all history toward a beneficent conclusion, the eternal grounds of love and confidence towards God and towards man, and the immovable basis of faith, hope, and charity. It is plain that the vindication of God's justice and goodness in our creation, government, and destiny, is the author's innermost aim; that he carries this purpose habitually in his heart; that it went abroad with him, came home with him only enlightened and encouraged, and now becomes the triumphant and inspiring theme of his book. The intense religiousness of this work is its most original and most valuable characteristic. It is the ruling spirit of its author. Religion is his highest philosophy and his most practical science. He sees God everywhere, feels him always, and can enjoy nothing till he has laid it with himself down at his Father's feet. If there were any stiff dogmatic theology, any professional sanctity, any apparent effort, in this all-pervading piety, it would be wearisome and commonplace; but coming, as it does, clothed in freshness, beauty, and infinite variety from the author's very being, it is neither obtrusive, chilling, nor formal, but constitutes the highest charm and refreshment of his work. It is publicly rumored that the contents of this volume were first communicated in the form of sermons to the author's own flock. We should not suspect it from anything that appears in the work itself; and yet we know nothing that could better occupy the hour of a Sabbath meditation than any one of these essays. The rare charm of them considered as serious and religious papers is, that while piety is the toning and pervading element, it does not in the least impair the truth, the variety, the playfulness, of the other sentiments. Indeed, we know not that our highest valuation of this work does not rest upon its serviceableness to the general cause of spirituality, by developing with such exquisite skill the universality of religion, as the life of beauty, the inspiration of art, the interpretation of history, the clew, support, and illumination of daily life, the traveller's guest, guide, and goal, and the food and rest, the business and pleasure, of the universal pilgrim, man.

In his first essay, if we ought not rather to say canto, our author shows the prime advantage of travel "abroad" to be contentment "at home." He returns to his country, his

home, his post of duty, from wandering over the earth, viewing its scenes of highest interest and enjoying a vacation from all labor, to open his mouth first, not with expressions of admiration and astonishment at what he has seen and enjoyed, but with the praises of what he returns to, the beauty and glory of that which it needs no travelling to see, but which travelling only takes us from, the familiar, the domestic, and the obligatory. There are perhaps readers so simple as to mistake the drift of this original and artful introduction, as though it were a dissuasive from travel, or an expression of disappointment in it; whereas the author here gives in an inverted form the highest praise and ascribes the largest utility to it, by setting over against it the noblest and best things which life possesses, to balance its fascinations and outdo its lessons.

Next, under the title of the "Beauty of the World," we have, first, a general essay on the office of beauty, its commonness and universality, which is full of instructive and charming thought; and this is followed by four sections, devoted to the Mountains, the Rivers, the Lakes, the Sea. In these original essays we have the spiritual meaning and moral value of these grand features of Nature, set forth in a way which has, perhaps, never been excelled. The author's genius never finds itself more at home than in this symbolism. He has a science of correspondences in his soul as exact as Swedenborg's, and infinitely more poetical. What is most valuable in these delightful essays comes not from abroad. The author has not gone to Europe to learn the significance and glory of Nature. There are mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas in his soul, which neither Mont Blanc, nor Rhine, nor Leman, nor Atlantic can surpass. What he sees abroad of these glories seems only to furnish occasion for pouring out the fulness of a life's love and admiration upon these counterparts of our humanity, in which deep calls unto deep and mountain replies to mountain. The most strikingly original of these four papers is that upon the Sea, with which the author is evidently most familiar. We know not where to point to more subtile and bolder treatment of the sea than in the following passages.

"But, once more, the landsman sees only part of the sea's beauty, to leave out which would be to omit half the portrait. Yet it is, in great

part, a terrible kind of beauty. Its monstrous look softens, and its motion grows caressing, as it runs into the inlets of the shore. Most graciously it courts the humanity on its borders with invitations to its broad and cool mansions, and coaxes it out upon its open floor, to treat it, alas! too often with savage inhospitality; and yet, sometimes, after fierce storms, that have roughly handled the sailor on either of its sides, it will smile, as in my own experience, with halcyon days dropped down betwixt the watery poles to tempt one out upon the deck, where he will swing as gently as the hang-bird in its nest, or seek refuge from the warm sunshine in the shadow of the mast. Beauty, in general, seems to lurk chiefly in the lines where diverse or opposite elements meet together, as with the sky and earth at the horizon, or the land and sea upon the beach. Yet are there peculiar charms only to be caught far out at sea. The huge cup, turned from above upon the liquid ball below, with their fine assorting of mutual colors, blue and gray, as sometimes in smooth embrace meet these mighty curves; the golden disk of the sun, rising, a solitary show of unrivalled sublimity, from behind the one convex into the other concave; or of the moon, with her splendid silver pillar cast in section athwart the dusky waves; the infinite grace with which the ocean makes a ship bow to its power, the mysterious witchery of which particular spell never wears out or tires the meditative mind, all these things make vastness of scale and grandeur of movement fall into the idea and feeling of beauty."- pp. 137, 138. "And the sea, which has required so much courage to cope with itself, has it not taught man to be courageous under every kind of trial on the ocean of life? It has taught us, that, if we yield to fear and foreboding on the voyage of our existence, we are like the sailor who should lie cowardly and darkly down in the bottom of his boat, and let her drift towards the rocks before the breeze; or, at the first stroke of the wind or lowering of the sky, hasten back spiritless and afraid to his corner, and, with all his means and opportunities, bring nothing to pass. It has taught us, on the roughest tide of affairs, to steer calmly and bravely on through the wild commotion. The worst way a ship can behave in a gale of wind is, in the technical term of the nautical dictionary, to broach to and lose the command of her rudder; for, so placed, she is at once roughly tossed about, torn asunder, and soon sinks in the awful hollow, which is called the trough of the sea. Our selfprostration under disappointment is that dreadful hollow, that fatal trough of the sea. It sucks up how many! God from on high, by his billows, calls on us, beneath whatever pressure of temptation or pain, to rise and stand at the helm. Beside only sin, he hates nothing as he does despair. If the pilot surrender, all is gone. What port at all can be reached?". pp. 144, 145.

