My dress-I strive with all my maiden skill All she can need who as a lady lives, But I, unaided, may through all my years Endure these ills. Forgive these foolish tears," &c. "The Equal Marriage" is clear and spirited, and the mutual reproaches of the disenchanted pair, as soon as the veil of the imagination has been torn away, and the false fires of a foolish love extinguished, are truly imagined and described. Still they can speak-and 'tis some comfort still, Till all was fierce reproach, and peace for ever fled. What see I then to love? was I in love with Sin?' Smiting your breast and acting like a player; Are you not early taught your prey to catch? When your Mamas pronounce- a proper match.' young; But if he views you as ourselves-good bye To speculation-he will never try, &c.' 'Well,' said the wife, admit this nonsense true, A mighty prize she gains, in catching you; For my part, Sir, I most sincerely wish 'Hold, Sir, at least my reputation spare, The tale of Rachael possesses no novelty of incident. It's an old tale, and often told,' of an absent lover and a faithful mistress; but the description of the effect of the sudden appearance and as sudden departure of the lover, after a long absence, on a mind broken, wearied, and misled, is finely painted, and the following lines are unsurpassed for their melancholy truth and beauty: He tried to sooth her, but retired afraid None came! and Rachel in the morn was found With household look of care, low singing to the sound. Parts of the story of "Villars" are good in the execution, but it is not an agreeable picture; and we think that neither the morality, the delicacy, nor the feeling of the author, would approve or applaud a husband who takes to his bosom a wife who had been living in adulterous estrangement, and who at last is forcibly and unwillingly separated from her guilty paramour. This is not the only tale in Mr. Crabbe's works, where a false humanity triumphs over all honour, and a sense of justice connected with every pure and tender emotion, and virtuous principle, and honourable feeling. It may do very well in a German play, but we did not expect to find it in Mr. Crabbe's poems. The guilt is unfortunately such, as nothing on earth can expiate without lowering the moral purity of the feeling that pardons. Forgiveness must be sought elsewhere, and may be obtained; but here, to use the words of Young, If I forgive, the world will call me kind : If I receive her in my arms again, The world will call me very-very kind. The "Ancient Mansion"† is well described, the accompaniments judiciously chosen, and the description conveyed in some of Mr. Crabbe's best versification. We can only afford room for the latter part. Here I behold no puny works of art, None give me reasons why these views impart Such charm to fill the mind, such joy to sooth the heart. These very pinnacles and towers small, And windows dim, have beauty in them all. How stately stand yon pines upon the hill, How soft the murmurs of that living rill, And o'er the park's tall paling, scarcely higher, Peeps the low Church, and shows the modest spire. * In this tale the last line is defective in metre, whether designedly or not we cannot say, Oh! happy, happy, happy pair! both sought Both seeking-catching both-and caught. The ancient mansion reminds us, that the artist who has given a plate of Mr. Crabbe's house at Parham, in Vol. III. has made a complete mistake, and drawn a house in which Mr. Crabbe never lived; he has in fact given Parham Hall instead of Parham Lodge! It certainly is far the more picturesque mansion; and hence probably was preferred. Then comes the summer with augmented pride, Then shall th' autumnal yellow clothe the leaf, Stamps on the scene its English character.* In the "Wife and the Widow," the concluding verses are neatly and forcibly expressed (p. 199), as is also the character of the frivolous and foolish Belinda Waters, who after coquetting long, at last marries a poor surgeon's mate, and suffers accordingly. She wonders much-as why they live so ill, She wonders when she'll die. She faints, but never dies. Danvers and Rayner" is a good story of a purse-proud parvenu; and the disenchantment of the lover at the end, is told with humour, though it is too long for us to give. "Master William, or Lad's Love," is of the same kind, where a quixotic and romantic youth falls in love with the gardener's niece; and his fancy invests her with such perfections as to make him even hesitate in venturing to declare his love. The dream is sadly broken in pieces by a sudden disclosure, abruptly made, that she is going to be married to the Footman. Who takes her arm? and oh! what villain dares Lip to his lip can wickedly incline. The lad, unnerv'd by horror, with an air Of wonder quits her arm and looks despair. Nor will proceed-oh, no! he must return, Tho' his drown'd sight cannot the path discern, &c. In the Tales of the Hall (Book iv.), in the adventures of Richard, is a very elegant and just description of Autumn in the country, beginning It was a fair, and mild autumnal sky, And earth's ripe treasures met the admiring eye, &c.—Vol. VI. p. 71. 