is it that gives to Coleridge's Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouney, the deep, unutterable sublimity, that awes the soul into worship, and suffuses the eye with swelling tears ? What, but the thought of Him, to whose praise that stupendous mountain, with its sky-pointing peaks and robe of silent cataracts, rises like a cloud of incense from the earth!

“Motionless torrents! silent cataracts !
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen, full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers,
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow
And in their perilous fall, shall thunder, God !”

There is a spiritual world, and it is a world of light and grandeur! Man's relation to it is the greatest theme, that poet or philosopher ever yet exercised his powers upon. It broods over him like the day, a master o’er a slave,

“ A presence, which is not to be put by!” The truths that man is fallen, exposed because of sin to the just indignation of God, in peril of his soul forever, the object of all the stupendous histories and scenes of revelation recorded in the Bible, surrounded by dangers, and directed how to avoid them, pointed to Heaven, and told what to do that he may enter there, and watched in all his course with anxiety by heavenly spirits, do, rightly considered, throw round every spiritual movement a thrilling, absorbing interest; an interest, for the individual who knows and feels it personally, too deep and awful, till he is in a place of safety, to be the

Sur

subject of poetry. He can no more command attention to the sublimity of his situation, than Lot, hurried by the hand of the angel to Zoar, with the storm of fire rushing after him, could have stood to admire burning Sodom and Gomorrah. It was not amidst his distressing conflicts with the Enemy, when it seemed as if his soul would be wrested from his body, that a thought of the Pilgrim's Progress came in upon the Author's mind. It was when the Fiend had spread his dragon wings and fled forever, and the hand came to him with leaves from the Tree of Life, and the presence of God gladdened him, and on the mountain summit, light shone around him, and a blessed prospect stretched before him, with the Celestial City at its close, that that sweet vision rose upon his view. To the Pilgrim, looking back from a safe resting place, all the way is fraught with poetical recollections and associations. His imagination now sees a spiritual life full of beauty. In the new light that shines upon him, he loves to retrace it again and again, and to lift his hands in grateful, speechless wonder at the unutterable goodness of the Lord of the Way. He is like Jacob, sleeping in the open air of Padan Aram, and dreaming of Heaven. Angels of God are ascending and descending continually before his sight. His are no longer the

“Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized," but the rejoicings of a weary Pilgrim, on whose forehead the mark of Heaven has been placed, and who sees close at hand his everlasting rest. Once within the straight gate, and in the holy confidence

of being a Pilgrim bound from the City of Destruc-
tion to the City of Immanuel, and all past circum-
stances of trial or danger, or of unexpected relief
and security, wears a charmed aspect. Light from
a better world shines upon them. Distance softens
and lends enchantment to the view. Proof from ex-
perience, as well as warnings from above, show how
many dangerous places he has passed, how many
concealed and malignant enemies were here and
there lying in ambush around him, and in how many
instances there were hair-breadth escapes from ruin.
There were the Slough of Despond, the fiery darts
at the entrance to the Wicket Gate, the hill Diffi-
culty, that pleasant arbor where he lost his roll of
assurance, the lions that so terrified him, when in
the darkness of evening he could not see that they
were chained ; there was that dark valley of the
Shadow of Death, and that dread conflict with
Apollyon before it. There were those fearful days
and nights passed in the Dungeon of the Castle of
Giant Despair, and the joyful escape from his terri-
tories. There were the Land Beulah, and the De-
lectable Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground,
and all the glimpses of the Holy City, not dream-
like, but distinct and full of glory, breaking in upon
the vision, to last in the savor of them, for many
days and nights of the blessed pilgrimage! Inge-
nious Dreamer, who could invest a life of such reali-
ties with a coloring so full of Heaven! Who can
wonder at the affectionate sympathy, with which a
heart like Cowper's was wont to turn to thee !

“And e'en in transitory life's late day
That mingled all his brown with sober gray,
Revere the man, whose PILGRIM marks the road,
And guide the PROGRESS of the soul to God.”