The following sublime and affecting production was but lately discovered among the remains of our great epic poet, and is published in the recent Oxford edition of Milton's Works:

I am old and blind!

Men point at me as smitten by God's frown;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind;

Yet I am not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong;

I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father supreme! to thee.

O, merciful one!

When men are farthest then thou art most near;
When friends pass by me, and my weakness shun,
Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face

Is leaning towards me; and its holy light
Shines in upon my lonely dwelling place—
And there is no more night.

On my bended knee

I recognize thy purpose clearly shown:
My vision thou hast dimm'd, that I may see
Thyself-Thyself alone.

I have nought to fear;

This darkness is the shadow of thy wing;
Beneath it I am almost sacred; here'
Can come no evil thing.

O! I seem to stand

Trembling, where foot of mortal ne'er hath been,
Wrapp'd in the radiance of thy sinless land,
Which eye hath never seen.

Visions come and go:

Shapes of resplendent beauty round me throng; From angel lips I seem to hear the flow

Of soft and holy song.

Is it nothing now,

When heaven is opening on my sightless eyes?-—
When airs from paradise refresh my brow
The earth in darkness lies.

In a purer clime

My being fills with rapture-waves of thought
Roll in upon my spirit-strains sublime
Break over me unsought.

Give me now my lyre!

I feel the stirrings of a gift divine:
Within my bosom glows unearthly fire
Lit by no skill of mine.

REV. RICHARD LUCAS, D. D.

THERE is no other period in the history of England that produced as many able polemic writers, as the seventeenth century. The enthusiasm and cruel persecutions that attended the first outbreak of the reformation in that country, had then much subsided, and both the great leading powers (Protestant and Papal) were made willing to consecrate their faith and creeds at the shrine of reason and revelation. This concession, so long sought for by the reformers, inspired and brought into the field many of the most learned and distinguished men of those spirit-stirring times. Their fervent discussions of holy writ, tempered with that moderation and zeal which an earnest inquiry after the truth always inspires, resulted in the discovery and establishment of those vital doctrines, in the propagation of which the Christian church has since been so eminently successful. In this arena of giant intellects, was spent the life of our author, a bright luminary, lighting up the path of the inquirer after truth, and by his profound learning vanquishing the advocates of error on every side.

This eminent divine was of Welsh origin, the son of Mr. Richard Lucas, of Resteign, in Radnorshire, England, and was born in that county in the year

1648. He early evinced a strong desire for knowledge, and after a thorough training in the common branches of science, he was sent to Oxford, and entered a student of Jesus College, in 1664.

Having taken both his degrees in arts, he entered into holy orders about the year 1672, and was afterwards master of the free school at Abergavenny; but being much esteemed for his talents in the pulpit, he was chosen vicar of St. Stephen's, Coleman-street, London, and lecturer of St. Olave, Southwark, in 1683. His sight began to fail in his youth, but he lost it totally about this time.

The privation of this important sense, in the full vigor of life and highest sphere of usefulness, might have been considered by some, (less noble,) a justifiable excuse for a retirement from the duties and responsibilities of public life. But he, true to that excellency of soul that characterized his former career, made up in energy and perseverance what he lost in sight, and continued to devote himself to the public good with such well-directed zeal as must merit the highest respect of all succeeding generations.

Early in life, at an age when most young men spend their time in trifling amusements, this champion of the cross consecrated all his powers to the service of his divine Master, and was, therefore, meekly resigned to whatever privation or affliction a benign Providence might assign him.

As a testimonial of his resignation we quote the following from the preface of the author's work, en

titled "Enquiry after Happiness:" "It has pleased God, that in a few years I should finish the more pleasant and delightful part of life, if sense were to be the judge and standard of pleasure, being confined (I will not say condemned) to retirement and solitude.

"In this state conversation has lost much of its former air and briskness; study, which is the only employment left me, is clogged with this weight and incumbrance, that all the assistance I can receive from without, must be conveyed by another's sense, not my own; which, it may easily be believed, are instruments or organs as ill fitted and awkwardly managed by me, as wooden legs and hands by the maimed. Should I ambitiously affect to have my name march in the train of those, although not all equally great ones, Homer, Appius, Aufidius, Didymus, Walkup, Père Jean l'Aveugle, &c., all of them eminent for their service and usefulness, notwithstanding their affliction of the same kind with mine, even this might seem almost a commendable infirmity; for the last thing a mind truly great and philosophical puts off, is the desire of glory. But this treatise owes neither its conception nor birth to this principle; for, besides that I know my own insufficiency, I must confess I never had a soul great enough to be acted by the heroic heat which the love of fame and honor has kindled in some."

Notwithstanding the inconvenience of this privation, Dr. Lucas continued to discharge the duties of