ness he seeks the eternal happiness of his fellow men, he ensures his own condemnation, and accumulates to himself wrath against the day of wrath. Can you imagine, my brethren, a being more contemptible, or a condition more awful.' pp. 26-7.

After having introduced the preceding extracts it will scarcely be necessary to add our most cordial recommendation of this Sermon, especially to those who are about to enter upon the sacred office.

Art. IX. Alastor; or the Spirit of Solitude: and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Foolscap 8vo. pp. 104. Price 5s. Baldwin and Co. 1816.

IT

T is but justice to Mr. Shelley, to let him give his own explanation of this singular production.

The poem entitled' ALASTOR,' may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sink profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and afford to their modifications a variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception: Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men.' pp. iii.'iv We fear that not even this commentary will enable ordinary readers to decipher the import of the greater part of Mr. Shelley's allegory. All is wild and specious, untangible and incoherent as a dream. We should be utterly at a loss to convey any distinct idea of the plan or purpose of the poem. It describes the adventures of a poet who lived' and died' and sung in solitude:'-who wanders through countries real and imaginary, in search of an unknown and undefined object; encounters perils and fatigues altogether incredible; and at length

expires like an exhalation,' in utter solitude, leaving the world inconsolable for a loss of which it is nevertheless unconscious.

The poem is adapted to shew the dangerous, the fatal tendency of that morbid ascendency of the imagination over the other faculties, which incapacitates the mind for bestowing an adequate attention on the real objects of this work day' life, and for discharging the relative and social duties. It exhibits the utter uselessness of imagination, when wholly undisciplined, and selfishly employed for the mere purposes of intellectual luxury, without reference to those moral ends to which it was designed to be subservient. This could not be better illustrated, than in a poem where we have glitter without warmth, succession without progress, excitement without purpose, and a search which terminates in annihilation. It must surely bewith the view of furnishing some such inference as we have supposed, that every indication of the Author's belief in a future state of existence, and in the moral government of God, is carefully avoided, unless the following be an exception.

"O that God,

Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death!' p. 47.

Our readers will be startled at the profanity of this strange exclamation, but we can assure them that it is the only reference to the Deity in the poem. It was, we presume, part of the Author's plan, to represent his hero as an atheist of that metaphysical school, which held that the Universe was God, and that the powers of evil constituted a sort of demonology. He speaks in his Preface of the poet's self centered seclusion' being avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin.' But that power,' he adds, which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits which dare to abjure its dominion.' It is a pity that in his Preface Mr. S. had not avoided such jargon

We shall enter no further into the Author's theory, nor shall we subject his poetry to minute criticism. It cannot be denied that very considerable talent for descriptive poetry is displayed in several parts. The Author has genius which might be turned to much better account; but such heartless fictions as Alastor, fail in accomplishing the legitimate purposes of poetry. In justice to the Author, we subjoin the following extract.

The noonday sun

Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence
A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,
Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks
Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.
The meeting boughs and implicated leaves
Wove twilight o'er the Poets path, as led
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,
He sought in Nature s dearest haunt, some bank,
Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark
And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,
Expanding its immense and knotty arms,
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids
Of the tall cedar overarching, frame
Most solemn domes within, and far below,
Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
The ash and the acacia floating hang

Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed
In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,

Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
The gray trunks, and as gamesome infants' eyes,
With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles,
Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,
These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs
Uniting their close union; the woven leaves
Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns
Beneath these canopies extend their swells,

Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen

Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jessamine,
A soul-dissolving odour, to invite

To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,
Silence and twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
Like vaporous shapes half seen; beyond, a well,
Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
Images all the woven boughs above,

And each depending leaf, and every speck
Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;
Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves
Its portraiture, but some inconstant star
Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,
Or, painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,
Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,
Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings

Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.' pp. 29-33, VOL. VI. N.S. 2 H

Art. X. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Gloucester, at the Primary Visitation of that Diocese, in the Year 1816. By Henry Ryder, D.D. Bishop of Gloucester. Second Edition, 4to. pp. 37. Price 2s. Payne, &c. London, 1816.

