Thy temple, once thy glory, fallen and razed.

The fate of their Temple is one of the most striking evidences in the external history of the Jews. Over the face of the whole earth are traced, as it were, the very footsteps of false religion. The circle of unchiselled stone half sunk in the heath-the art where grandeur astonishes, or symmetry charms the eye, whether left to unhastened decay, or exposed to the rage of man, still impress their sites with imperishable records: but of the temple of the Most High, reared in proportions, and with materials equally stupendous, not a wreck remains ; for He had declared that not one stone should be left upon another. While human error thus survives in the monuments of its own waywardness and ingratitude, Jehovah declares his power by an awful blank. Lest, however, this dread evidence might be gainsaid, the very arts of the conqueror speak to the passing generations of Jerusalem and her Zion; and the sculptures in the arch of Titus testify to the institutions of Moses.

A lawless brood, and curse thee to thy face.

From its commencement, Cowper viewed the American contest with dread, and, overlooking the political predilections of the party to which he professed to belong, with that just indignation that ingratitude always rouses in an honest heart. There is much truth and good sense in the following remarks :. "I know not whether your sentiments and mine upon this part of the subject exactly agree, but you will know, when you understand what mine are. It appears to me that the king is bound, both by the duty he owes to himself and to his people, to consider himself with respect to every inch of his territories, as a trustee deriving his interest in them from God, and invested with them by divine authority for the benefit of his subjects. As he may not sell them or waste them, so he may not resign them to an enemy, or transfer his right to govern them to any, not even to themselves, so long as it is possible for him to keep it. If he does, he betrays at once his own interest, and that of his other dominions. It may be said, suppose Providence has ordained that they shall be wrested from him, how then? I answer, that cannot appear to be the case, till God's purpose is actually accomplished; and in the meantime, the most probable prospect of such an event does not release him from his obligation to hold them to the last moment, for as much as adverse appearances are no infallible indication of God's designs, but may give place to more comfortable symptoms, when we least expect it. Viewing the thing in this light, if I sat on his majesty's throne, I should be as obstinate as he, because if I quitted the contest, while I had any means left of carrying it on, I should never know that I had not relinquished what I might have retained, or be able to render a satisfactory answer to the doubts and inquiries of my own conscience.”— Cowper's Private Correspondence, January 13, 1782.

NOTE 7.- Page 66, line 22.

Return ashamed, without the wreaths they sought.

This refers to various naval engagements, as Rodney's with the French Admiral de Guicheu, 17th April, in the West Indies; Parker's with the

Dutch fleet, under Zoutman, off the Dogger Bank, 5th August; Grave's engagement with the French in the Chesapeake all in 1780, and all indecisive, though each was fought with determinative conduct and great bravery. The succeeding lines,

Thy senate is a scene of civil jar, &c.

alludes to the discussions on the American War, and especially to those on Burke's celebrated Reform Bill, which took place in the Parliament that assembled on the 31st October, 1780.

NOTE 8.- Page 66, line 3 from bottom.

Sighing millions prophesy the close.

At the commencement of the American War in 1775, the national debt was only one hundred and twenty-four millions; at the close of that unhappy contest in 1783, a few months after the publication of the poem, the amount exceeded two hundred and thirty-eight millions, having nearly doubled in little more than seven years. It is worthy of remark also, that of the original debt no inconsiderable portion had been incurred by the mother country in defending these lawless children" against the attacks of their powerful neighbours the French and aborigines. At present the yearly interest of the national debt of Great Britain equals a fourth part of the entire amount in the time of Cowper.

NOTE 9.- Page 68, line 3 from bottom.

Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look within.

Formerly it was the practice in the civil as well as the criminal courts of India to administer oaths to natives and Mahommedans on the Gospel. Sir William Jones was the first to change a system so inadequate to accomplish the ends of justice, and in itself so repugnant to Christian feeling.

NOTE 10.-Page 70, line 10.

But public censure seeks a public foe,
Unless a zeal for virtue guide the blow.

In these lines the poet seems to have intended some reparation for speaking of sins which cannot be mentioned in connection with Britons as a nation, save in reference to our national detestation and abhorrence of their turpitude. Had it not transcended an editor's privilege, we would have expunged the whole as the only passage in Cowper's writings which may not be read with pleasure to the young and pure of the most intimate family circle.

NOTE 11.-Page 70, line 22.

Except a few with Eli's spirit blest,

Hophni and Phineas may describe the rest.

"The description in Expostulation of what the clergy ought to be, is excellent. I will not transcribe the closing couplet; because it appears to me one of the few passages where the warm current of the poet's zeal hurried him into a hasty expression of asperity, not in unison with the native and habitual candour of his contemplative mind."-HAYLEY.

NOTE 12.-Page 71, line 16.

It sparkles with the gems he left behind.

This appears to be rather loosely expressed. The Romans could leave but a slight impress of their own noble language on the rude dialect of the aboriginal Britons. The classic portion of our modern tongue is a

very recent and gradual addition.

NOTE 13.- Page 71, line 24.

Made thee at last a warrior like his own.

The Romans never made their provincial subjects "warriors," except at a late period, when their valour was already on the wane, and then these "exotic legionaries," as a classic historian indignantly terms them, were employed in guarding some distant frontier far from their own home. It was, in fact, the policy of these "conquerors of the world," to encourage pacific arts and dispositions among the nations they subdued. Hence, on the final departure of the Romans, the Britons, unused to war, were incapable of defending themselves against the ruder, but braver assailants who poured in upon them from the northern parts of the

island.

