One Fold.

"And there shall be one fold."

Disciple.
"One Fold! Good Lord, how poor thou art,
To have but one for all!
Methinks the rich with shame will smart
To stand in common stall
With ragged boors and work-grimed men;
And ladies fair, with those who when
They pray have dirty, hands.
Dost think the wise can be devout
When, close beside, an ignorant lout
With mouth wide-gaping stands?
I would thou wert a richer Lord,
And could an hundred folds afford
Where each might find his place.
Look round, good Lord, and thou wilt see
Most men the same have thought with me,
And herd with whom they best agree
In fashion, creed, and race."
Master.
"Good child, thou hast a merry thought!
But folds like mine cannot be bought,
Nor made at fancy's will.
If any find my fold too small
'Tis they who like no fold at all,
The same who heed no shepherd's call,
Whom wolves will find and kill.
My fold alone is close and warm,
Shielding its inmates from all harm—
Its pastures rich and sweet.
Hither, with gentle hand, I bring
The peasant and the crownèd king
Together at my feet.
Here no man flings a look of scorn
At him who may be baser born,
For all as brothers meet.
The wise speak kindly to the rude;
The lord would not his slave exclude;
Proud dames their servants greet.
My fold doth equally embrace
The men of every clime and race,
And here in peace they rest.
Here each forgets his rank and state.
And only he is high and great
Who loveth me the best.
The rich, the poor, the bond, the free,
The men of high and low degree,
My fold unites in one with me—
With me, the Shepherd, called The Good,
Who rules a loving brotherhood.
Therefore, in that my fold is one,
Believe me, it is wisely done."

Translated From The French Of M. Vitet.
Science And Faith.
Meditations On The Essence Of The Christian Religion,
By M. Guizot.

Some time ago political life seemed to be the prominent occupation in France. M. Guizot was then cautiously defending his opinions, and was really wearing out his energy and his life in this work. At that time, we have heard it wished more than once, not that the struggle should cease, but that death might not surprise him with his mind occupied solely with these passing events. He needed, as a last favor and at the end of an ambitious career, some years of quiet and retreat to meditate upon the future, and to revive the faith of youth by the lessons of riper years. He required this for himself, for the interest of his soul. Nothing then foretold that he would soon be engaged in the arena of metaphysical and religious controversy. The disputes about these questions seemed almost lulled to sleep. Not that doubt and incredulity had surrendered their arms; they followed their accustomed work, but without noise, without parade, and without apparent success. This was a truce which had allowed Christian convictions to become reanimated, to increase, and to gain ground. The proof of this was seen in those gloomy days, when the waves of popular opinion, which threatened to destroy, bent, completely subdued and submissive and with an unlooked-for respect, before sacred truths and the ministers of religion. This was the natural result of that bitter struggle which had lasted for fifteen years. The aggressors could not undertake two sieges at one time, and so political power became the target against which all their efforts were directed.

It is not the same now. Power is protected by an armor which has disheartened its adversaries; and the more surely it is guarded, the more exposed and compromised are other questions, which equal or even exceed it in importance. The spirit of audacity and aggression compensates itself for the forced forbearance from politics, imposed upon it by the political power. It sees that in religious matters the ground is not so well protected; it feels more at ease there and not nearly so hard pushed. From this fact there arises a series of bold attacks of a new order, which scandalize the believing, and astonish the most indifferent, when they think for a moment of the preceding calm. It is no longer men or ministers, it is not a form of government, it is God himself whom they attack? We do not ask that the government should place the least restriction on the rights of free thought, even should it be to the advantage of the truths that we venerate the most. We desire to state the fact, and nothing more. It may be that these attacks are not important enough to cause as much anxiety as they have done. They are passionate, numerous, and skilfully arranged; but they cannot shake the edifice, and will serve rather to strengthen it, by summoning to its aid defenders who are more enlightened, and protectors who are more vigilant. Still, they are a great source of trouble. The restlessness, the distress, and the vague fears that the agitation of political affairs seemed alone capable of producing, now arise in the heart of the domestic circle and in the depths of the individual soul from these new discussions. It is not personal interests that are now risked, but souls that are in danger; and if the crisis is apparently less violent and intense, it is really graver and more menacing, and no one can remain neutral in the struggle.

And so M. Guizot wishes to take a part, and has entered the fray. He is of the number who, at certain times and upon certain subjects, do not know how to be silent. In politics he held back and he forbore. He saw the events, but he did not say what he thought of them. His debt in politics is now amply paid; all the more since he owed it to himself, as well as to his cause, to reestablish the real sense, the true physiognomy of the things he did. He had to explain clearly his views, his intentions, his acts; to interpret them and to comment upon them, we can almost say, to finish them during his own life; to give the true key to his future historians; in a word, to write his own memoirs. This was his duty, and he has acted rightly in not delaying it. It was not less for other ends, and in the design of a greater work, that he wished for twenty years' solitude and repose at the end of his life. His desire was heard. The days of calm and retreat have come, not, perhaps, at the time that he desired, and still less under conditions that he would have chosen, but for his glory they are such that he can well think them fruitful, worthy, valuable, full of vigor and of ardor. Happy autumn! when the recollections of the world and the echoes of political strife are only the recreation of a soul incessantly engaged with more serious problems. It is in these heights, in these serene regions, while he is questioning himself on his destiny and on his faith, that war has come to seek him; not the personal war of former times, but another kind of war, less direct and more general, yet perhaps more provoking. He is not the man to refuse the contest. Under the weight of years that he bears so well, stronger, more resolute, younger than ever, he has entered the arena; he will be militant until the end.

What will he do? What is his plan? What position will he take? The volume which is before us is an answer to these questions. It is only a first volume; but it is complete in itself, it is a work that one cannot study too closely, nor diffuse too widely. The developments, the additions, and the supplements which the three remaining volumes will soon add to the work, will, without doubt, make it still more comprehensive and solid; but as it is now, we consider it, without any commentary whatsoever, to be a most effective reply to the attacks which have recently been levelled against Christian doctrines, or, to speak more correctly, against the essence of all religion.

