cannot refrain from giving an extract from this part of the poem: it is an excellent specimen of the style in which its least descriptive portions are composed. " The child;-we knew no more of happy childhood, Are incoherent as its own crude visions; We but begin to live from that fine point Which memory dwells on, with the morning star, The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing, Or the first daisy that we ever pluck'd, When thoughts themselves were stars and birds and flowers, Thenceforward, mark the metamorphoses! The boy, the girl;-when all was joy, hope, promise: To bear the yoke, to long for liberty, And dream of what will never come to pass ? That they may be the pleasure of beholders: Whose birth requires his death to make them room, Yet in whose lives he feels his resurrection And grows immortal in his children's children: (No snow falls lighter than the snow of age, Dead in the lap of his primeval mother; She throws a shroud of turf and flowers around him, -Man giveth up the ghost,—and where is he? These are followed by some reflections, whose deep and calm solemnity finely sustains the contemplative character of the poem. The shelter which the speaker afterwards seeks from the terrible contemplation of man's final state and the sight of his present misery, is as powerfully conceived a passage as our poetry possesses. The idiot," muttering syllables which all the learn❜d on earth could not interpret;" the woman "panting from her throes," and sinking on her offspring's ready prepared grave, are finely wrought pictures, and are among the most felicitous portions of the volume. But we must hasten to the conclusion. In the recesses of a solitary and untrodden glen, the etherial being, whom we have been following in his contemplations, meets with one of those true worshippers of nature, whose only desire was to penetrate through her mysteries to the clearer notion of a Great First Cause. There are some good lines in the description of his character, and of his attempts to soar above the height where reason becomes weary and uncertain; but we confess this is to us the least pleasing part of the poem. The spectacle of a human being standing in the vast temple of nature, and adoring her eternal though unknown God, is a magnificent moral picture; but when this being is made to speak and reason, and we hear only the common-place thoughts with which every philosopher and poet have inspired the same character, we turn with weariness from the page. But we have now arrived at the conclusion of the poem, and at that part where the poet speaks in his own, person. There is nothing sweeter, in any of its cantos, than the following passage, in which the hearts of the thousands who admire Mr. Montgomery's poetry will find much to awaken their tenderest sympathies. Vain boast! another day may not be given; Around, with love unfeign, on all he's losing; VOL. I.-NO. IV. For the grave's shadows lengthen in advance, pp. 165-7. Such is the Pelican Island;" the latest production of an author who, we trust, will write many more before any one can be called his last. The general character of that before us is calm and contemplative; here and there varied with some highly finished descriptions; but most eminently beautiful in its sublime, spiritual abstractions. It is singular, that, within a few months of each other, two poems should have appeared so remarkable in their design, and in many respects so nearly resembling each other, as Mr. Pollok's "Course of Time," and the Pelican Island" of Mr. Montgomery. I Both of them take a flight far beyond the ordinary bounds of modern imagination; both of them are represented as emanating from human spirits disembodied, and contemplating the wide system of creation; and both take the course and revolutions of time as the foundation of their narrative. The only difference is, Mr. Montgomery is more of the historian, and Mr. Pollok more of the prophet. In the execution of his poem, our author has employed, as we observed, blank verse. It is sometimes loose and defective, and, in more than one passage, almost prosaic; but in its general structure it is various and harmonious. In one or two places we have remarked instances of bad taste, which we should have expected Mr. Montgomery would have avoided for example, what can be worse than the cold conceit in the following line? That made the air sigh as they cut it through. Notwithstanding, however, these little blemishes, the Pelican Island is a noble poem, and worthy the matured experience and genius of its author. Had it been his only production, it would have rewarded him with a fadeless laurel; as his latest, it has added another wreath to the crown. There are at the end of the volume some minor poems, but several of which have been already before the public. The best among them is that called the "Bridal and the Burial," and another very sweetly written piece, founded on the circumstance of Dr. Carey (the Baptist Missionary in India) having found a daisy among some roots that had been conveyed thither from England. We should gladly have given it our readers, but we have already exceeded the limits of our article. M'CRIE'S History of the Reformation in Italy. IN the former part of our review of this interesting work