'Come, Master William, come Sir, let us on, The indignant boy, and all endearment spurn'd. "The Will" is excellent, natural in its design, and well finished in its detail, but perhaps falling off a little towards the end; and the story of "The Cousins" admirably delineates the unsuspecting and disinterested feelings of a young woman, and her all-confiding lover; and the cold calculating selfishness, duplicity, and hardheartedness of a treacherous, worldy-minded man. And thus at length we are arrived at the end of this pleasing and clever volume, which the editors judged rightly in giving to the public. Of Mr. Crabbe's former fame it has in no manner impaired the lustre; while to the public it has afforded a few more hours of innocent gratification. If compared to his former productions, a critical and curious eye may perhaps detect in some cases a feebleness of execution, and an incompleteness of design :-may find the colouring of a fainter hue, and some few of the tales deficient in power and spirit-but we cannot see that the best of them are at all below the level of Mr. Crabbe's general power of writing. We have not, it is true, those tempestuous descriptions of his earlier scenes; the terrific and heart-rending descriptions that are to be found in Ellen Orford, or in that half-dæmon and halfbrute Peter Grimes, or in the Prisons; but in these perhaps the tragic distress has not been sufficiently softened and subdued by the ideal and poetical, which ought always to maintain their elevated dominion over the violence of passion, while the reason and the taste are to be satisfied even among the most engrossing and painful impressions. We have alluded before to those earlier paintings by our great artist, of debased humanity, where the whole soul has become diseasd by crime; the moral nature disappeared in dark perspective behind the savage and sensual; and where the gloom and blackness that brooded over it, were only occasionally broken through by the electric fires of the unhallowed and ungovernable will. There are, too, the not less affecting scenes of a heart withering away in an uncongenial atmosphere, and in defenceless misery; where a long and fatal sorrow, grown up from early emotions, and youthful feelings, and modest and delicate desires, is first seen by a few sunny tears and tender alarms, and timid hopes; afterwards in patient resignation, and silent suffering, and virgin pride; then, as blow followed blow, and a fresh tide of calamity rushed in e'er the former had ebbed away, the progress of misery is beheld gradually increasing in power, and growing sterner in feature, unfortunately mastering all other passions and feelings, till it gains entire possession of every faculty, banishing even hope itself, and making its habitation the receptacle of thoughts and images more forlorn and fearful than the grave. There is a life, alas!—thrice happy they who know not of it-that is said to resemble one single-one endless sigh! Such were the masterly productions of Mr. Crabbe's muse, in the fulness of his strength, and when his genius was in its meridian power and heat. The present Tales belong rather to the subdued and chastened fancy which shed a mild gleam on the evening of his poetical life. They hold, as it were, a middle place between the deeply tragic and the ludicrous; serious some, some pathetic, and some almost conversational and familiar. Yet they exhibit the same knowledge of the human heart; the same profound view-" of the life of nature and her mysterious springs,"—the inconsistencies of disappointed passion, and the wanderings of a misguided and distressed mind; the same picturesque situations; the same power of collecting all the impressions in one focus to bear with the greatest effect; the same fine harmonies and contrasts, colours delicate or strong, allusions playful or pathetic, grave or gay; the same discrimination and selection of facts, images and illustrations; with the same occasional superfluity of detail, weakness of expression, and tameness of versification. GEOLOGY NOT SUBVERSIVE OF DIVINE REVELATION. MR. URBAN, Gray's Inn. ON some points I readily agree with your reviewer in his critique on the Rev. H. Coles' "Popular Geology subversive of Divine Revelation," in your Sept. number, p. 283.; fully indeed, in his general negative to that proposition; but I cannot but think, that in detracting from the inspiration of the Book of Genesis, in support of his argument, he has advanced a position at once erroneous, and dangerous to the cause of revealed religion. Your reviewer, if I understand the end of his argument rightly, admits that Moses, from oral tradition, and various writings of others, compiled an account of the creation, which he did not himself clearly understand, and which the progress of science now shews to our senses and understandings, was not entirely true. Can any cne coolly advance this of the man who conversed with God, and was the medium through which God communicated to his peculiar people the Jews, his laws and commandments? who, in the power of the Almighty defied the sublunary power and malice of the Egyptian Tyrant, and forced his people from his unwilling grasp by the most awful and tremendous miracles, and was the ruler and lawgiver of that people for so many years, under the immediate guidance and personal dictation of the Almighty? Whether Moses had the account of the creation immediately revealed to himself, (which, from his frequent communion with God, is most probable) or derived it from those to whom it had been revealed, is, perhaps, not very material, but Moses was not likely to write from slight or inconsiderable information, still less from guess. The account of the creation, (slight as it is, though perhaps sufficiently full for the comprehension of mankind at the time it was written,) must have been the subject of Revelation, because man was the last work of the creation, and could of course know nothing of what passed before Adam existed, but from Revelation. If we may doubt any part of Moses' account of the creation, we may also doubt his information that, "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Now, believing, as I do implicitly, in the inspiration of the Mosaic account, 1 apprehend that the best and truest way of supporting the converse of Mr. Coles's proposition, is, to shew that popular geology is not only consistent with, but supported by that account of the creation; which I now propose to do by an examination of the first Chapter of Genesis. It was immaterial to the principal end of the writings of Moses, (the knowledge of the true God, and his laws) whether the world was created in six days, or whether the Almighty |