Before entering into the work, let us say something of the manner in which it is written. We are not going to speak of the author's style. We would announce nothing new to the world by saying that M. Guizot, when he has time and really tries, can write as well as he speaks. His pen for many years has followed a law of progress and of increasing excellence. He has shown in these Meditations a new skill, perhaps higher than in his Memoirs even, in the art of clothing his ideas in excellent language; learnedly put together, yet without effort or stiffness, true in its coloring, sober in its effects, always clear and never trivial, always firm and often forcible. Something more novel and more characteristic appears in this book. It is in reality a controversial work, but a controversy which is absolutely new. It is more than courteous, it is an impersonal polemic. The author has, certainly, always shown himself respectful to his opponents; he has ever admitted that they could hold different opinions from his in good faith; and even at the rostrum, in the heat of contests, his adversaries were not persons, they were ideas; but the people he disputed with were always, without scruple, called by their names. Here it is different; there is not a single proper name, the war is anonymous. In changing the atmosphere—in passing, if we can be allowed the expression, from earth to heaven, or, at least, from the bar to the pulpit, from politics to the gospel, he changes his method and takes a long step in advance. He endeavors to leave persons entirely out of consideration, for they only embarrass and embitter the questions. He forgets, or at least he does not tell us, who his adversaries are; he refutes them, but he does not name them.

Is not this discretion at once, good manners and good taste? It is also something more. Without doubt, by speaking only of ideas and not of those who maintain them, one loses a great means of effective action. In abstract matters, proper names referred to here and there are a very powerful resource—they arouse and excite attention, they give interest and life to the argument; but what is gained on one hand is frequently lost on another. The use of proper names, though it may have nothing to provoke irritation, still always incurs the danger of causing the debate to degenerate into a personal dispute. The questions are reduced to the capacity of those who sustain them. Better take a plainer and more decided path, and keep persons completely out of view. M. Guizot has done well. In no part of his book is there reason to regret the vivacity and attraction of a more direct polemic; whilst the urbanity and the omission of names, without really changing or diminishing the questions, spread a calm gravity throughout the work, almost a perfume of tolerance, which gains the reader's confidence and disposes him to allow himself to be convinced. It is true that this kind of polemics can only be maintained when greatness of thought compensates for the lack of passion. It is necessary to take wing, mount above questions, conquer all and enlighten all. Such is the character of these Meditations. The comprehensiveness of his views, the greatness of his plan, and the clearness of his style, alike impress upon it the seal of true originality.

It is not a theology that M. Guizot has undertaken; he has not written for doctors; he discusses neither texts nor points of doctrine; he does not attempt to solve scholastic difficulties; still less does he wish to mingle in the discussion of incidental events, to descend to the questions of to-day, and to follow, step by step, the crisis which agitates the Christian world at this time. He has grappled with more weighty and more permanent questions. He wishes to show clearly the truth of Christianity in its essence, in its fundamental dogmas, or rather in its simplicity and innate greatness, without commentary, interpretation, or human work of any kind, and consequently before all disunion, schism, or heresy. He has tried to expose the pure idea of Christianity, so that he can be more able to demonstrate its divine character.

Such is his intention. What has he done to attain it? The book itself must answer this question. But in these few pages how can we speak of it? How can we analyze a work when one is tempted to quote every paragraph? And on the other hand to give many extracts from a book, is only to mutilate it and give an incorrect idea of its real value. Let us only try, then, to say enough to inspire our readers with the more profitable desire of studying M. Guizot himself.

I.

The beginning and the foundation of these Meditations is a well-known truth, which the author establishes with absolute certainty, and which at this time it is useful to keep in mind. This truth is, that the human race, since its first existence and in every place where it has existed, has been engaged in trying to solve certain questions which are, so to speak, personal to it. These are questions, of destiny, of life rather than science, questions it has invincibly tried to determine. For example, Why is man in this world, and why the world itself? Why does it exist? Whence do they come, and where do they both tend? Who has made them? Have they an intelligent and free Creator? or are they merely a product of blind elements? If they are created, if we have a Father, why, in giving us life, has he made it so bitter and painful? Why is there sin? Why suffering and death? Is not the hope of a better life only the illusion of the unhappy; and prayer, that cry of the soul in anguish, is it only a sterile noise, a word thrown to the mocking wind?

These questions, together with others which develop and complete them, have excited the deepest interest of the human race since it first existed upon the earth, and it alone is interested in them. They speak only to it; among all living creatures, it alone can comprehend and is affected by them. This painful yet grand privilege is the indisputable evidence of its terrestrial royalty; it is at once its glory and its torment.

This series of questions, or rather mysteries, M. Guizot places at the beginning of his Meditations, under the title of Natural Problems. Man, indeed, possesses them by his very nature; he does not create or invent them, he merely submits to them. We do not mean by this that for humanity in general these problems are not obscure and confused, without a distinct form or outline, surrounded with uncertainties and frequently rather seen than clearly apprehended. This must be true of the great mass of mankind, who live from hand to mouth, who go and come and work, absorbed in petty pleasures or occupied with dreary toil. Still we think that there is not a single one, even among these apparently dull and heedless men, in whatever way he may have lived and whatever hardships he has had to sustain, who has not at least once in his life caught a glimpse of these formidable questions and felt an ardent wish to see them solved. Make as many distinctions as you please between races, sexes, ages, and degrees of civilization; divide the globe and its inhabitants by zones or climates; you will no doubt discover more than one difference in the way in which these problems are presented to the soul; you will find them more or less prominent, and more or less attention paid to them; but you will find a trace of them everywhere and among all people. It is a law of instinct, a general law for all times and places.

If such is our lot, if these questions necessarily weigh upon minds, these questions which are "the burden of the soul," as M. Guizot calls them, are we not really compelled to try to solve them? It is on our part neither vain curiosity, nor capricious desire, nor frivolous habit which leads us to attempt it. It is a necessity, quite as serious and as natural to us as the problems are themselves; a need we feel in some way to have lifted from us the weight which oppresses. We must have a reply at any cost; who can give it to us?

Faith or Reason? Religion or Philosophy? At every moment we see in what a very limited manner reason, science, and all purely human resources suffice to satisfy us. It can be said that, from the very infancy of human society up to the present day, it has been from the various religions, thought to be divine and accepted as such by faith, that humanity has asked these indispensable responses.

