, we should pass no eulogy on her poetry. We do not praise her poetry because we cannot. Not that it lacks sense, or harmony, or elevated spirit, or a high purpose; nor yet that it is not rich in pictures, nor full of fine allusions; but it does lack what are essential to good poetry-originality and inspiration. To be reminded of the great bards of our literature, by the adoption of some of their peculiar forms of expression, and to have, by this very means, the general mediocrity of the performance forced on his atten

tention, one needs only to read a canto or two from any of the poems of our authoress. He will be satisfied of the truth of the remark we have just made. With the exception of some of her briefer effusions;—and we are not sure that even these are exceptions, we know not a single poem of her's whose probable purpose might not have been as well, nay better, attained by the use of plain prose.

While discussing the imagination of our subject and the uses to which she has applied it, we can hardly forbear adverting to a point on which the religious world has been much divided. It is this, the utility of religious fictions. Charlotte Elizabeth seems to have given her decision practically in their favor; for a large portion of her writings is made up of works of this character. The question is not whether ficti tious writing is wholly wrong, nor whether the use of imagi nary illustrations may not be a powerful auxiliary in the enforcement of the highest truths. But it is this-is the novel an effective instrumentality for the conveyance of doctrinal instruction, or for the conversion of the soul from sin to holiness? On this question we have but a few words to say. If experience be appealed to for the decision of the case, we would ask, where is the person to be found who traces his sound religious knowledge or his conversion from sin to holiness, to the reading of a religious novel? Where is the company of intelligent believers that would not contemplate with incredulity such a statement on the part of one who was relating his religious experience? If we look at the state of the sensibility induced by the perusal of an interesting novel, (a dull novel is a poor vehicle for truth of any kind,) and compare it with that induced by the personal application of the awful truths which concern us as culprits before the throne of our Righteous Judge; we shall find such a contrast between them, that their co-existence in the same mind is as little to be expected as is the co-existence of comic drollery with speechless terror or overwhelming grief. When the soul is roused to gaze at these great verities, all the fantastic dreams of fiction vanish. The mariner may be charmed by the Eolian harp; but the condition of mind into which such music throws him has no very assignable relation to his preparation for resisting the hurricane which ere noon may founder his doomed vessel. So the kindling interest in imagi nary scenes; the warm solicitude for the welfare of the hero or heroine of the story, the high wrought sentimentalism, which are, and must be wrought into the very texture of every charm.

ing novel, are poor preparations indeed for the state of mind in which the soul makes its peace with its Maker. Be it remembered that we are not discussing the abstract propriety of these states of mind, as such. We are only asking whether they contribute to the end proposed. We humbly conceive they do not. Indeed we believe it to be one of the most palpable blunders in practical psychology to imagine that they do. Of course we do not approve the judgment of our authoress in the selection of the fictitious story as the medium of doctrinal instruction or as the means of leading the sinner to God. Such stories attempt impracticabilities; they must sacrifice the story to the moral, or the moral to the story; they very commonly sacrifice both. If the imaginary story has a place at all, in a sound literature, and we will not deny that it has, its sphere will be different from the one under consideration.

As an offset to what we have just been compelled to say, we are gratified to observe the happy gift of our authoress in symboling the unseen and spiritual, by the visible and material objects around her. She finds much unity in the universe of God. She believes that the same Architect who laid the foundations of the world, and curved the arch of the sky, has built up the temple of the soul, and fitted it for his own abode. Of course she finds a spiritual meaning in ten thousand things which the unanointed eye dwells on only because of their material beauties. She loves the world not only because it is beautiful in itself, nor yet because it every where breathes the life of a present God; but also because its great gallery of pictures are suggestive to her mind of the highest spiritual truths, and become for her a vast treasure-house of symbols significant of principles which will endure when the world and its transient glory shall have passed away. Her writing partakes largely of this character. She might doubtless exclaim with Wordsworth:

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Indeed one whole work of hers, "The Flower Garden," is largely molded by this idea, partly of analogy and partly of resemblance between the seen and the unseen worlds. We should rejoice to see this mine of illustration and ornament more diligently worked. Notwithstanding the abuses and excesses that have been perpetrated in the use of symbolical language, we believe that its adoption by many of our ortho