imagery brought forward to their aid, but from the well-adapted structure and harmony of the versification, which, like tints in the hand of the painter, forms the medium of their develop

ment.

Upon the Lord's right hand

eye

His station Michael held: the dreadful sword,
That from a starry baldric hung, proclaimed
The Hierarch. Terrible, on his brow
Blazed the archangel crown, and from his
Thick sparkles flashed. Like regal banners, waved
Back from his giant shoulders his broad vans,
Bedropt with gold, and, turning to the sun,
Shone gorgeous as the multitudinous stars,
Or some illumined city seen by night,

When her wide streets pour noon, and echoing thro'
Her thronging thousands mirth and music ring.

Opposed to him, I saw an angel stand In sable vesture, with the books of Life. Black was his mantle, and his changeful wings Glossed like the raven's; thoughtful seemed his mien, Sedate and calm, and deep upon his brow Had Meditation set her seal: his eyes

Looked things unearthly, thoughts unutterable,

Or uttered only with an angel's tongue.

Renowned was he among the seraphim
For knowledge elevate, and heavenly lore;
Skilled in the mysteries of the Eternal,
Profoundly skilled in those old records, where,
From everlasting ages, live God's deeds;
He knew the hour when yonder shining worlds,
That roll around us, into being sprang;
Their system, laws, connexion; all he knew
But the dread moment when they cease to be.
None judged like him the ways of God to man,
Or so had pondered; his excursive thoughts
Had visited the depths of Night and Chaos,
Gathering the treasures of the hoary deep.

The poet now brings before us the sumless myriads of human beings, who, like wave following wave, appear entering on the plain in endless succession; and it is here that he has shown a very uncommon degree of skill in selecting, contrasting, and grouping, for the purpose of placing them on his foreground, characters of all ages and nations. Preserving to them their historic costume and features, he has on this plan elicited a degree of dramatic interest which no other expedient perhaps could have produced, and he prefaces his portraits

with the following striking sketch of the masses from which his more individuallized pictures are hereafter to start. All, he observes, heard the warning blast, and however separated by the intervention of distant ages, here in one vast conflux met.

Gray forms that lived

When Time himself was young, whose temples shook The hoary honours of a thousand years,

Stood side by side with Roman consuls:- - here, 'Mid prophets old, and Heaven-inspired bards, Were Grecian heroes seen : there, from a crowd Of reverend Patriarchs, towered the nodding plumes,

Tiars, and helms, and sparkling diadems

Of Persia's, Egypt's, or Assyria's kings;

Clad as when forth the hundred gates of Thebes
On sounding cars her hundred princes rushed;
Or, when, at night, from off the terrace top
Of his aerial garden, touched to sooth
The troubled Monarch, came the solemn chime
Of sackbut, psaltery, and harp, adown
The Euphrates, floating in the moonlight wide
O'er sleeping Babylon. For all appeared
As in their days of earthly pride; the clank

Of steel announced the warrior, and the robe
Of Tyrian lustre spoke the blood of Kings.

It must be evident that on the scheme developed at the close of this fine passage, a field of almost incalculable extent is opened for the introduction of bold and picturesque imagery, and our poet has availed himself of it in a manner which has given an air of originality to his work.

From the multiplicity of objects, however, which this system necessarily brought forward on the imagination of the poet, it became indispensable to make a very rigorous, and at the same time a very judicious selection, especially in a poem whose limits were not to extend beyond forty pages. He has therefore chosen a few very distinguished personages, and has thrown round them a high degree of prominency and relief. They are taken from widely different ages and classes of society; some from the primeval and patriarchal world, as Adam, Abraham, and Joseph; some from the list of heroes, as the Founder of Babylon, Alexander the Great, and the Dictator Cæsar. From

the benefactors of their species, the legislators and philosophers of mankind, he has drawn forth the ever memorable names of Moses, Plato, and Socrates; and from the Christian dispensation appear the hallowed forms of the Mother and the Disciples of our Saviour.

It will of course be expected that I should offer to my readers some specimens of the mode in which this very material part of the subject is treated, and I shall, therefore, give the first and the last of these portraits, not as the most elaborate of their number, but as presenting very adequate proofs of the talents of the writer for the task he has undertaken.

Nearest the mount of that mixed phalanx, first
Our general Parent stood: not as he looked
Wandering, at eve, amid the shady bowers
And odorous groves of that delicious garden,
Or flow'ry banks of some soft rolling stream,
Pausing to list its lulling murmur, hand
In hand with peerless Eve, the rose too sweet,
Fatal to Paradise. Fled from his cheek

The bloom of Eden; his hyacinthine locks

Were changed to grey; with years and sorrows