We readily see from this, what a deep interest is attached to these natural problems. Who will presume to tell us that religion proceeds from an artificial and temporary want, which men have gradually overcome, if the problems to which it answers are inherent in the race and can only perish with it? It is the constant work and watchword of every materialistic and pantheistic system to distort the character of these problems and make them simply accidental and individual, the result of temperament or of circumstances. Farther than this, they had not yet gone. They did not dare to deny, in the face of universal testimony, the continued existence of the problems themselves. They disguised their significance, they did not aspire to destroy them. Now they take another step. In order to get the advantage in answering, they begin by suppressing the questions. This is the characteristic feature, the first step of a system which makes a great deal of noise in the world to-day, although it only claims to reproduce efforts which have been already more than once defeated. It has, however, this kind of novelty, this advantage over its associates which, like it, have issued from pantheism, that it is not vague. It sets forth its opinions clearly and without equivocation, and by this fact this school of philosophy has gained the title by which it is commonly known. We need hardly say that it is to Positivism that we are alluding. This promises with the greatest seriousness, if we will only lend it our attention, to free humanity from these untoward problems which now torment it.

Its remedy is extremely simple: it simply says to the human race, Why do you seek to know whence you have come and what is your destiny? You will never find out a word of this. Do then your real duty. Leave these vain fancies. Live, become learned, study the evolution of things, that is to say, secondary causes and their relations; on this subject science has wonders to reveal to you; but final causes and first causes, our origin and our destiny, the beginning and the end of the world, these are all pure reveries, words completely without meaning! The perfection of man as well as of society consists in taking no notice of these things. The mind becomes more enlightened, the more it leaves in obscurity your pretended natural problems. These problems are really a disease, and the way to cure it is, not to think of them at all.

Not to think of them! Ingenuous proposition! Wonderful ignorance of the eternal laws of human nature! "Our age," say they, "inclines to these ideas: but let us not be disturbed by this." Men will not be persuaded by speaking to them in such a clear way, any more than Don Juan could overcome Sganarelle by his discourses on "two and two are four." Positivism not only attempts the impossible, but it frankly acknowledges it. Let us suppose for a moment that by some miracle it should triumph; that man, in order to please this system, should cease to pay any attention to the problems which beset him, should renounce the idea of fathoming these questions, and should despise every attempt at a religious or even a metaphysical solution, every inspiration toward the Infinite. How long does any one believe this would continue? We do not think that the human mind would consent to be thus mutilated and imprisoned for two days in succession. Were this system far more fascinating, the human soul would still rise above the limit to which Positivism would confine it, and would say with a great poet:

"Je ne puis, l'infini malgré moi me tourmente."

And so we see, whatever may happen, Positivism is not destined to give us the solution of these natural problems. After, as before, its appearance, the mystery of our destiny claims the attention of the human race.

M. Guizot describes another attempt, of an entirely different character. It is apparently less bold, for its aim is not to suppress inquiry, but merely to elude any definite solution of these natural problems. It cannot be properly called a system; it is rather a state of the individual soul, which not unfrequently is found among cultivated minds; it is a tendency to substitute what is called religious sentiment for religion itself. They do not deny the great mysteries of life, but consider them as being very serious and extremely embarrassing. But in the place of precise solutions and categorical replies, which could be required of a system maintaining fixed and clearly defined dogmas, they content themselves with frequent reveries and long contemplations. "This is," say they, "the religion of enlightened intellects; we care for no solutions, for they only serve to agitate and annoy." It offers a complete contrast to Positivism. That recommends us, as a sort of moral hygiene, never to think of invisible things; but these "enlightened minds" would have us reflect much, if not continually, upon them, but always with the proviso that we must come to no conclusion.

The human race will not be satisfied with these modes of interpreting its destiny. It requires something more than the blind negations of the one, or the vague aspirations of the other. Man is not merely an intellectual or an emotional being; he is both united. He requires real answers, and not beautiful dreams; he requires true replies, which satisfy his intellect as well as his heart, which point out the way he must take, which sustain his courage, which animate his hope and excite his love. The ideal that he seeks is a system of facts, of precepts, and of dogmas, which will correspond to the wants that he finds within himself. Let us search for it, for it is the great question for us all. As we have already said, there are two sources from which we may hope to learn the truth, one entirely human, the other half divine. Does the first suffice? Let us see.

II.

If science can reply to the appeals of our souls, if by its own power and light it can reveal to us the end of this life, can make us see clearly the beginning and the end, so much the better; we will cling to science without asking for anything more. We have this exact and sure guide completely within our control; why should we seek adventitious aid and inexplicable revelations? It is true that everybody cannot be learned, but everybody believes in science. However scanty her proof may be, the most rebellious yield as soon as she has pronounced her decision. There is no schism or heresy with her. If sometimes the savans quarrel, which they can do perhaps even better than other men, they are not long in finding a peacemaker: they take a retort, a microscope, or a pair of scales; they weigh, compare, measure, and analyze, and the process is terminated: until new facts are ascertained, the decree is sovereign. What an admirable perspective opens before humanity if these hidden questions, which now puzzle and confuse, will in the future be cleared up and accurately determined by the aid of science. Time and the law of progress give us an easy way of putting an end to our perplexities. The fruit of divine knowledge, the old forbidden fruit, we can now pluck without fear, and we can satiate ourselves without danger of a fall!

Unfortunately, all this is only a dream. In the first place, the authority of science is not always admitted. It has more or less weight, according to the subject it may treat. In the investigations of natural things, in physics, and in mathematics, its decisions are law. But when it leaves the visible world, when it turns to the soul, interminable controversies arise. Its right to be called science is then disputed; for it appears to be only conjectural, and half the time its principal efforts consist in trying to demonstrate that it has the right to be believed. This is exactly the kind of science with which we have to do. The questions which disturb man are not the problems of algebra or chemistry; they are the secrets of the invisible world. We cannot expect unanswerable solutions of these doubts, for science, in the field of metaphysics, has none such to give us.