we were principally occupied with considering the situation into which Italy, in common with the other countries of Europe, had been thrown by the Papal usurpation. We afterwards endeavoured to point out some circumstances, peculiar to herself, which seemed, at the first view, to promise an early reformation in her religion, but which were afterwards found to be fallacious. Our present endeavour will be to explain the causes which, both in the early and later attempts made to restore the Gospel to her people, baffled the efforts of her best and noblest advocates. It will be seen, we think, in the progress of this inquiry, that the study of the Reformation affords some grand and striking illustrations of the particular interference of Providence in its establishment in other parts of the world; while it enables us to see exactly how far only second causes were made to operate, or had an influence in effecting, this remarkable change in men's moral character and opinions. The revival of learning, the invention of printing, the better notions respecting civil liberty which were beginning to gain ground, and the extended communications between one country, and another: these, both separately and together, had undoubtedly a considerable influence, both as preparing for the reception and afterwards facilitating the diffusion, of the new doctrines. But there is sometimes a danger of attributing too much to these second causes; a tendency to ascribe the Reformation to their operation, as a natural or necessary result. But the providence of God here vindicates itself, as the Divine sovereignty over nature is sometimes manifested by a suspension of her general laws. Italy had most of the advantages possessed by other nations, and some of them in a pre-eminent degree; but they were insufficient to make her free, or purify her religion. Learning and philosophy came smiling back to her shores; the arts all flourished under her fostering care; and the other nations of Europe received their literature and their political dogmas from her hands. In those respects, also, in which the reformation of religion is immediately regarded, there were circumstances in her favour which, from an a priori view of the subject, would have seemed to counterbalance almost any opposing difficulties. The court of Rome had as many profound and sharp-sighted politicians as any in Europe; nor was she so devoted to any point of mere religious importance, as not to be ready to sacrifice it, could the sacrifice have increased her power or augmented her treasures. The necessity, therefore, of a Reformation-at least a partial one-had more than once been insisted on by men the steady friends of the Papacy; and it is easy to see how strongly, according to ordinary calculation, this must have aided the designs of the Reformers. But we want not to have recourse to supposition, when we know that a, considerable progress had actually been made in changing the corrupt doctrines of Popery for those of a purer and more rational creed. Of this our author has given a sufficient proof in the following passage. The preceding narrative sufficiently shews that the reformed opinions, if they did not take deep root, were at least widely spread, in Italy. The number of those who, from one motive or another, desired a reformation, and also would have been ready to fall in with any attempt to introduce it which promised to be successful, was so great, that, if any prince of considerable power had placed himself at their head, or if the court of Rome had been guilty of any such aggression on the political rights of its neighbours as it committed at a future period, Italy might have followed the example of Germany, and Protestant cities and states have risen on the south as well as the north of the Alps. The prospect of this filled the minds of the friends of the Papacy with apprehension and alarm. In a letter to the nephew of Pope Paul III. Sadolet complains that the ears of his holiness were so pre-occupied with the false representations of flatterers, as not to perceive that there was "an almost universal defection of the minds of men from the church, and an inclination to execrate ecclesiastical authority." And Cardinal Caraffa signified to the same Pope," that the whole of Italy was infected with the Lutheran heresy, which had been embraced not only by statesmen but also by many ecclesiastics." pp. 185, 186. It is sufficiently apparent from this, that, humanly speaking, there were the brightest prospects for Italy when the Reformation began; that she had those circumstances conspicuously in her favour to which they who reason on moral probabilities would too exclusively ascribe it; and that, if in any instance, certainly in hers, a train of politically operating causes was laid, so as to take effect in the most powerful manner when things were prepared for its explosion. Had the Reformation been established in Italy, it would have been a subject worthy of Gibbon to shew how easily the whole might be accounted for without having recourse to an interposing Providence: as it turned out, it would have been a useful subject for his consideration before he wrote his second causes to account for the establishment of Christianity without a miracle; and we wonder it |