SOUTHEY'S CHEERFULNESS.

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fumigation, could chase away dark spirits. Oh that I could impart to you a portion of that animal cheerfulness which I would not exchange for the richest earthly inheritance! For me, when those whom I love cause me no sad anxiety, the skylark in a summer morning is not more joyous than I am; and if I had wings on my shoulders, I should be up with her in the sunshine carolling for pure joy.

"But you must see how far our mountains overtop the Derbyshire hills. The leaves are now beginning to fallcome to me, Montgomery, as soon as they reappear, in the sweetest season of the year, when opening flowers and lengthening days hold out to us every day the hope of a lovelier morrow. I am a bondsman from this time till the end of April, and must get through, in the intermediate time, more work than I like to think of: through it, if no misfortune impede or prevent me, I shall get willingly and well; for I know not what it is to be weary of employment. Come to me as soon as my holidays begin. You will find none of the exhausting hurry of London, but quiet as well as congenial society within doors; and without, everything that can elevate the imagination and soothe the heart.

"I heard of you in London from Miss Betham, who saw you at Mrs. Montague's. Thank you for inquiring about the Missionary Reports. If there are only the two first numbers [qy. volumes?] out of print, I will send to London for the rest, and have a few blank leaves placed at the beginning, in which to write an abstract of what is deficient, whenever I can borrow a perfect copy.

"My next poem will have something to do with missionaries, and will relate to the times and country of Eliot, the apostle of the Nituencer Indians, and the man who translated the Bible into the most barbarous language that was ever yet reduced to grammatical rules. The chief person

age is to be a Quaker, and the story will hinge upon the best principles of Quaker philosophy, if those words may be allowed to exist in combination. The object is to represent a man acting under the most trying circumstances in that manner which he feels and believes to be right, regardless of consequences; and in my story the principle of action will prove as instrumental at last to the preservation of the individual, as it would be to the happiness of the whole community if 'the kingdom' were 'come.'

"Do not let your poem languish longer. I, who want spurring myself, would fain spur you on to a quicker progress. I advance in these things with a pace so slow and so unlike the ardor of former times, that I should suspect more changes of temperament and loss of activity than eight-and-thirty years ought to bring with them, if I did not find or fancy a solution in the quantity of prose labor that falls to my lot. Time has been when I have written fifty, eighty, or a hundred lines before breakfast; and I remember to have composed twelve hundred (many of them among the best I ever did produce) in a week. A safer judgment has occasioned this change; still time may have had some share in it. I do not now love autumn as well as spring, nor the setting sun like the life and beauty of the morning. God bless you!”

CHAPTER XI.

THE WORLD BEFORE THE FLOOD PUBLISHED-NEW INTERESTS ENGAGES IN RELIGIOUS LABORS SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION BIBLE SOCIETY HIS FIRST SPEECH -CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS BROTHER IGNATIUS RE-ADMISSION TO THE MORAVIAN CHURCH- DAWNING PEACE-SUNDAY-SCHOOL LABORS.

In the spring of 1813, The World before the Flood was published, prefaced by a little poem to his departed friend which thus touchingly closed:

"My task is o'er; and I have wrought

With self-rewarding toil,

To raise the scattered seeds of thought

Upon a desert soil:

Oh for soft winds and clement showers!

I seek not fruit, I planted flowers.

"Those flowers I trained, of many a hue,

Along thy path to bloom;

And little thought that I must strew
Their leaves upon thy tomb:

Beyond that tomb I lift mine eye;

Thou art not dead — thou couldst not die."

It was the design of the author, as he tells us in The World before the Flood, "to present a similitude of events,

that might be imagined to have happened in the first ages of the world, in which such Scripture characters as are introduced would probably have acted and spoken as they are here made to act and speak. The story is told as a parable only; and its value in this view must be determined by its religious influence. Truth is the essence, though not the name. Truth is the spirit, though not the letter."

This poem, which is his longest, though inferior in unity and finish to Milton's master-work, with which it was sometimes unwisely compared, contains passages whose descriptive beauty, harmonious flow, and quiet earnestness, disclose some of the genuine excellences of the divine art.

"It not only satisfied the large expectations of his friends," we are told, "but elevated his name in the rank of those whom, at that time, the reading public delighted to honor."

But it is not through his larger poems that Montgomery will be best and widest known to posterity. These are indeed memorials of the quality of his genius, and the drift of his soul; it is his hymns and minor poems, the overflowings of a heart full of poetic insight and genuine feeling, which will most endear his name to future generations.

His friend, Mrs. Montague, says:

"We have The World before the Flood,—but we have also the World after the Flood; and it is impossible, though I oppose my nine children, and Basil fences himself with bankruptcy papers, that we can always keep it out. You will be with us in the shades of Bolton [Abbey], and your own Elysium is not more beautiful; there we shall enjoy your work."

And there they did enjoy it: his correspondent was in raptures with the poem:

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"I have read The World before the Flood again and again. I do not know any character so sublime as Enoch ; it has the grandeur and awful simplicity of Michael Angelo -I borrow my comparison from a sister art, for I know nothing like it in poetry. Why did you include in the volume any of your Prison Amusements, to bring us back to earth, and even cast us into prison?"

The painfulness of the anxiety with which he waited for, and received the verdict of the public upon his works, is somewhat abated. Years had naturally moderated expectation and tamed the passions; but more than this, other interests were engaging his affections, drawing him away from himself, and offering him that kind of labor which the spiritual exigencies of his soul most needed.

From temperament and bodily infirmities, Montgomery was prone to look upon the dark side of all events; and his religious character, of course, partook in some measure of the same clement; his soul struggled long in darkness and despair, and only slowly did he appropriate to himself the comforts of the Christian faith. In such a state of mind, wrestling with inward doubts, and lingering under the shadows of Sinai, the new religious organizations of the day, instinct with a social, active, and joyous Christian life, were precisely what was needed to draw off and strengthen his religious affections; and by giving him a work to do, enabled him to gain, through love to man, a more personal consciousness of love to the Redeemer of men.

We are glad therefore to find him engaging, heart and hand, in the new religious movements which are stirring England; those which recognized no denominational dif ferences, but united all in a common bond, Montgomery especially clung to. His broad and catholic spirit embraced all who loved the Lord, under that simple, and yet