Can science gratify its fancy in these investigations with perfect liberty and without limit? No, an impassable barrier opposes and imprisons it in the invisible universe, as well as in the breast of physical and material nature. All science, whatever it may be, has its determined limit in the extent of finite things. Within this limit, everything is in its power; beyond it, everything escapes it. Could it possibly be otherwise? It is the product of our mind, which is finite; how then could human science be anything but the explication of the finite? Induction, it is true, transports us to the extreme frontier of this material world, to the door of the infinite, and the results of induction are with reason called scientific; yet what does this wonderful faculty, this great light of science, really do? Nothing else than to put us face to face with the unknown mysteries which are completely closed to us. It shows them in perspective, it makes us see enough to persuade us that they really do exist, but not enough to make known any truth precisely, exactly, practically, or experimentally—in a word, scientifically. The invisible finite, that is to say; the human soul, the dwelling of the human Ego, science is capable of explaining; the invisible infinite, the supreme, creative spirit, escapes it completely.

But this is exactly what must be penetrated and thoroughly known, if we expect to resolve the great problems which concern our destiny in a scientific manner. It is then impossible, it is more than an illusion—it is folly to hope for a solution of these questions from human science.

Is this equivalent to saying that philosophy is powerless to speak to us about natural problems? that it has nothing to say to us about our duties, our hopes, our destiny? No, certainly not. It is qualified, it has the right to treat of these questions; to treat concerning them, not to resolve them. The most daring effort of spiritual philosophy can never span the abyss; it can only make the borders more distinct. Noble task, after all! A sound philosophy, which abstains from useless hypotheses, which gives us that which it can give, namely, the clear proof that an invisible order does exist, that realities are behind these mysterious problems, that they justly disturb us, that we are right in wishing to solve them; all this, certainly, is not worthless knowledge nor a trifling success for the human race. As soon as this philosophy flourishes in a place, if it be only among a small number of generous spirits, the perfume is spread abroad, and, little by little, one after another, the whole people feel its influence, and society is reanimated, elevated, and purified. And religion, we do not fear to say it frankly, is badly advised and wants prudence, no less than justice, when, in the place of accepting the aid of this system and welcoming it as a natural auxiliary, seeing in it a kind of vanguard, which is to prepare minds and overcome prejudices, she keeps it at a distance almost with jealousy, combats it, provokes it, places it between two fires, and loads it with the same blame and bitter reproaches as the blindest errors and the most perverse doctrines receive. If these unfortunate attacks had not been made, perhaps we should not see certain reprisals, an excess of confidence, and a forgetfulness of its proper limits that its friends do not now always avoid; for if it is true that we should be just toward it, it is no less true that it should be held in check. M. Guizot, as a real friend, has frankly rendered it this service. Perhaps no one before him has traced with so sure a hand the limits of philosophical science. He claims for it the sincerest respect, and ably sustains its legitimate authority, but clearly points out the limit that must not be passed.

More than one, its adherents will complain: "You discourage us. If you wish us to maintain the invisible truths against so many adversaries, do not deprive us of our weapons; do not tell us in advance how far we may go; let us trust that some day this gate of the infinite, at which we have struggled for so many centuries, will at last be opened."

We could answer: "If you had only made some progress during these centuries, we could hope for more in the future. We would not have the right to say, 'So far shall you go, but no farther.' But where are the advances of metaphysics? Who has seen them? Possibly there has been a progress in appearance, that there is now more clearness and more method. In this sense, the great minds of modern times have added something to the legacy of the philosophers of ancient history; but the inheritance has ever remained the same. Who will presume to boast that he knows more of the infinite than did Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato? The natural sciences seem destined to increase. Feeble at first, they gradually go from victory to victory, until they have created an empire, which is constantly increasing and always more indisputable. Metaphysical science, on the contrary, is great at its birth, but soon becomes stationary; it is evidently unable ever to reach the end it is ever seeking. If anything is needed to prove this immobility of metaphysics, it will be done by referring to the constant reappearance of four or five great systems, which in a measure contain all the thousand systems that the human mind has ever, or will ever invent. From the very beginning of philosophy, you see them; at every great epoch, they are born again; always the same under apparent diversities, always incomplete and partial, half true and half false. What do these repeated returns to the same attempts, ending in the same result, teach us, unless the eternal inability to make a single advance? Evidently man has received from above, once for all and from the earliest times, the little that he knows of metaphysics; and human work, human science, can add nothing to it."

If, then, you rely on science to pierce the mystery of these natural problems, your hope is in vain. You see what they can attain—nothing but vague notions, fortified, it is true, by the firm conviction that these problems are not illusory, that they rest upon a solid foundation, on serious realities.

Is this enough? Does this kind of satisfaction suffice for your soul? What does it signify if a few minds, moulded by philosophy, comprehending everything in a superficial manner, remain in these preliminaries, contented with this half-light, and need no other help to go through life, even in times of the most severe trial? We are willing to grant what they affirm of themselves, but what can be concluded from this? How many minds of this character can be found? It is the rarest exception. The immense majority of men, the human race, could not live under such a system; it is too great a stranger to the philosophical spirit; it has too limited a perception of the invisible. All abstraction is Hebrew for it. And even supposing that the vague responses that come from science were to be presented in a more accessible form; still the essential facts would be for most men without value or efficacy, and a most inadequate help.

What is the human race going to do if, on one side, it cannot do without precise responses and dogmatic notions concerning the invisible infinite, and if, on the other, science is the only means of attaining this end? If it aspires to learn truths which transcend experience, and yet takes experience for its only guide? If, in short, it will only admit and accept the facts that it observes, confirms, and verifies itself? How shall we escape from this inextricable difficulty?

To Be Continued.

Cowper, Keble, Wordsworth; Or,
"Quietist" Poetry, And Its Influence On Society.