NOTE 14.-Page 76, line 31.

A world is up in arms.

Alluding to the coalition and armed neutrality formed by the states of Europe against England in 1780.

NOTES TO HOPE.

NOTE 1.- Page 93, line 11.

Remote, unenvied isle!

The connection of East Greenland with the continent of America was not then discovered. Cowper delighted in reading missionary voyages, and had been so engaged during the winter previous to that in which these lines were written. More recent accounts shew the life which Moravians now lead amid the frozen waste," to be far less dreary than the poet here represents.

NOTE 2.-Page 95, line 3.

In the person of Leuconomus are portrayed the life and character of George Whitefield, the founder of the Calvinistic Methodists. This celebrated man was born in Gloucester, the son of an innkeeper in that city, 1714. The voyages referred to in the text are those to Georgia and other parts of America. The calumnies by which his living peace was attacked, and his memory after death pursued, originated chiefly in his opposition to what he conceived to be the errors of the Church of England, which caused also his separation from Wesley, who followed

the Lutheran doctrines.

Hence the two sects into which the Methodists are still divided. The powers of Whitefield as a preacher have never been surpassed in any age or country; and if we are to estimate oratory by its effects-the proper criterion after all-his was true eloquence. He died about ten years before the composition of the just and splendid vindication in the text, at the age of fifty-six.

NOTE 3.-Page 98, line 5 from bottom.

"The progress of an awakening, convincing, and converting grace is very powerfully traced in these lines. Cowper spoke from personal knowledge here. Those who mock at such changes, and deem them delusive, because they have not felt the like in themselves, are manifestly incompetent judges; since they only who have had the experience, can testify to the reality of that which must be proved true by experience alone."-MONTGOMERY.

NOTES TO CHARITY.

NOTE 1.-Page 103, line 8 from bottom.

James Cook, the most humane of discoverers, was born, 1728, at Marton in Yorkshire, the son of a day labourer, and was bound an apprentice to the coal trade. He first distinguished himself while master of the Eagle frigate at the siege of Quebec; set out on his first voyage of circumnavigation 1768, and in his third was slain at Owhyhee, 4th July, 1779, two years before Cowper wrote these lines.

NOTE 2.-Page 104, line 10.

Ferdinand Cortes, one of the first names in the annals of romantic but bloody adventure, was born of a noble family in Estremadura, 1485; he embarked for the New World in 1504; engaged in the conquest of Mexico in 1512, with six hundred and seventeen men; discovered California in 1536; returned to Europe four years afterwards in disgrace, and died neglected in his native country, aged sixty-two, having, as he boasted to Charles V, added more kingdoms to Spain, than she formerly possessed provinces.

NOTE 3.-Page 109, line 12.

I sigh no more

For Africa's once loved, benighted shore.

Cowper, in his letters, gives excellent reasons for refusing to write a poem professedly on the slave trade," though frequently importuned, alleging, with equal moral and poetical propriety, that the subject would be apt to lead both reader and writer into vulgar and ill founded excitement. In these lines, he concludes with the only real means of removing the opprobrium, -a gradual preparation-an enlightening by information-and a softening by Christianity, of those hearts which would truly feel and rightly use the blessings of liberty.

NOTE 4.-Page 109, line 24.

John Thornton, Esq. the benevolent merchant of whose charities the poet was well informed, and occasionally the instrument to the poor of his own neighbourhood.

66

NOTE 5.-Page 109, line 27.

Thine altar, sacred Liberty.

Liberty always inspires Cowper; no sooner does he name it, than his spirit goes into the highest heaven of invention:' words, images, thoughts of light, life, love, pour in upon him like sunbeams through an eyehole in a darkened casement; and he is all himself—all that he ought always to have been." In illustration of this, Montgomery quotes the passage in the text it is true there is much of exquisite fancy, of the very soul of the sweetest poetry, in the verse; but to us its practical entreaty to "the ten thousand hearts" too often steeled against the "misfortune of being poor," is the most affecting incident of all.

NOTE 6.-Page 110, line 27.

John Howard, of all who have aspired to the distinction, was most justly entitled to the name of philanthropist. In the words of Burke, "to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries," were the objects for which he left home, and affluence, and ease, to visit the prisons of Europe during a period of fourteen years. He died at Cherson, on the Black Sea, 1790, aged sixty-four. The noble lines in the text, we are informed, have been lately inscribed on his monument: in Russia they will be like the handwriting on the wall testifying that the kingdom of despotism is weighed and found wanting.

NOTE 7.-Page 112, line 28.

'Tis truth divine, exhibited on earth,
Gives Charity her being and her birth.

Never were the real purposes of "divine philosophy," or the worthlessness of "knowledge without grace," more eloquently displayed than in this noble passage. There do indeed occur expressions indicative of that contempt of natural science with which Cowper has in some degree been justly charged. Poets and artists, who look at nature as a whole, and describe effects, not causes, are rarely adequate judges of the value of experimental truth; but there was another reason in his case for this alleged disregard. The French encyclopedists were at this period in the height of their career; and Cowper, whose retirement, while it could not secure his ear against the painful intelligence of their success, prevented him from fully appreciating the value of those acquisitions which science was making, seems not to have sufficiently discriminated between them and the moral misapplications of the materialists, facts most important in themselves, and which at this moment form the groundwork of some of the most stupendous practical improvements of the present age.