WE are not surprised that a second edition of this Charge should already be called for. The expression of his Lordship's sentiments on several important topics now before the public, will naturally be awaited on all sides with curious or anxious impatience. The Bishop has evidently felt the peculiar delicacy of his situation, and the present Charge is adapted to disarm by its piety those whom its moderation fails to satisfy.

The first part of the Charge consists of a general exhortation, highly impressive, and in a strain of affectionate earnestness, on the responsibility of the pastoral office. His Lordship then proceeds to offer some additional admonitions as suggested by the peculiar exigencies of the times;' professing himself to be distrustful of his own judgement, but confident that the motive by which he is actuated, entitles him to be listened to without prejudice.

His Lordship considers that the Form of Prayer and series of public services,' are chief among the distinguished privileges of the Ministry of the Church of England; and he cites with great approbation the remark, the author of which is not named,

That if we were to compare the prayers used in the 10,000 Churches of the country during each sabbath of the year, with the contemporary prayers in the other places of worship, we should be constrained to fall down upon our knees and bless God for the Liturgy of the Church of England.'

To bless God for whatever we deem a privilege, or value as a possession, is so bounden a duty, that no one would wish, by unseasonably questioning the propriety of the occasion, to interrupt the exercise of devout gratitude. It cannot be supposed that the Bishop is extensively acquainted with the quality of the extemporaneous services of other churches. If he were, much as his educational habits would incline him to prefer the liturgical form, and especially that form which he deems such an affecting, inspiring, and effectual instrument of communion with God; we feel persuaded that he would join us in blessing God that, under some circumstances, there are contemporary prayers offered, in which the reality of devotion is preserved, how imperfect soever the form. We say this with confidence, because his Lordship himself adverts to such circumstances as attending the public use of the Liturgy.

The service, a toilsome ceremony-the worshippers, a formal few-the utter inefficacy of the prayers manifested by the extinction of the power of Godliness among them-and, above all, the God who heareth prayer grievously offended by such lip-service and solemn mockery. The prayers used from, or without the heart, make the grand, fundamental characteristic difference between a Minister and Congregation who are holy and happy and those who

are not.'

Among the prevailing errors of the day, the Bishop with great propriety alludes, in the first place, to the late Antinomian seceders from the Episcopal Church, and the few who may yet remain in it, but who adopt, in some measure, their opinions and practice.' After citing a very striking passage from the Homily of Faith, he adds, with great candour and piety,

Beware, then, let me beseech you of this error, which however it may have sprung up upon this occasion, in well-intentioned and pious persons, is, we must fear, but a snare of the devil, and an awful wresting of Scripture, to the destruction of those who hear. While in every discourse you exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, leading your people to him, as the needful, the only Saviour of their souls, all sufficient to procure them pardon, and to give them grace; never fail to press the indispensible necessity of maintaining, and the tremendous danger of neglecting, good works; the necessity of "living unto Him who died for us "

p. 19.

We believe that there is no pious Dissenter, by whom the secession to which his Lordship alludes, has not been viewed as an event deeply to be deplored as fraught with extensive mischief; and we rejoice that there is no class of Dissenters whose sentiments have been found sufficiently to approximate to the notions of these deluded men, to tempt them to a coalition. The respectability, the fervent zeal, and the evident sincerity by which they were characterized, led us to cherish the hope, so long as it was rational, that either their tenets were in some measure misrepresented, or that their aberrations from the doctrine which is according to Godliness, was merely (shall we say?) a paroxysm of orthodoxy which would subside into the sobriety of truth. But the event has disappointed the hopes of all good men. Proud, dogmatical, intolerant, and rash even to impiety in the assertion of their ignorant notions, these true separatists reject alike the most affectionate expostulations and the most convincing arguments. All preachers of Christ, except their own small number, are deemed to be propagators of error, as detracting from the • all sufficiency of faith;' while they themselves exalt above the righteousness of Christ, a meritorious notion, a chimerical assurance; as if by this assurance, not by the merits of the