The Spanish priest, Michael Molinos, who spent the last eleven years of his life in the prisons of the Inquisition, was destined to exert considerable influence over many of the most thoughtful and gifted spirits of his age. It was in 1675, and in the heart of Rome, that he published a Spiritual Guide, in which he pointed out various methods calculated to raise the soul to a state of contemplation and quietude, in which she makes no use of her faculties, is unconcerned about all that may happen, and even about the practice of good works and her own salvation; reposing on the love of God, and, through his presence, safe, all-sufficient, and entirely blest. It can be easily imagined how acceptable the unction of ascetic eloquence might render such doctrine to minds mystically disposed. Multitudes in every age are ready to run after any quack of human happiness who is ingenious enough to hide his fallacies under a show of reason; and Molinos had this advantage over many charlatans, that before deceiving others he had completely deceived himself. He was honest, therefore, and certainly a great advance on the Quietists of the 14th century, called in Greek Hesuchasts, who in their monastery on Mount Athos passed whole days in a state of immobility, "contemplating," as their historians say, "their nose or their navel, and by force of this contemplation finding divine light." Molinos found many partisans in Italy and in France, where his system was fervently embraced by the celebrated poetess and mystic, Madame Guyon, who conceived herself called from above to quit her home and travel, inculcating everywhere the gospel of quietism. Fenelon, whose sweetness and goodness flung a charm around every opinion he expressed, adopted in part the theories of Molinos, and Madame de Maintenon herself is numbered among Madame Guyon's converts to the Spaniard's novel and dreamy creed.

The inmates of Port-Royal, and the Jansenists in general, had, as may be conjectured from the example of Fenelon, strong affinities for quietism; and the sympathy entertained for their sufferings by English Calvinists in the last century, sufficiently accounts for the poet Cowper becoming an admirer of Madame Guyon's writings, and imitating in the Olney Hymns many of her fervent compositions.

Without falling into the errors of the Quietists, Cowper imbibed much of their spirit, and transfused it into his verses very happily. His poetry is essentially of a quietist description, provided the term be understood in a favorable sense. His mind was naturally tranquil, and even during the melancholy of his later days, his mental aberration partook of the original placidity of his character. His rhythm is musical, his language choice, and the flow of his thoughts calm and tranquillizing. He discards stormy and passionate themes from instinct rather than resolve. He delighted in such subjects as "Truth," "Hope," "Charity," "Retirement," "Mutual Forbearance," and

"Domestic happiness, the only bliss
Of Paradise that has survived the Fall."

And he has clustered around them all the graces of poetry and charms of Christian philosophy. In that work in which his powers are exhibited to most advantage and at greatest length—The Task—he has touched on every topic that is most soothing, and in verses, many of which have become proverbs, has expressed, with unrivalled precision and ease, thoughts and feelings common to every Christian who is

"Happy to rove among poetic flowers,
Though poor in skill to rear them."

He is never obscure, his emotions are never fictitious, his humor is never forced, nor his satire pointless. Hence he became popular in his generation, and has lost no particle of the credit he once obtained. Brighter stars than he have in the present century come forth and dazzled the eyes of beholders, by the intensity of their radiance and the boldness of their career; but they have not thrown the gentle Cowper into the shade. He still shines above the horizon, "a star among the stars of mortal night," of heavenly lustre, unobtrusive, steadfast, and serene. He still exerts a wholesome influence on society, still refreshes us in the pauses of the battle of life, still refines the taste, fills the ear with melody, elevates the soul, and fosters in many those habits of reflection from which alone greatness and goodness spring. The "Lines on the receipt of his Mother's Picture" have rarely been surpassed in pathos. There never was a poet more sententious or a moralist more truly poetic. "He was," says one of his biographers, "an enthusiastic lover of nature, and some of his descriptions of natural objects are such as Wordsworth himself might be proud to own." His poems, observes Hazlitt, contain "a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself." Of all his encomiasts, none has spoken of him with more fervor than Elizabeth Barrett, afterward Mrs. Browning, and the following stanzas from her beautiful poem called "Cowper's Grave" deserve to be quoted in connection with the present subject:

"O poets, from a maniac's tongue
Was pour'd the deathless singing!
O Christians, to your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood
Your weary paths beguiling,
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace,
And died while ye were smiling."

But has Cowper had no successor in the peculiar path he so successfully trod? Was Wordsworth not in one sense a Quietist? Were the subjects he selected not as passionless as those of his master, and treated with equal thoughtfulness and calm? No doubt. Yet there was an important difference between them. The quietude which Cowper inculcated was to spring from religion; while that which Wordsworth promoted had its sources principally in contemplation of the beauties of Nature, and in obedience to her powerful influences. Each of these gifted minds has benefitted society, but in different ways; and it is well that, in a poetry-loving age, there should be some counter-balance to the morbid excitement and passionate intensity which the school of Byron, Moore, and Shelley rendered so popular. It is well that minor and gentler streams should irrigate the ground which has been desolated by their torrents of impetuous verse. It is well that divine no less than human love should have its laurel-crowned minstrels, and that principle and conscience should be proved no less poetical than passion and crime.

It is undoubtedly difficult for one who foregoes the passions to rise to a very high eminence as a poet, since the violent emotions of our nature are well adapted to verse, and full of dramatic effect. The bard of Rydal-Mount has, nevertheless, attained a lasting celebrity, after patiently enduring years—long years—of neglect and ridicule. He has carefully eschewed those stormy and harrowing subjects with which poets of the highest genius had, before his time, generally delighted to familiarize our minds. He leaves such themes as Prometheus bound by Jupiter to a rock, with a vulture preying perpetually on his entrails, [Footnote 58] Count Ugolino devouring the flesh of his own offspring in the Tower of Famine, [Footnote 59] and Satan summoning his fallen peers to council in the fiery halls of Pandemonium, [Footnote 60] to such masters as "AEschylus the Thunderous," Dante, and Milton, and addresses himself to the softer and more homely feelings, and to the calmer reason of men. He is firmly persuaded that a truer and deeper source of poetic inspiration is to be found in the every-day sights and sounds of Nature; that the changing clouds and falling waters, the forest-glades, wet with noon-tide dew, the rocky beach, musical with foaming waves, the sheep-walks on the barren hill-side, and the "primrose by the river's brim," supply the imagination with its best aliment, and effectually tend to calm, elevate, and hallow the mind. This is his great, his constant theme. His longer and more philosophical poems ring ever-varying changes on it, and may be called an Epithalamium on the espousals of Man and Nature. But for his devoting a long life to the poetic development of this fundamental idea, we should never have seen our literature enriched by the productions of Shelley and Tennyson's genius. In poetry, as in all that concerns the human mind, there is a law of progress. The poetic harvest-home of one generation is the seed-time of that which is to follow. Thus Dante speaks of two poets (Guinicelli and Daniello) now forgotten, or known only by name, in terms of strong admiration, as predecessors to whose writings he was considerably indebted. [Footnote 61] The following lines are but a sample of a thousand passages in Wordsworth which set forth the agency of natural scenery in the work of man's education and refinement. It is taken from the Prelude, a long introduction to the Excursion, which lay upon the author's shelves in manuscript during forty-five years: [Footnote 62]

"Was it for this,
That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved
To blend his murmurs with my nurse's song,
And from his alder-shades and rocky falls,
And, from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou,
O Derwent! winding among grassy holms
Where I was looking on, a babe in arms.
Make ceaseless music, that composed my thoughts To more than infant softness, giving me,
Amid the fretful dwellings of mankind,
A foretaste, a dim earnest of the calm That Nature breathes among the hills and groves?"

[Footnote 58: Prometheus Vinctus.]
[Footnote 59: L' Inferno, c. xxxiii.]
[Footnote 60: Paradise Lost, Book i.]
[Footnote 61: Il Purgatorio, xi. 97; xxvi. 115, 142, 92, 97.]
[Footnote 62: 1805 to 1850.]

Wordsworth's life was an exemplification of the doctrine he taught. Cheerfulness and peace marked his character at each stage of his eighty years' pilgrimage, and, towards the close of his career, he had the satisfaction of perceiving that his works were slowly effecting the result to which he had destined them—making a lasting impression on the literature of his age, and leading many a thoughtful spirit from artificial to natural enjoyments, from the imagery of dreamland to that of daily life, from bombast to simplicity, from passion to feeling, and from turmoil to repose.

"O heavenly poet! such thy verse appears,
So sweet, so charming to my ravished ears,
As to the weary swain, with cares opprest.
Beneath the silvan shade, refreshing rest;
As to the fev'rish traveller, when first
He finds a crystal stream to quench his thirst." [Footnote 63]

[Footnote 63: Dryden's Virgil, Pastoral v.]

Nor was Wordsworth's love of nature and her soothing influences dissociated from religious belief. He was no materialist, maintaining the eternal existence and self-government of the universe by fixed and exclusively natural laws. He was no pantheist, worshipping nature as an indivisible portion of the divine essence—a body of which God is actually the soul. He believed in other laws besides those which regulate the movements of the celestial bodies, and the gradual formation and destruction of the strata that compose the surface of our globe. The view which he took of the material universe was such as became a Christian, and is luminously expressed by him in the following lines:

"I have seen
A curious child applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell.
To which, in silence hushed, his very soul
Listened intensely, and his countenance soon
Brightened with joy; for murmurings from within
Were heard—sonorous cadences! whereby,
To his belief, the monitor expressed
Mysterious union with its native sea.
E'en such a shell the universe itself
Is to the ear of faith, and doth impart
Authentic tidings of invisible things.
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."

It is impossible to read the Prelude and the Excursion without perceiving that Wordsworth's passion for natural scenery was no fictitious emotion, assumed for the purpose of appearing brimful of philosophy and sentiment, and making an effective parade of moon and stars, flowers and rivulets, in verse. No, it was a deep and abiding principle—a feeling of which he could no more have divested himself than Newton of his bent toward science, or Beethoven of his ear for music. This unaffected enthusiasm enabled him to speak with the authority of a master, and to instil into the minds of disciples the ideas that had taken so strongly possession of his own.

From the poetry of inanimate nature, the transition was easy to that of simple feelings, particularly in rustic life. In the innocent plays of children of the cot, and the sparkling dews on the cheeks of wild mountain maids, Wordsworth found themes for reflection deep enough to sink into the memory of men. Who has not felt the inimitable simplicity of the verses in which the child, who often, after sunset, took her little porringer, and ate her supper beside her brother's grave, persisted in saying: "Oh! no, sir, we are seven," and in ignoring the power of death to sever or to annihilate? Purity marks all which this chief of the Lake School has composed; for how could he soothe the spirit if, like Moore and Byron, he pandered to vicious inclinations? Hence his successor as Poet-Laureate congratulates himself very properly on wearing

"The laurel greener from the brows
Of him that uttered nothing base."

A poet's best eulogy is that which comes from a poet. Having quoted that of Tennyson, therefore, I shall add that which Shelley also bestows on Wordsworth:

"Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude
In honored poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty."

The quietude commended by infidel poets is, at the best, that of despair. It is rest without repose, pathetic but not peaceful—a spurious and delusive calm, difficult to attain for a moment, and certain not to endure.

"Yet now despair itself is mild.
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child.
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear." [Footnote 64]

[Footnote 64: P. B. Shelley.]

Such is their language; so writes one of the most distinguished of these "apostles of affliction." How different are the feelings of the Christian "quietist:"

"Nor let the proud heart say.
In her self-torturing hour,
The travail pangs must have their way.
The aching brow must lower.
To us long since the glorious Child is born,
Our throes should be forgot, or only seem
Like a sad vision told for joy at morn,
For joy that we have waked, and found it but a dream."
[Footnote 65]

[Footnote 65: Keble. The Christian Year. Third Sunday after Easter.]

Nor is this strain unreal. The writer's life was the best guarantee for the sincerity of his sentiments, and the response he has wakened in myriads of hearts is a seal set on the depth of his convictions. He hymned not the happiness of the Christian, because the theme suited an ambitious lyre in that it is lofty, or an ordinary one in that it is familiar, but because he was persuaded that the poet's highest glory consists in calming the agitated spirit, as David did when he played cunningly on the harp in the presence of Saul; and that, while it is incumbent on us to make others happy, our paramount duty is to be happy ourselves; that if we are not so, the fault is our own; and that there are in the religion we profess, in every crisis and condition, ample provisions for that happiness to which all aspire.

"O awful touch of God made man!
We have no lack if thou art there:
From thee our infant joys began,
By thee our wearier age we bear."
[Footnote 66]

[Footnote 66: Keble. Lyra Innocentium.]

This is the key-note of his thoughtful rhymes.

Keble's reputation as a poet was established long before the leading periodicals of the land called attention to the beauty of his compositions.

