our country, to our GOD, we shall go on extending and increasing in national greatness. If we are not faithful, we shall deserve to sink; and as sure as other nations have gone down, so shall we. There is much in the subject to inspire our patriotism and efforts to help our country. All can do something. Be it ours to learn what that something is. I believe that much can yet be done to increase the greatness and promote the progress of our country. Do not let us sit down because we cannot do great things, or engage in the most prominent work. Let us rather do the work that lies nearest home. First, let us try to raise our own moral character and spiritual life up to the model of the "Man CHRIST JESUS," and then having received power from on high, let us go forth to battle with wrong, with ignorance, and sin; let us attack wickedness, oppression, and error, find it where we may; let us try to promote all that is "lovely and of good report:" and if in this struggle we are called upon to sacrifice some sensual gratification, some personal indulgence, or worldly honour, let us think of Him who, though rich, for our sakes became poor." Remember, we shall soon run the race; our day for work will soon end. It is not of much importance whether. men approve or condemn; sufficient if conscience approves. Enough, if GOD smiles upon our work. And what will be the joy of hearing the Master by-and-by say-" Well done!" Friends, I have to-night set before you a noble object: it to promote the greatness of our country, and the happiness of future generations. Let us, one and all, earnestly and heartily throw ourselves into the work, believing that GOD, even our own GOD, will bless us.

66

374

POETRY AND RELIGIOUS FEELING,

ILLUSTRATED BY THE WRITINGS OF BYRON AND SHELLEY. BY THE

REV. F. W. KITTERMASTER, M. A.,

[Concluded from p. 352.]

WILL now refer to two of the highest instincts of our nature. First, the love existing between parent and child. Byron felt this strongly. In the beginning of the third canto of Childe Harold, he represents himself as about to bid farewell to his native land; and while pacing the deck of the vessel and watching the receding shore, he becomes lost in thought, and these words break instinctively from his lips

Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!

Ada sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted-not as now we part,
But with a hope. Awakening with a start,
The waters heave around me, and on high
The winds lift up their voices: I depart,
Whither I know not; but the hour's gone by

When Albion's lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. And in stanzas cxv. to CXVIII. he shows, by another reference to her, how well he understood the strength of that love which can only be destroyed by some unnatural return, or by overstrained authority.

CXV.

My daughter! with thy name this song begun

My daughter! with thy name thus much shall end!

I see thee not,-I hear thee not, but none

Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend
To whom the shadows of far years extend:
Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold,

My voice shall with thy future visions blend
And reach into thy heart,-when mine is cold,-
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.

CXVI.

To aid thy mind's development,-to watch
Thy dawn of little joys,-to sit and see
Almost thy very growth,-to view thee catch
Knowledge of objects,-wonders yet to thee!
To hold thee lighty on a gentle knee,

And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss,-
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me;
Yet this was in my nature:-as it is,

I know what is there, yet something like to this.

CXVII.

Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught
With desolation,-and a broken claim:

Though the grave closed between us,-'twere the same,
I know that thou wilt love me; though to drain
My blood from out thy being were an aim,

And an attainment,-all would be in vain,

Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.

CXVIII.

The child of love,-though born in bitterness
And nurtured in convulsion. Of thy sire
These were the elements, and thine no less.
As yet such are around thee,—but thy fire
Shall be more temper'd, and thy hope far higher.
Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee,

man.

As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me.

We turn, lastly, to the love existing between man and woThis is the highest instinct of nature-higher than that between parent and child; for under its influence" man is to leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife." It is the sympathy of spirit with spirit, for which every man and woman with any true feeling longs. In Byron this was never satisfied. After his first disappointment he went through life pursuing a shadow. That instinct, however, was deep in his heart, and his imagination created something for it to worship: it breathes in intensity throughout his poetry. Under its spirit he writes :

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye Elements!-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not

Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot,

Byron's mistake was in loving that which could not love him, and therefore there was disappointment. This disappointment made him write such lines as the following:"Who loves, raves-'tis youth's frenzy," canto 4, stanza 123. Frenzy, truly! to love as he loved. His masterly genius could not draw to himself that on which he had blindly set his heart, for there was no sympathy for him there. But not frenzy to love as nature teaches; her purest impulses are not to be forced or bought; they spring spontaneously; they unite with what is kindred to themselves; they give themselves willingly to that other self when that other self is found. It is thus that Shelley describes a vision coming to the spirit of solitude :

He dream'd a veiled maid

Sat near him talking in low solemn tones;
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought.

Such love is the highest instinct in man; it can impart the greatest happiness of which human nature, without God, is capable; and it binds with the strongest bond, second only to that which unites the believer to his Lord. That Byron, as a poet, fully understood this instinct, we learn from his characters. We trace it in Conrad, Medora, Cain, Adah, Kaled, Manfred, &c. We might adduce many passages; one, however, shall suffice. It contains the reply of Cain to Lucifer, who had been trying to persuade him earthly beauty was delusive, and would decrease if approached nearer. Cain felt it was not so. He had looked upon the cloud, the sky, the sunlight, and had been charmed; but there was something charmed him more, and "loveliest still as he approached it nearest." He had looked upon

Adah's face, and read there the expression of mutual love; he had seen her eye speaking from its depths a language more eloquent than that of the tongue; he had felt her beauty intensify and grow upon him, and, gazing on her face, all else to him was as nothing. Hear how he speaks: My sister, Adah. All the stars of heaven,

The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world,

The hues of twilight, -the sun's gorgeous coming-
His setting indescribable, which fills

Mine eyes with pleasant tears as I behold

Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him

Along that western paradise of clouds ;

The forest shade,-the green bough, the bird's voice

The vesper bird's-which seems to sing of love,

And mingles with the song of cherubim,

As the day closes over Eden's walls;

All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face: I turn from earth and heaven
To gaze on it.

These passages I have selected will be sufficient to show that Byron not only appreciated in an intense degree the beautiful in nature, but that he understood fully the best and noblest instincts in man. But for all this we find in him nothing approaching to religious feeling, as connected with God in Christ, and that all his natural gifts, great as they were, did not help him towards it. Sufficient proof is this that natural gifts are entirely distinct from religion. The feeling arising from them is a natural feeling emanating from what is within ourselves; while religious feeling is an external thing emanating from God, and coming down into the soul from Him. It would be easy to show that Byron's poetic nature made him proud, morose, a despiser of his fellows, and in other ways an unsatisfactory character: and thus it will generally be where there is strong poetic feeling without religion; for there will be the recoil from disappointment, which the sensitive mind often meets with, making it look in the worst light at everything. One quotation will be sufficient to show what I mean:

CANTO III. STANZA CXIII.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd