tured? What law of God or man have they not trampled upon? Talk of the pope's conscience! A pope can have no conscience. Satan himself has a conscience as much as any pope of Rome for the last thousand years.

Henry VIII. died in 1546, and his son by Jane Seymour, a mere child, succeeded him, taking the name of Edward VI. The prince was educated under Protestant influences, and was in all respects a remarkable youth. He promoted the Reformation, causing the service of the Church of England to be established by act of Parliament. That beautiful prayer which has been adopted and poured forth from thousands upon thousands of pious hearts, was composed by him: "Cleanse thou the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Edward always had a feeble constitution, and died in 1553, having reigned seven years. Had he been physically as vigorous as his father, and lived as long, the Church of England would have been established upon a more liberal and evangelical footing. That Church has never been so purely Protestant as it was during Edward's short reign.

Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. by Catherine of Aragon, succeeded Edward VI.; and, notwithstanding she had given pledges in advance that she would not disturb the existing order of things, she turned over the kingdom to the pope, recalled the Romish bishops, and deprived the Reformers. In 1554, under the promptings of the infamous Bonner, she commenced a furious persecution, in which Hooper, Ferrar, Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were burned at the stake in Smithfield. Many others, among whom were men and women in common life, received the crown of martyrdom under this reign. These sanguinary proceedings procured for this queen the just but unenviable title of "Bloody Mary." Thanks to a merciful Providence, her reign was short. Five years terminated her career of blood.

Smithfield, whence the noble martyrs above referred to went to heaven, was afterward, and until recently, a cattle-market in the midst of London. In1846 we visited the scene of the fearful tragedies enacted under the reign of Catholic Mary, with feelings of mingled pleasure and pain. Thank God, the days of persecution in the British Isles have passed, as we trust, never to return.

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. by Anne Boleyn, succeeded Mary, and was crowned in 1558. Elizabeth expelled the papacy, and restored the Reformation. She repealed all the popish laws which had been enacted under the reign of Mary, and established

her own supremacy over the Church. By a bull of Pius V. she was deprived of her kingdom, and her subjects absolved from their allegiance to her government. Her Tudor spirit did not quail under the pope's anathemas, but flung them back upon his head, and lashed his treacherous vassals out of her dominions. Elizabeth was a lover of learning, and having given herself to study during her imprisonment under the reign of Mary, she had mastered five or six languages. The Articles and Liturgy of the Church of England, as at present found, were settled during her reign. Numerous feuds and many executions grew out of the pope's bull of privation and anathema. Elizabeth made no compromise with popish rebels, but they, with their schemes, were dashed to pieces with little ceremony. She administered the government for forty-five years, and attained a high rank among the crowned heads of Europe. Two types of opinions were associated in the English Church, which still remain there. One is the High Church, or Romish type; and the other is the Low Church, or Puritan type. The first is represented by Archbishop Laud and Bishop Sancroft; and the second by Cranmer, Jewell, Hooker, Burnet, Stillingfleet, and others. The ultra spirits of the High Church party became Romanists, while the ultras of the other party became Dissenters. Jewell considered the particular form of Church government a matter for the Church to determine, and he held to episcopacy, and revived episcopal ordination, upon that principle, while he declared the Romish Church to be antichrist. The English Church is like the Shunammite in the Songs: there is seen in her as it were the company of two armies."

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The English Church has been called "the bulwark of Protestantism." As Protestantism becomes a state institution this is just; but as Protestantism is a principle, and a form of spiritual life, it is not true. The principle and vital power of Protestantism constitute but a minor portion of the composition of the English Church. Protestantism is in England, and potent for good there; but its exponent is to be found in the evangelical Churches. The Church of England is more of a state institution than it is a Protestant Church. Its heterogeneous materials never can unite, and it is crippled by its connection with the government, and especially by the royal supremacy. It contains both papists and Puritans, and they are eternal antagonisms.

Separating the royal and parliamentary acts establishing the regimen of the English Church, from the great moral and doctrinal revolutions which were their antecedents, instead of being their fruits or results, it is plain enough that the English Reformation was not

the creature of Henry VIII., or of any other merely human agency; but was one of the great demonstrations of evangelism intervening between the day of pentecost and the millennium.

ART. IV-WHITTIER'S POEMS.

The Poems of John Greenleaf Whittier. Two volumes, 32mo., pp. 320, 304. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1857.

HERE are two neat volumes, bound in tasteful blue and gold, and handsomely printed by one of the most judicious of Boston publishing houses. They contain, it is true, but little that has not before been presented to the reading public in other forms; almost all of the poems in them having been read and weighed long ago, either in other volumes or in the periodical literature of the day. Yet the publication of this many times read and often quoted poetry, in this eye-pleasing form, is a just tribute to the noble-minded author, one of the most truly affectioned and most genuinely inspired poets of modern times. The books, and their binding, their types, paper, and bodily presence, are an honor to the worshipful bookmaking craft of Boston. The writings of Whittier are on such topics, and in such a spirit, as are best suited to the demands of an age like the present. These volumes gather them all, and bind them in as neat a setting as gems could desire; "apples of gold in pictures of silver."

Whittier was born in 1808, in Amesbury, Massachusetts, on the banks of the then idle and rural, but now the busy and city-studded, though still sweet and picturesque Merrimack; a river which these poems fitly celebrate. He is a bachelor, tall and spare; of delicate health; of simple, unostentatious habits; of disposition retiring, even to bashfulness; an ardent lover of nature and of human goodness; a bold admirer of radical freedom of thought, and strict lawabiding acting; a most hearty hater of all cant, hypocrisy, meanness, and illiberality; and an enthusiastic asserter, and a fearless, untiring defender of the inalienable rights of conscience and human liberty. He has written on almost everything, from religion to business, and even the petty details of town politics, and on all these topics he has written in prose and rhyme. His pen has been at all times in his ink-horn, ready to obey the dictates of its master's great and loving heart. And it has been kept busy, writing for the party, the

literary, and the reform newspapers of the age, and for the anniversaries of numerous associations of enthusiastic philanthropists, and the meetings of charitable societies of honest and benevolent women, who labor and pray for the coming of the better time. He has written in honor of the memory of the noble dead, who suffered for truth and freedom in other days, and on topics of current literary and critical interest; deeming, very justly, no subject too humble for his notice, if the attention of men was so aroused as that, upon it, a true and hearty word could be said, which should readily command for itself a patient and a promising hearing. Almost every day, therefore, notwithstanding his feebleness of body, he has sent out a little waif-always with a glowing torch in it-to float its moment, its hour, or its year, upon the disturbed waters of the times, to please the weary watchers for the promises of the coming day, or to light a little space on the gloomy abyss, and guide some one, endangered by the vicinity of cruel rocks, in the direction of safety.

These fragments, for they are hardly more, though made of diamond, are in all its forms; now well polished, and now rough; noble poems at one time, and little more than doggerels at another; essays, tales, novels, odes, sketches, criticisms, biographies, tirades, philippics, orations almost, and almost epics in spirit and conceptions, at least, if not in execution. They touch, of course, on almost every subject of moral interest; but the key-note of nearly all is found in intense hatred both of civil and ecclesiastical oppression and intolerance; in keen and enthusiastic love for nature, truth, right, justice, and freedom; and they display shrewd and patient observation of all the varying moods of nature and humanity. In the literary world Whittier is sometimes regarded as exclusively an anti-slavery poet; yet, among all our American writers of verse, there is not another who better knows nature in all her grandeur and beauty, in all her whims of smile and frown, of peace and strife; who can so heartily sympathize with man in all his trials and aspirations, in all his hopes and fears, in all his agonies and exultations; and who can better describe the varying glories of landscape and season, and better speak the emotions and struggles of the great soul of the race. And his poetry, though bristling with epithets of bitterest denunciation of human bondage and cruel wrong, though burning with almost implacable ire against the practices of Churchmen and statesmen, who fear to utter the true word, or cower to speak the false, has still little that is offensive to any one who hears in it the great cry of human want and woe, and who sympathizes with and admires unflinching courage and noble, heroic devotion to principle.

This collection, called complete, contains separate pieces that count one hundred and ninety-five. They are of divers lengths, from forty pages to less than half of one. They are on a vast variety of topics, many apparently discordant, but all full of lyric fire, tender sweetness, or holy faith. They touch all the keys in the great diapason of song, from the grand anthem of "Peace on earth, good will to man," to the humble song that requites the simple gift of a flower. And while it is safe to say, that it would be tiresome to read them all consecutively, it would by no means be untrue to say that not one is here, that may not, at the proper time, be read with great delight and profit. These poems are grouped together in the volumes, very properly, under several distinct heads, according to their evident design and purpose, or with reference to the topics of which they treat. Thus we have in the opening two of the longer poems, which are tales of the early times of New-England; then a family of ten poems, entitled "Legendary;" following which are thirty-eight, called "The Voices of Freedom;" and last in the first volume, a crowd of some thirty or more, named "Miscellaneous." The second volume contains "The Songs of Labor," "The Chapel of the Hermits," "The Panorama," Ballads, and several groups of Miscellaneous. Some of these divisions are too well known to need any formal introduction to any class of readers. It may not, however, be amiss to analyze them more at large.

By the Songs of Freedom Whittier has been more widely known than by any other of his writings; and in any notice of him and his poems, these very properly may be first commented on. These pieces were written at different times during the discussion of the question of Slavery in New-England, from 1833 to 1849, when they were first collected and published together. They are in many respects the poet's best verses, and many of the miscellaneous poems might be classed among them. They are spirited, are often smooth in versification, sweet in diction, harmonious in rhythm, and contain many of his most vividly sketched and most appropriately colored descriptions. The opening of the poem entitled, "Toussaint l'Overture," is rich and luxuriant almost beyond imagination. It describes a scene of tropical moonlight, such as sinks into the soul, and fills it with a sense of beauty too deep for words. The ability to sketch a broad landscape with a word or an epithet, in the hurried generalizing manner of Sir Walter Scott, is seen in parts of the World's Convention, and in the "Crisis." In this division, too, are some of his most stirring appeals, as in "The Song of the Free;" and some of his most tender and sympathetic verses, as in the "Farewell-A Slave Mother's Lament over her Daughters;"

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