Their publication in the first instance is said to have been owing to his seeing several of them in print without being able to conjecture by what means they had found their way to public light. He soon learned, however, that some of his manuscripts, which he had lent to a lady, had been dropped in the street and lost. He therefore resolved on completing and publishing The Christian Year. It was not till nearly twenty years after its first appearance that it received in the Quarterly Review that meed of applause to which it was justly entitled. The article which there called attention to its extraordinary merits was written, we believe; by Mr. Gladstone, whom neither the bustle of parliamentary life, nor the aridity of financial study, renders insensible to the charms of those muses who are generally supposed to haunt woods and caves, and to smile only on the recluse.

To us Catholics the name of Keble will always be remembered with interest, because he shared with Drs. Newman and Pusey the leadership of that great party in the Anglican Church which has given so many children to the true church, and has spread through England and through the world many Catholic doctrines and practices long dormant or forgotten. We think of him with affection, because he carried on to the end the work of soothing the troubled spirit by means of religious verse; because he was through life the friend of that distinguished convert to whose genius and writings we owe so much; and because he has, both in prose and verse, laid down, more clearly and explicitly than any other Protestant writer, the grounds of our veneration of the blessed Mother of God Incarnate.[Footnote 67]

[Footnote 67: See Lyra Innocentium, "Church Rites;" and The Month, May, 1866, "John Keble.">[

He did not, indeed, follow out his convictions to their legitimate results; he fancied that he responded to them sufficiently by remaining where he was. But his poems will ever remain a witness against the church in which they were composed, because it can never reduce to practice the doctrines he taught in reference to the holy eucharist, the confessional, and the communion of saints. Meanwhile they are silently imbuing the minds of Anglican readers with feelings and arguments favorable to the divine system of the Catholic Church. Though his Christian Year is adapted to the services of the Church of England, and though its chief purpose, as stated in the preface, is "to exhibit the soothing tendency of the Prayer-Book," the author's sympathies are with the Book of Common Prayer in its Catholic, and not in its Protestant aspects. During more than forty years it has been chiselling the Anglican mind into a more orthodox shape. It moulds the chaotic elements of faith into substance, form, and life. It supplies the lost sense of Scriptures, and lays the foundation of towers and bulwarks it cannot build. It opens bright vistas of realized truth, and points to glorious summits from the foot of the hill. It is not inspired with genius of the highest order; the range it takes is more circumscribed in some respects than that of Cowper; it seldom reaches the sublime, and is always pleasing rather than original. But in spite of these drawbacks, it has wound itself more and more into public esteem. No poetry is read more habitually by members of the Established Church. The number of those is very large who take down The Christian Year from their bookshelves every Sunday and festival. It rings every change on the theme Resignation, and presents it in all its truest and most beautiful lights. It has extracted from the sacred writings the very marrow of the text, has developed in a thousand ways the typical and mystic import of Scripture histories, expressed from them abundantly the wine and oil of consolation, and conveyed it to us in poetic ducts of no mean kind.

"As for some dear familiar strain
Untired we ask, and ask again.
Ever, in its melodious store.
Finding a spell unheard before;"
[Footnote 68]

so, many Anglicans of the devouter sort recur to Keble's poems year after year, and end the perusal only with death. Other poets charm and instruct the mind, he forms it; and while others are but read, he is learnt. Even the conviction which he cherished of the heavenly mission of the church of Queen Elizabeth, though misplaced, added to the sweetness and soothing character of his verses. But it is deserving of note that his latter volume, Lyra Innocentium, which contains more lamentation than he uttered before over the shortcomings of his own communion, and more intense aspirations after Catholic dogma and practice, evinces at the same time less inward quietude in the writer, and imparts less of it to the reader. One poem, indeed, called "Mother out of Sight," on the absence of the holy Mother of God from the English mind, invoking her, as it did, in a strain of glorious verse, was omitted, lest it should perplex and disquiet those who were unused to such invocations, and believed them to be forbidden by the Anglican Church.

[Footnote 68: Christian Year, "Morning.">[

To cite passages from Keble's poems illustrative of their soothing tendency, would be to copy almost all he wrote. They fell like the dew of Hermon, and were a sign and symbol of the man himself. "His bright, fresh, joyous, and affectionate nature," says one who knew him well, "was an ever-flowing spring, always at play, always shedding a gentle, imperceptible, and recreating dew upon those who came within its reach. There was a Christian poetry about him, a natural gift, elevated and transformed by his consistent piety and religious earnestness, which gilded the commonest things and the most ordinary actions, and cast the radiance of an unearthly sunshine all around him." [Footnote 69] What wonder that the illustrious author of the Apologia used to look at him with awe when walking in the High Street at Oxford? What wonder that, when elected a Fellow of Oriel, and for the first time taken by the hand by the Provost and all the Fellows, he bore it till Keble took his hand, and then, as he said, "felt so abashed and unworthy of the honor done him, that he seemed desirous of quite sinking into the ground"? [Footnote 70] Yet the greater was blessed of the less. For depth and subtlety of reasoning, for power and pathos in prose composition. Dr. Newman has surpassed beyond all measure everything which Keble did or could accomplish. In poetry, the world in general has awarded the palm to Keble, and the world, we believe, is right. In the art, at least, of calming the ruffled spirit, the poet of The Christian Year has outdone his beloved rival and friend.

[Footnote 69: The Month, vol. iv. p. 142.]
[Footnote 70: J. H. Newman's Apologia, p. 76.]

The Lyra Apostolica brought Keble and Newman together as athletes in the arena of poetry; and that series of poems affords a good opportunity of comparing their several merits, to those who have the key to the writers' names. They appeared in the British Magazine, signed only with Greek characters representing the following writers:

AlphaJ. W. Bowden.
BetaR. H. Froude.
GammaJohn Keble.
DeltaJ. H. Newman.
EpsilonR. J. Wilberforce;
ZetaIsaac Williams.

