Adam. Ay, mock me! now I know more than I knew. Now I know thou art fallen below hope

And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.
Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?
Eve. Thou hast a glorious darkness.
Lucifer.

Eve. I think no more.
Lucifer.

Nothing more?

False heart, thou thinkest more!

Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God,
Unwillingly but fully, that I stand

Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves

Were fashioned very good at best, so we

Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word

Which thrilled around us; God himself being moved,

When that august work of a perfect shape,

His dignities of sovran angel-hood,
Swept out into the universe; divine

With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,
And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings.

Whereof I was, in motion and in form,

A part not poorest. And yet-yet, perhaps,
This beauty which I speak of is not here,

As God's voice is not here; nor even my crown-
I do not know. What is this thought or thing
Which I call beauty? Is it thought or thing?
Is it a thought accepted for a thing?

Or both? or neither? A pretext—a word?
Its meaning flutters in me like a flame
Under my own breath; my perceptions reel
For evermore around it, and fall off,

The consummation to the inward sense,
Of beauty apprehended from without,

I still call love. As form, when colourless,
Is nothing to the eye; that pine-tree there,
Without its black and green, being all a blank;
So, without love, is beauty undiscerned
In man or angel. Angel! Rather ask
What love is in thee, what love moves to thee,
And what collateral love moves on with thee;
Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.

I, too, would drive up, like a column erect,
Marble to marble, from my heart to heaven;
A monument of anguish, to transpierce
And overtop your vapoury complaints,
Expressed from feeble woes!

Earth-Spirits! I wail, I wail!

Lucifer. For, O ye heavens, ye are my witnesses That I, struck out from nature in a blot,

The outcast and the mildew of things good,

White angels in your niches, I repent ;.
And would tread down my own offences, back
To service at the footstool! That's read wrong:
I cry, as the beast did, that I may cry—
Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep
Against the sides of this prodigious pit,
I cry cry! dashing out the hands of wail,
On each side, to meet anguish everywhere;
And to attest it in the ecstacy

And exaltation of a woe sustained

Because provoked and chosen.

*

*

My curse catch at you strongly, body and soul;
And He find no redemption, nor the wing
Of seraph move your way. And yet rejoice!
Rejoice! because ye have not set in you

This hate, which shall pursue you; this fire-hate,
Which glares without, because it burns within;
Which kills from ashes; this potential hate,
Wherein I, angel, in antagonism
To God and His reflex beatitudes,
Moan ever in the central universe,

With the great woe of striving against love;
And gasp for space amid the infinite,
And toss for rest amid the desertness.

Self-orphaned by my will, and self-elect

To kingship of resistant agony

Toward the good round me; hating good and love,

And willing to hate good and to hate love,

And willing to will on so evermore;

Scorning the past, and damning the to-come.
Go, and rejoice! I curse you!

[Lucifer vanishes.'

The effect of this is injured by the impossibility of extracting the whole passage; yet here is not wholly lost the climaxthe accumulation of scorn and woe, which reminds one of power of the same kind in the Prometheus Bound' of Eschylus. We can give but one more extract from the Drama of Exile,'-it is part of the address of Christ, when he appears in vision to reinstate Adam and Eve in their sovereignty over earth and its agencies :

'Ponder it!

This regent and sublime humanity,

Though fallen, exceeds you. This shall film your sun;
Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud;

Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas;

Lay flat your forests; master, with a look,
Your lion at his fasting, and fetch down
Your eagle flying.

*

*

*

*

Therefore, over you,

Accept this sceptre; therefore be content
To minister with voluntary grace,
And melancholy pardon, every rite
And service in you to this sceptred hand.
Be ye to man as angels be to God-
Servants in pleasure, singers of delight;
Suggesters to his soul of higher things
Than any of your highest. So, at last,

He shall look round on you, with lids too straight
To hold the grateful tears, and thank you well;
And bless you when he prays his secret prayers,
And praise you when he sings his open songs,
For the clear song-note he has learnt in you,
Of purifying sweetness; and extend
Across your head his golden fantasies,
Which glorify you into soul from sense!
Go, serve him, for such price. That not in vain ;
Nor yet ignobly ye shall serve. I place
My word here for an oath-mine oath for act
To be hereafter. In the name of which
Perfect redemption and perpetual grace
I bless you, through the hope and through the
Which are mine, to the love which is myself.'

