the minutest shadings of the ideas by which they had been principally occupied, were to be discovered in their features. What then is that faculty of thought, in man, which leaves such strong impressions on the countenance even in the dust of annihilation?-Since we speak of poetry let us be permitted to borrow the simile of a poet. Milton tells us that the Divine Son, after having accomplished the creation of the world rejoined his eternal principle, and that their route over created matter was for a long time discernible by a track of light; thus the soul returning into the bosom of God leaves in the mortal body the glorious traces of its passage.

M. Michaud is highly to be applauded for having made use of those contrasts which awaken the imagination of the reader. The ancients often employed them in tragedy; a chorus of soldiers keeps guard at the Trojan camp on the fatal night when Rhesus has scarcely finished his course. In this critical moment do these soldiers talk of combats, do they retrace the images of terrible surprizes?-Hear what the semi-chorus says:"Listen! those accents are the strains of Philomel who in a thousand varied tones deplores her misfortunes and her own vengeance. The bloody shores of Simoïs repeat her plaintive accents. I hear the sound of the pipe, 'tis the hour when the shepherds of Ida go forth, carrying their flocks to graze in the smiling vallies. A cloud comes over my weary eye-lids, a sweet langour seizes all my senses; sleep shed over us, by the dawn, is most delicious."

Let us frankly acknowledge that we have no such things in our modern tragedies, however perfect they may otherwise be; and let us be sufficiently just to confess that the barbarous Shakspeare has sometimes hit upon a species of sentiment so natural, yet so rare, upon this simplicity in his imagery. The chorus above-cited

in Euripides will naturally recal to the reader the dialogue in Romeo and Juliet: "Is it the lark that sings" &c.

But while those pastoral pictures which in softening terror increase pity, because as Fenelon says, they create a smile in a heart of anguish, are banished from the tragic scene, we have transported them with much success into works of another kind. The moderns have extended and enriched the domain of descriptive poetry. Of this M. Michaud himself furnishes some fine examples.

On yon tall mountain tops, yet on the verge
Of disappearing, day, still ling'ring, smiles
Upon the flow'rs herself had bade expand.-
The river, following its majestic course,
Reflects beneath its clear and glassy surface
The dark hues of the woods that fringe its shores.
Some feeble rays of light still pierce amid
The thickly woven foliage, and illume
The lofty turrets of the antique castle;
The slate reflecting these declining rays,
The windows blazing to the dazzled sight

At distance shew like fire. And hark, I hear

From forth those bow'rs, sweet songstress of the spring,
Thy strains, which seem more mellow to the ear
'Mid evening's gloom; and while the woods around
Are vocal made by thee, the mute Arachne

To the low bramble and aspiring oak

Fastens her netted snares: meanwhile the quail,
Like me a stranger in a foreign land,

Pours through the listening fields her springy lays.
Quitting his labyrinth, the imprudent rabbit
Comes forth to meet the hunter who awaits him;
And the poor partridge, by the gloom encourag'd,
From answering echoes asks her wander'd mate.

This seems the proper place to advert to a reproach made us by M. Michaud in his preliminary discourse, where he combats, with no less taste than politeness, our

opinion of descriptive poetry. "The author of the Ge nius of Christianity," says he, "ascribes the origin of descriptive poetry to the Christian religion, which, in destroying the charm attached to the mythological fables, has reduced the poets to seek the interest of their pictures in their truth and exactness."

The author of the poem on Spring thinks that we are here mistaken. But, in the first place, we have not ascribed the origin of descriptive poetry to the Christian religion, we have only attributed to it the developement of this species of poetry; which seems to me a very different thing. Moreover, we have been careful not to say that Christianity has destroyed the charm of the mythological fables; we have endeavoured, on the contrary, to prove that every thing beautiful which is to be found in mythology, such, for example, as the moral allegories, may well be employed by a Christian poet, and that the true religion has only deprived the Muses of the minor, or disgusting fictions of paganism. And is the loss of the physical allegories so much to be regretted? What does it signify to us whether Jupiter means the æther, Juno the air, &c.

But since M. de Fontanes, a critic whose judgments are laws, has thought that he also ought to combat our opinion upon the employment of mythology, let us be permitted to revert to the passage which has given occasion to this discussion. After showing that the ancients were scarcely acquainted with descriptive poetry, in the sense which we attach to this term; after having shown that neither their poets, their philosophers, their naturalists, nor their historians have given descriptions of nature, I add: "We cannot suspect men endowed with the sensibility of the ancients to have wanted eyes to discern the beauties of nature, or talents to paint them. Some powerful cause must then have blinded their eyes. Now this cause was

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their mythology; which, peopling the earth with elegant phantoms, took from the creation its solemnity, its gran. deur, its solitude, and its melancholy. It was necessary that christianity should chase all this people of fauns, of satyrs, of nymphs, to restore to the grottoes their silence, to the woods their disposition to excite meditation. The deserts have assumed, under our worship, a more sad, a more vague, a more sublime character. The domes of the forests are raised, the rivers have broken their petty urns, to pour out their waters, drawn from the summits of the mountains, only into the great deep. The true God, in being restored to his works, has given to nature his own immensity.

Sylvans and Naiads may strike the imagination agreeably, provided always that we are not incessantly presented with them. We would not

Of their empire o'er the sea

Deprive the Tritons, take from Pan his flute,
Or snatch their scissars from the fatal sisters.

"But what does all this leave in the soul? What results from it to the heart? What fruit can the thoughts derive from it? How much more favoured is the Christian poet, in the solitude where God walks with him! free from this multitude of ridiculous deities, which surrounded him on every side, the woods are filled with one immense Divinity. The gifts of wisdom and prophecy, the mysteries of religion, seem to reside eternally in their sacred recesses. Penetrate into the American forests, as ancient as the world itself," &c. &c.

It appears to us, that the principle, as thus laid down, cannot be attacked fundamentally, though some disputes may be admitted as to the details. It may perhaps be asked, whether nothing fine is to be found in the ancient

allegories? We have answered this question in the chapter where we distinguish two sorts of allegories, the moral and the physical. M. de Fontanes has urged that the ancients equally knew this solitary and formidable deity who inhabits the woods. But have we not ourselves assented to this, in saying, "As to those unknown gods, whom the ancients placed in the deep woods and in the barren deserts, they undoubtedly produced a fine effect, but they formed no part of the mythological system; the human mind here recurred to natural religion. What the trembling traveller adored in passing through these solitudes was something unknown, something the name of which he could not tell, whom he called the divinity of the place. Sometimes he addressed it by the name of Pan, and Pan we know was the universal god. The great emotions which wild nature inspires have never been without existence, and the woods still preserve to us their formidable deity."

The excellent critic whom we have already cited, maintains farther, that there have been Pagan people who were conversant with descriptive poetry. This is undoubtedly true, and we have even availed ourselves of this circumstance to support our opinions, since the nations to whom the Gods of Greece were unknown, had a glimmering view of that beautiful and simple nature which was masked by the mythological system.

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It has been objected that the moderns have outraged descriptive poetry. Have we said any thing to the contrary; let us be permitted to recur to our own words: Perhaps it may here be objected, that the ancients were in the right to consider descriptive poetry as the accessory part, not as the principal subject of the picture; in this idea we concur, and think that in our days there is a great abuse of the descriptive. But abuse is not the thing itself, and it is not the less true, that descriptive poetry,