The "Superiority of Art to Nature" follows next; an essay whose title will seem profane to many readers who will afterwards be compelled to acknowledge the truth, humility, and devoutness of the author's doctrine. Take the following as a sample of it:

"Let me refer to perhaps the grandest of these passages on the globe, that of the Stelvio, - being the highest practicable carriageroad in Europe, running over the Tyrolese Alps at a point nearly two miles above the level of the sea. The scene which it traverses might, one would think, well take off all attention from any work of human hands. Enough to amaze and delight are even the entry and bare approach through deep gorges and along rocky beds, furrowed with often raging torrents, their sides ploughed with descending avalanches, across whose recent stony deposits, perhaps at the moment of your passing laced with mountain cascades, horse and vehicle must be carefully supported and led. Gazing up, you see the lofty ramparts of nature wreathed in pale or in lurid vapor, as though parks of a celestial ordnance had been opened in the recent storm; and hostile signals still displayed, as from a fort against a coming foe. In some places the track has been swept away; but the inhabitants have rushed forth with peaceful weapons of husbandry to shape a new line, or throw over the current a safer bridge. Looking down into the river that dashes far below, you may observe its banks guarded with fortifications of floating timber or solid walls, to keep these inland waves from ravaging some adjoining nook of cultivation or more distant field. But, forward, you behold the path, like a living creature, climbing undaunted still, scaling the steep, or, where the rise is too sudden, traversing from side to side, as a vessel tacks to make headway against the wind, till, as it steadily gains upon the monstrous bulk of the upheaved earth, the sharp peaks and oval summits of the upper air, white as Purity's own form, begin to peer down upon your vision. But, right up, in the face of unmelting frosts and eternal snows, glides your road so smoothly, that your pace is without a break or jar. And now, your eye, reaching on, catches sight of its farther, higher progress on the main, central elevation you are to surmount. It shines zigzag afar, like the teeth of an enormous saw, that, from underneath, has cleft the hills. It hangs still farther beyond for miles up and down the awful brow, thinned by distance, as though the spider's web were spun from point to point to glimmer in the beams of heaven, or the everlasting rocks were sharpened to a cimeter's edge along the front of every beetling precipice with which the countenance of the giant of the range is seamed. But forth you fare, and find the

airy thread continually becoming your convenient path. Terraced on foundations swelling at the base to resist the sap of the elements, and the crush of falling matter from above; roofed in some places where the slides are wont suddenly to come, that the mighty weight of ice and earth may shoot, possibly over the very head of the passenger, into the tremendous vale below; boring its way through the stubborn rock, out of whose fissures the stalactites drip; winding by the feet of glaciers and beside banks of midsummer snow; standing a moment on the top to command the glorious view; and then plunging, the traveller with it, in the same absolute security, down the awful transalpine gullies, from whose bottom he looks back in astonishment to see where he has descended without terror, his wonder not ceasing till, by the bright streams and clear skies and soft verdure, and perhaps rare fruits, of Italy, he is taken into an embrace as mild as the elemental grasp before has threatened to be severe and dreadful.” pp. 163–166.

The essay styled the "Testimony of Art to Religion" exhibits the necessity under which art has found itself of seeking its great subjects, finding its present inspiration, and achieving its most costly triumphs, in religion. In this chapter are found some descriptions which exhibit the author's enthusiasm, taste, and piety in most favorable connection with his rhetoric. Take the following passage:

"So I felt, especially before one delineation of the holy mother and her child Jesus, which makes the pride and glory of the German city of Dresden, and, like the other great pictures in their several places, is set there so that it cannot be removed, — if I should not rather say, it is the honor of Europe and the world. The spectator feels, at first, a little curious and puzzled to account for its effects; for this astonishing picture does not seem to have been elaborated with the patient pencil that has wrought so unwearied upon many other famous subjects, but rather to have been thrown off, almost as though it had been in water-colors, by an inspiration of divine genius, in a sudden jubilee of its solemn exercise, with a motion of the hand, at the last height and acme of its attainment. The theme of the Saviour of the world, a babe on his parent's bosom, is of interest not to be surpassed. The dim shine of a cloud of angels flows from behind a curtain into the room, which is equally open to earth or heaven. All heaven indeed, through the artist's wondrous hinting of innumerable eager faces, seems crowding there to see. 'These things the angels desire to look into.' All earth waits dumbly expectant and mysteriously attentive below. The mother is discovered