"Divine Being possesses this qualification in the highest "degree: He is the Infinite Spirit, He only is capable of bestowing and assuming true, permanent, unchanging felicity, "at all periods and through all duration. The earth in this "respect, with all its riches, is indigent; even the splendour "of immortality is dark, as to any power capable of guiding "men to happiness, independently of the great Eternal."

All this is strongly expressed, and does everything that the promise of happiness can do to inspire our attachment to the Author of our being; yet, constituted as we are, it is apt to fall flat on our minds. There is not merely the difficulty in obtaining assurance; even when that is got over, we still lack the ready response of affection to the call of self-interest.

Hall endeavours to supply the proof of his position, while adding fresh illustrations from his copious diction.

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God, as He is a Spirit, is capable of communicating Himself to the spirits of His rational creatures. Spirit naturally comes into contact with spirit; and this com"munication of Himself is infinitely easy to the Divine Being. He can manifest Himself to the hearts of His 'people, disclose the glory of His name to them more and more, open perpetually fresh views of His character, give "them fresh sensations of ineffable delight in the contemplation of His excellence, lead them forward from one de"partment of His perfections to another, and make the "whole creation itself speak forth His praises. Thus may He accumulate the materials of ceaseless rapture to eternity; elevating His worshippers perpetually in adoration, at the same time that He lays them lower in prostra"tion before Him."

In his gorgeous discourse, entitled "The Glory of God in Concealing," Hall makes an effective employment of the influence of the mysterious on the human mind; not, however, without a certain amount of special pleading. Mystery and concealment may be carried to such a pitch as to prove harassing rather than a charm or fascination.

"The Deity is intended to be the everlasting field of the "human intellect, as well as the everlasting object of the "human heart, the everlasting portion of all holy and happy minds, who are destined to spend a blissful but ever-active "eternity in the contemplation of His glory." Here there is a mixed appeal to our affections and to our intellectual

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MYSTERY A LIMITED INTEREST.

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pleasures; in point of fact, the last-named constitute the theme of the passage.

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If we stretch our powers to the uttermost, we shall never exhaust His praise, never render Him adequate honour, never discharge the full amount of claim which He "possesses upon our veneration, obedience, and gratitude. "When we have loved Him with the greatest fervour, our 'love will still be cold compared with His title to devoted "attachment." There is no real force in these hyperbolical statements; they miss the way to the human heart.

"This will render Him the continual source of fresh 'delight to all eternity." The inference is by no means plain. "His perfection will be an abyss never to be "fathomed; there will be depths in His excellence which we "shall never be able to penetrate. We shall delight in "losing ourselves in His infinity." Not necessarily; we may be equally liable to the pain of being baffled in our endeavours.

"In the contemplation of such a Being, we are in no danger of going beyond our subject; we are conversing "with an infinite object in the depths of whose

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essence and purposes we are for ever lost. This will "(probably) give all the emotions of freshness and astonish"ment to the raptures of the beatific vision, and add a delightful rest to the devotions of eternity." Theologians have drawn largely on their own uninspired imagination for the pictures of celestial bliss, and these must be judged solely as to their effect on the feelings. Intellectual curiosity is the charm of only a select number of minds; and such will not be carried away by the very doubtful assertions that Hall indulges in. His glittering language is well suited to develop the theme; but, to awaken the more universal sentiment of love, a different style of address is needed. It would have been still better if he had expended his great powers in a simple, unqualified, and harmoniously sustained appeal to the human affections.

Cardinal Newman, speaking of 'The Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament,' makes such an appeal with effective simplicity:

"As sons might come before a parent before going to bed at night, so, once or twice a week, the great Catholic family comes before the Eternal Father, after the bustle or toil of the day, and He smiles upon them, and sheds upon

them the light of His countenance." "It is," he says subsequently, "one of the most beautiful, natural, and soothing actions of the Church"; which brings the rite close to the tender regards.

TENDERNESS IN NATURAL OBJECTS.

