ished plans. With subtile speech he shows the folly of attempting heaven by direct violence, while, with fiendish craft, he proposes to entice man from his allegiance to God, and involve him also in sorrowful punishments. His advice betokens a hatred more intense even than that of the others, since it rarely happens that a man will destroy the happiness and the lives of innocent persons, in order to wreak a more fearful vengeance upon his enemy.

The words of the other spirits are the offspring of some particular passion which has come to be a second nature, and which shapes and directs both the feelings and their expression. They do not have in view so much the regaining of heaven, as the gratification of these several passions. Beelzebub, however, seems to be free from any one controlling characteristic, and brings his crafty, yet terrible wisdom, to bear upon the real question before the council. Though he professes to admit the impossibility of waging war successfully against the King of Heaven, the lurking hope that from the confines of the earth they might find easier access to their lost abode, is cautiously expressed. Indeed, the desire for revenge, which he expresses, seems to be surpassed by his ambition to occupy once more his heavenly station; but, knowing that the hosts of Pandemonium dreaded another battlefield "worse than hell," he proposes to them an intermediate step, which, if not bringing about the end he has in view, will at least ease them from the pains of the gnawing worm and the unquenchable fire. He seems also to be an instrument in the hands of his chief, serving the purpose of maturing his ambitious plans, and influenced in a great measure by his wishes.

We see in him a carnal wisdom, which is regardless of God's commands, and with fancied security dares to question his just decree. The workings of this wisdom we have seen in Voltaire, Payne, and the multitude of infatuated mortals who have spent their lives in attempting to refute the Bible, and ridicule Christianity, but who even in this world have suffered the pains of the damned. We see his human counterpart in the unprincipled statesman, who makes the great interests of humanity bend to his immoderate ambition or favorite schemes; who willingly becomes another's tool, although in so doing he loses every vestige of true manhood.

Influencing, as they do, not individuals only, but whole nations, they have ever been a great source of evil to the world, and useful allies to the great adversary. Some, hypocritically chanting those grand old words, "vox populi vox Dei," have been placed in positions of trust, only to plot the more successfully their own aggrandizement,

and the degradation of the people. Like the "vir bonus" of whom Horace speaks, while prostrating themselves before the shrine of Liberty, they pray, in fearful undertones, that the goddess will veil their deceptions with night, and their frauds with a cloud. Others, boldly espousing the cause of injustice, so confound the false and the true with devilish logic, as to lead discreet men even, into the by and forbidden paths of political corruption. Thus is their wisdom the weakness and not the strength of the nation.

Against these evil spirits, mankind has contended for six thousand years, and we ourselves are constantly apprised of their existence and power, by inward struggles which try our very souls. But, victorious. when we look above for aid, our hearts overflow with gratitude toward that Son of Adam whose death freed us from everlasting subjection to them.

B. P.

"Barkis is Willin.”

DAVID COPPERFIELD.

THE tide was flowing out,-past the old wrecks
Of mastless boats, half buried in the sand,
And little sobbing wavelets left their flecks
Of foam upon the strand.

And all along the shore the ripples curled,

The tiny rills ran down the beach in glee,
Each farther than the last, the eddies swirled,
And hasted to the sea.

The tide was flowing out,-and so the life

Was ebbing in the breast of Barkis there;
Beside him watched that honest, faithful wife,
Whose love was now a prayer.

And yet so gently throbbed the fainting pulse,
It seemed as if the heart no answer gave,
As calm as when the leaves of scarlet dulse
Float on the sleeping wave.

THE main idea of this poem may not be evident at a first superficial glance. But read it again, and its significance dawns upon you grandly. In order to get at its proper meaning, let us rapidly sketch the general train of thought; noticing, by the way, some of the minor

beauties of the piece, some of the felicitous expressions and sparkling gems of imagery that abound throughout. This review of the successive ideas of the poem cannot fail to suggest the lesson illustrated and inculcated in it, which, together with its exquisite finish, has made "Locksley Hall," and justly, too, one of the most famous of its author's productions.

"While as yet 'tis early morn," the hero sits down and ponders, looking off upon the old Hall, with its views of sandy tracts and roaring ocean. He remembers vanished scenes of other days; memory calls up before him the picture that used to nightly greet his eyes from "yonder ivied casement." And in that picture, what fairy-like enchantment!

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."

He dwells fondly on his youth, spent in wandering on the beach, building castles in the air; and then suddenly breaks in the recollection of his betrothal to his fair cousin; and very charmingly is expressed time's unheeded flight, and the unselfishness of their early love.

"Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands,

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight."

But, while he describes this season of bliss, relentless memory confronts him with the mocking issue of all these vows of love; and deep into our hearts sinks the pathos of the cry, as his soul's bitterness thus gives itself atterance :—

"O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!

O the dreary, dreary woodland! O the barren, barren shore!"

An outburst of passion against the wrongs of society is followed by a touching struggle between a sense of injury and lingering affection for the faithless one. He tries to "love her for the love she bore;" but his grief rises triumphant, refusing comfort, with the conviction;

"No-she never loved me truly-love is love forevermore."

Gradually his spirit rises up from despair, yearns for the excitement of action, leaps within him, to go among men-in its glorious woods ;.

"Men my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new; That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do." VOL. XXXII.

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Again despondency crushes him, making him sigh for some far off retreat, for perfect abandonment of his higher nature, and a marriage with some savage woman. But how eloquently is the reaction expresed;

"I to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,

Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains?"

Then soaring skyward in his consoling confidence in the superiority of mind and civilization, and his glowing anticipations of the progress of the race, his enthusiasm breaks forth:

"O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set,

Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet."

He has found hope and consolation, he ceases his brooding over the past, and his melancholy revery over Locksley Hall, saying :

"For the mighty wind arising, roaring seaward, and I go."

And so he goes toward the sea, toward the great agency of communication with fellow-men; he goes to work among them and for them, and he leaves us with the main idea of the poem taking hold of our minds-the noble idea of finding refuge from disappointment, not in abandonment to despair, sensuality, or misanthropy, but in hopeful enterprise for the welfare and progress of our fellow-men. What a grand theory-trial not crushing, but chastening, fitting for higher and better things! What manliness in this conception of rising up, after the fearful passage through the fiery furnace, and pursuing the rest of the journey, with heart purified, yet not broken-still throbbing in unison with the cause of right and humanity! How many careers have proved worse than worthless, for want of this manly view of affliction! Byron, passing his life in an agony of disgust with lifeits hollowness and transiency, takes for his philosophy depondency and mockery. He sinks into despair, to rise only in defiance; and his poetry reflects the miserable minanthropist.

The key-note to the career of our own Percival is commonly acknowledged to have been early disappointment in love. When we read that he was gifted not only with the "vision and faculty divine," but with scientific and linguistic abilities sufficient, if employed, to have made him a Liebnitz, a Bacon, or a Dana, we are sad to think what a crushed and misanthropic hermit he was, hiding in the ground the talents he might have employed to further the onward march of the mind, and humanity.