By far the greater number of the pieces were written by Keble and Newman, and almost all by the latter have reappeared this year in a series, which supplies a poetic commentary on the author's life. These Verses on Various Occasions range over a period of forty-six years, and having each of them the date and the place where composed attached to it, the interest of the whole is thereby greatly increased. Among the poems is that remarkable one, "The Dream of Gerontius," which was published in The Catholic World in 1865. But neither Dr. Newman's verses thus collected, nor the series entitled Lyra Apostolica in general, are marked by that repose which is the prevailing feature of The Christian Year. The motto chosen by Froude for the Lyra was truly combative, and shows the feeling both of Newman and himself, then together at Rome. It was taken from the prayer of Achilles on returning to the battle, and it implores Heaven to make his enemies know the difference, now that his respite from fighting is over.

[Footnote 71]

[Footnote 71: Iliad, [Sigma] 125. Apologia, p. 98.]

The scars of warfare are visible even in Newman's hymns. He has evidently passed through many an inward conflict, and fought with, many an external foe. He has vacated ground he once occupied, and he defends principles which he once assailed. He pierces many heights, and depths, and has to be always on his guard against his lively imagination. He is lucid as any star, but not always as serene. He flashes now and then like a meteor; he hints and suggests in nebulous light. He is a pioneer of thought; he shoots beyond his comrades; he walks "with Death and Morning on the Silver Horns." He sees, where others grope; he is at home, where others feel confused and out of place. He is, like Ballanche, [Footnote 72] more satisfied of the truth of the unseen than of the visible world. Mysteries are his solemn pastime. He strikes his harp in Limbo, as Spaniards weave a dance in church before the Holy Sacrament. His dreams are Dantesque; he is half a seer. The veil of death is rent before him, and his soul, by anticipation, launches into the abyss. The chains of the body are dropped, and angels and demons come round him to console and to harass his solitary spirit in its transition state. His condition there, like his poetry, and like himself on earth and in the body, is one of mingled quietude and disturbance;

"And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,
Had something, too, of sternness and of pain."
[Footnote 73]

[Footnote 72: Dublin Review, July, 1865, p. 10. "Madame Récamier.">[
[Footnote 73: "Dream of Gerontius," § 2.]

The happy, suffering soul ("for it is safe, consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God,") sings in Purgatory in a strain identical with that to which it was used in this mortal life:

"Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn—
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain
Until the morn;
There will I sing and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb and pine and languish, till possest
Of its sole peace." [Footnote 74]

[Footnote 74: Ibid. § 6.]

There is, indeed, one of Dr. Newman's poems, and that one the most popular and beautiful he has ever composed, which is singularly pathetic and peaceful. Yet even here darker shades are not wanting. The angel faces are "lost awhile," and the "pride" and self-will of former years recur to the memory like spectres. It was in June, 1833, when becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio in an orange-boat [Footnote 75] that Dr. Newman wrote "Lead, Kindly Light." The Pall Mall Gazette—no mean critic—has said of it recently, [Footnote 76] "It appears to us one of the most perfect poems of the kind in the language."

[Footnote 75: Apologia, p. 99.]
[Footnote 76: Jan. 23, 1868]

"Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom.
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet: I do not ask to see
The distant scene—one step enough for me.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Would'st lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears.
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.
"So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

Fond as Dr. Newman is of modern poetry he has not imitated it. His style is original—a rare mixture of strength, sincerity, and sweetness, moulded rather after the choruses of Greek dramas, than the rich creations of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and Longfellow. Hence his poems bear a nearer resemblance to Milton's Samson Agonistes than to any other English production. His lyrical pieces, again, often remind us of George Herbert, and of Shenstone, Waller, and Cowley. They have a clearness of expression and bright fluency, which makes you love the writer even when you cannot greatly admire his verse. One of the best specimens of his poetic faculty in the Verses on Various Occasions is a poem called "Consolations in Bereavement," written in 1828. It turns on one idea—the rapidity of death's work in the case of the dear sister whom he mourns. He solaces himself with the reflection that the deed was quickly done, and thus derives comfort from a thought which is in most cases afflictive. Perhaps Byron's lines were unconsciously running in his head:

"I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade:
......
Thy day without a cloud hath past,
And thou wert lovely to the last;
Extinguished, not decayed;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high."

Dr. Newman's poetry did not properly fall within the scope of this article, but we have been led to speak of it because he was Keble's colleague in the Lyra Apostolica, and because the verses of the surviving poet have just appeared in England in a new form, and have attracted general attention and been made the subject of admiring and affectionate criticism not merely by Catholic periodicals, but by non-Catholic reviews and newspapers of every political and religious shade. Indeed, the praise bestowed on them by such journalists has exceeded that of our own critics, because it has, generally speaking, been more discriminating and uttered by higher authorities in the literary world.

Let us then rejoice that English literature includes three poets at least—Cowper, Keble, and Wordsworth—who are in a good sense quietists, and the tenor of whose writings, from first to last, is tranquillizing. They may not, perhaps, be the authors who will afford us most pleasure in the tumultuous season of youthful enjoyment; but as years advance, and the trials of life present themselves, one by one, in all their painful reality; as reason matures and reflection ripens; as the probationary character of our mortal existence becomes more and more clear to our apprehension; as the discovery of much that is formal and hollow in society enamors us of rural retreats and sylvan solitudes; as the inexhaustible treasures of beauty and magnificence in the material universe unfold before our gaze; as the things unseen triumph over visible objects in our thoughts and affections, we shall find in such poetry as we have attempted to describe, more that is congenial and charming, and shall cherish with fonder remembrance the names of Cowper, the mellifluous exponent of Christian ethics and delights; of Keble, the bard of Biblical lore; and of Wordsworth, the child and poet of nature. Like skilful tuners of roughly-used instruments, they will reduce to sweetness our spirits' harsher and discordant tones, and fit us to take our part in the everlasting harmonies of the boundless universe. They will each make poetry, in our view, the handmaid of science and revelation, accepting with rapture the vast, amazing discoveries of the one, and ever seeking to harmonize them with the momentous and soul-subduing disclosures of the other. They will impart to mute matter the voice and power of a moral teacher, imbue inanimate things (to our imagination) with life and feeling, inspire us with "a glorious sympathy with suns that set" and rise, with "flowers that bloom and stars that glow," with the birdling warbling on her bough, and the ocean bellowing in his caves; and will lead us by nature's golden steps to the footstool of the Creator's throne; for, in the eyes of such poets, earth is "crammed with heaven," and every common bush on fire with God.