Wild raged the storm, earth’s firm foundations shook,
While ocean trembled from her deepest cells;
Blue, livid lightnings flashed with lurid glare,
Wreathing in flames the blackened arch of heaven;
While the loud thunder’s deep, continuous roar
Proclaimed, in God’s own voice, that Man was lost!
The four verses we have italicised are fiercely grand; more terrible than any we ever saw, except those by which they are succeeded. After the thunder-clap, lions roared, tigers yelled, hyenas cried, wolves howled, leviathans drifted ashore, birds of ill omen shrieked, and there was a dreadful rumpus in general among beasts, such as are usually to be seen in a Zoological Garden. The Arch-Enemy chuckles over this sport, rives his chain, and stalks over the globe, taking the precaution, however, to veil his hideous form and smile demoniac, (why, we cannot well perceive,) and finally speaks. His observations are left to the ingenuity of the reader; but he had no sooner “concluded his remarks,” than
“Wild spirits filled the air, the earth,
The sea.”
These we suppose are the Passions, mentioned in the title. Taking them as they are introduced, they are the most outrageous set of ill-behaved monsters that ever were seen, and are as dissimilar to those polite entities, classified under the same names, and said by the Fourrierists to be easily subjected to the domination of reason and the affections, as can well be imagined. It must be noted, however, that Mrs. Ware is more original in the individuals she recommends to our attention as the Passions, than she is in her figures of speech.