peace

We must now say a few words on Miss Barrett's alleged faults. In the first place, a passage here and there,-as the conclusion of the song of the Nightingale, in the Drama of Exile, and part of that of the Morning Star, in the same poem, is pronounced perfectly unintelligible. We think it not unlikely that in future editions the author may make the ideas intended to be expressed, more perspicuous; in the mean time they are not to our apprehension, meaningless. Perhaps the excuse which Foster made for Coleridge, and which in the Friend, and the Biographia Literaria Coleridge makes for himself, is in some degree applicable to them; that there are ideas which dwell beyond the region assigned to language, and to which therefore language can furnish no full expression,-broken steps, the lamp which guides from one to another, being borne by the reader himself. Another complaint is directed against the occasional use of Greek words, which, in English composition is held inadmissible, or such as ought to be introduced rarely, and only on very special occasions. This rule is a sound one, and we are inclined to give judgment against our author for its violation. There is also fault found with her use of a few adjectives as if they included the meaning of both adjective and substantive, as Human'-in the title of one of Miss Barrett's most generally acceptable poems, 'The Cry of the Human.' We presume this arises from her wish to give the most condensed form to a comprehensive idea;-where her power does not answer to her will, we can imagine her in her resolve for progressive excellence, regarding this and other difficulties, in the spirit of Penn's reply to his threateners with imprisonment, Friend, thy strength shall never equal my patience.'

Perhaps, however, the loudest complaint concerns the rhymes. We acknowledge that though some are of unsurpassed sweetness, they do not always pass muster either to eye or ear. One of the most faulty in this respect, amusingly faulty we have heard it called, The Wine of Cyprus,'-has however, a magnificent and flowing rythm, that seems to smile defiance at strictures; and bears us on, like a breeze over the billows,-— though there are mingled with it touches of deep pathos, as if some way-mark of past suffering rose above the wave.

We hope again to meet Miss Barrett, when her aspirations for advance in her art have been more than realised; and when she has won a yet higher place among the imperishable names of her country. It is now more than two years since the volumes before us were published. Doubtless the time will come when that period for exertion, and we rejoice to learn, of amended health, will be nobly accounted for. If in our present parting we may venture to express a wish as to the

future direction of her powers; it would be that some thrilling incidents of our History might be treated by one, so capable of 'stirring the soul as by the sound of a trumpet;' and that whatever she may decide on this point,-she would present to the public more of her thoughts in the form of prose, a vehicle possessing facilities at least different to those of verse, and perhaps better than even verse adapted to some modes of lofty thought. We think this wish must be echoed by every one who can appreciate the graces of her exquisite preface,which like her verse, presents a form of beauty undiscerned before.

It has occasionally happened to us to feel surprise at the temerity of critics, in composedly parcelling out blame to every quality of authors, the coast line of whose intellect, the entire extent of their own, would not fathom. How many spirited reviews would suffer total change if re-fashioned on the Platonic maxim,—' understand a man's ignorance before you attempt to judge his understanding!' But the effort to do justice to an author, sometimes involves presumption,-and in many cases we feel, that the mind, which from the height of its aspiration, looks down on all attained success, must yet perceive the lines of beauty it has designed with more exquisite appreciation than its critic. We shall, however, be not ill-satisfied if we succeed in suggesting these poems as a realm of thought, to those who may penetrate more deeply into its riches, than ourselves; and in any case, may know the joy of the humble,reverence for the high,—for

Art. V.-Report of a Discussion in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, on Monday, July 7, 1845, on the Presentation of two Memorials from Belfast and Derry.

ON every hand the voluntary principle is making progress. Practically or theoretically it bids fair to become universal among Protestant churches. In several cases where it is most stoutly repudiated it is, nevertheless, practically adopted, and most vigorously worked.. We can, therefore, well afford, and that too with no small amusement, to hear good men disclaim the very principle which is their only support, and on which they have