The interest in Nature, including inanimate objects, together with plants and animals, has been already brought into view (p. 53). The Tender interest, in particular, is inseparable from erotic poetry.

Personification and Association combine to impart tender feeling to the outer world; and objects rendered interesting from these causes are introduced into poetry, either as principals or as accessories and surroundings.

The chief liability to failure in all such references is assuming for them a greater height of emotion than the average reader can rise to.

Milton's Night Scene, in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost, accumulates circumstances of Nature interest, more or less impregnated with tender feeling, and nowise out of harmony with it. Even the celestial allusions, although tending to the sublime, are suited to the calm and repose of the loving emotion.

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung.
Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphire; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in cloudy majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

The accumulated circumstances of autumnal decay are given in Thomson thus :—

The pale descending year, yet pleasing still,
A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf
Incessant rustles from the mournful grove;
Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air.
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams;

NATURE TENDERNESS-THOMSON, SHELLEY, KEATS. 207

Till choked, and matted with the dreary shower,
The forest walks, at every rising gale,

Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak.
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. Even what remained
Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.

The general effect here is alliance with tender emotion, which is made more decided by the suggestion of decay. It is not difficult to assign the poetical bearing of every one of the circumstances. In some instances, the images are allied to power, as 'the leafy deluge,' 'the rising gale,'' the blasted verdure,' but these pass at once into the pathos of decay and desolation.

Even the grandeurs of the world's scenery can easily assume the tender aspect, without a sense of discord. As in Shelley :

She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,

A power that from its objects scarcely drew

One impulse of her being--in her lightness

Most like some radiant cloud of morning dev,

Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,

To nourish some fur desert: she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,

Like the bright shade of some immortal dream

Which walks, when tempest slccps, the wave of life's dark stream. We feel no unsuitability for the poet's aim, which is to inspire love, in quoting objects belonging to the higher sphere of nature's sublimity.

Even the sublime grandeurs of the celestial orbs are subservient to the tender and pathetic interest when they are employed as signs to mark the recurrence of interesting human avocations. As in Milton-

The star that bids the shepherd fold.

The following is from Keats :

Together had he left his mother fair
And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower,
And in the morning twilight wandered forth
Beside the osiers of a rivulet,

Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale.

The nightingale had ceased, and a few stars
Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush
Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle
There was no covert, no retired cave

Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves,
Though scarcely heard in many a green recess.

Again, in Wordsworth :

All things that love the sun are out of doors;

The sky rejoices in the morning's birth;

The grass is bright with rain-drops;-on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;

And with her feet she from the plashy earth

Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

The flowers are especially the ministers of pathos, as the trees are of strength. The rose has the admitted preeminence its charms to the senses are readily augmented by the subtle infusion of protective tenderness, and its value to the poet is correspondingly great. The violet, the primrose, the blue bell, the lily of the valley, and many others have also admitted poetic rank. The daisy, too, has its interest; but has been, perhaps, overtasked both by Wordsworth and by Burns. The ode of Burns To a Mountain Daisy' barely escapes maudlin, notwithstanding the poetic setting in company with the lark. Much less regret would suffice for uprooting a daisy in the plough's track. Moreover, to tag on to such a small incident a series of moral lessons-to the artless maid, to the imprudent bard, and to the unfortunate generally, seems an inversion of the order of supporting and supported.

Tennyson's harmonizing faculty finds congenial exercise in this field. The following is from Enone :—

O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,
Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.

For now the noonday quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass :

The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead.
The purple flower droops; the golden bee
Is lily-cradled: I alone awake.

My eyes are full of tears, &c.

SORROW.--PATHOS.

When misery cannot be relieved in kind, that is, by the means strictly adapted to the case, as poverty by alms, sickness by remedies; there is an assuaging power through the display of tender emotion. This may take the shape either of sympathy from others, or of grief on the part of the sufferer, which latter is tenderness towards self. The situation is expressed by Sorrow, and gives the meaning to