Co-herald ! wake, oh wake, and utter praise !
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth ? .
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams ?

5. And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad !
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered and the same forever ?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ?
And who commanded—and the silence came-
“ Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest ?”'

6. Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow

Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts !
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who with living flowers
Of loveliest blue spread garlands at your feet ?
“GOD!" let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer; and let the ice-plains echo, “GOD!"
“GOD !" sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds !
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, “GOD!"

7. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost !

Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest !
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm !
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds !
Ye signs and wonders of the elements !
Utter forth “GOD!" and fill the hills with praise.

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8. Once more, hoar mount! with thy sky-pointing peak,

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-
Thou too, again, stupendous mountain, thou
That, as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,
Slow travelling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me-rise, O, ever rise ;
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth.
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven,
Great hierarch, tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God !

III.-PASSAGE FROM CHRISTABEL.

Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted—ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining-
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary sea now flows between;
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been.

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15

CHARACTERIZATION BY DE QUINCEY. 1. Without attempting any elaborate analysis of Lamb's merits, which would be no easy task, one word or two may be said generally about the position he is entitled to hold in our litera

ture, and, comparatively, in European literature. In the literature of every nation, we are naturally disposed to place in the highest rank those who have produced some great and colossal work-a Paradise Lost, a Hamlet, a Novum Organum—which presupposes an effort of intellect, a comprehensive grasp, and a sustaining power, for its original conception, corresponding in grandeur to that effort, different in kind, which must preside in its execution.

2. But after this highest class, in which the power to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same scale of grandeur, there comes a second, in which brilliant powers of execution, applied to conceptions of a very inferior range, are allowed to establish a classical rank. Every literature possesses, besides its great national gallery, a cabinet of minor pieces, not less perfect in their polish, possibly more so. In reality, the characteristic of this class is elaborate perfection: the point of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass and power of the original creation, which (however exquisite in its class), moves within a smaller sphere. To this class belong, for example, The Rape of the Lock, that finished jewel of English literature ; The Dunciad (a still more exquisite gem); The Vicar of Wakejicid (in its earliest part); in German, the Luise of Voss; in French-what? Above all others, the fables of La Fontaine. He is the pet and darling, as it were, of the French literature.

3. Now, I affirm that Charles Lamb occupies a corresponding station in his own literature. I am not speaking it will be observed) of kinds, but of degrees, in literary merit; and Lamb I hold to be, as with respect to English literature, that which La Fontaine is with respect to French. For though there may be little resemblance otherwise, in this they agree, that both were wayward and eccentric humorists; both confined their efforts to short flights ; and both, according to the standards of their sey. eral countries, were occasionally, and in a lower key, poets.

DISSERTATION ON ROAST PIG. [INTRODUCTION.—The subjoined piece is one of the Essays of Elia, under which pseudonym Lamb contributed to the London Magazine this charming series of papers. Says Sir T. N. Talfourd: “They are carefully elaborated ; yet never were works written in a higher defiance to the conventional pomp of style. A sly hit, a happy pun, a humorous combination, lets the light into the intricacies of the subject, and supplies the place of ponderous sentences.'']

1. Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the s second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the cooks' holiday. The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner following.

2. The swine-herd Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast* for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers * of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, 15 which kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it), what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. ac

LITERARY ANALYSIS.—To what class of compositions does this piece belong? Ans. To the Essay.- What are the chief characteristics of the piece? Ans. They are raciness and humor,

1-10. Mankind ... following. By what means does Lamb give an appearance of truthfulness to the narrative?

2, 3. seventy thousand ages. The claims of the Chinese to a vast antiquity give point to this remarkable number.