Dh! this beautiful isle, with its phantom-like show,
Is a vista exceedingly bright:

And the River of Time, in its turbulent flow,
Is oft soothed by the voices we heard long ago,
When the years were a dream of delight.

FAITH AND WORKS.-ALICE CARY.

Not what we think, but what we do,
Makes saints of us: all stiff and cold,
The outlines of the corpse show through
The cloth of gold.

And in despite the outward sin,-
Despite belief with creeds at strife,
The principle of love within

Leavens the life.

For 'tis for fancied good, I claim,

That men do wrong,-not wrong's desire;
Wrapping themselves, as 'twere, in flame,
To cheat the fire.

Not what God gives, but what He takes,
Uplifts us to the holiest height;

On truth's rough crags life's current breaks
To diamond light.

From transient evil I do trust

That we a final good shall draw;

That in confusion, death, and dust,
Are light and law.

That He whose glory shines among

The eternal stars, descends to mark
This foolish little atom swung
Loose in the dark.

But though I should not thus receive
A sense of order and control,

My God, I could not disbelieve

My sense of soul.

For though, alas! I can but see

A hand's breadth backward, or before,

I am, and since I am, must be

Forevermore.

DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL.-EDWARD IRVING.

There never was a specimen of manhood so rich and ennobled as David, the son of Jesse, whom other saints haply may have equalled in single features of his character; but such a combination of manly, heroic qualities, such a flush of generous, godlike excellencies, hath never yet been seen embodied in a single man. His Psalms, to speak as a man, do place him in the highest rank of lyrical poets, as they set him above all the inspired writers of the Old Testament,equalling in sublimity the flights of Isaiah himself, and revealing the cloudy mystery of Ezekiel; but in love of country, and glorying in its heavenly patronage, surpassing them all. And where are there such expressions of the varied conditions into which human nature is cast by the accidents of Providence, such delineations of deep affliction and inconsolable anguish, and anon such joy, such rapture, such revelry of emotion in the worship of the living God! such invocations to all nature, animate and inanimate, such summonings of the hidden powers of harmony and of the breathing instruments of melody! Single hymns of this poet would have conferred immortality upon any mortal, and borne down his name as one of the most favored of the sons of men.

But it is not the writings of the man which strike us with such wonder, as the actions and events of his wonderful history. He was a hero without a peer, bold in battle and generous in victory: by distress or by triumph never overcome. Though hunted like a wild beast among the mountains, and forsaken like a pelican in the wilderness, by the country whose armies he had delivered from disgrace, and by the monarch whose daughter he had won,-whose son he had bound to him with cords of brotherly love, and whose own soul he was wont to charm with the sacredness of his minstrelsy, he never indulged malice or revenge against his unnatural enemies. Twice, at the peril of his life, he brought his blood-hunter within his power, and twice he spared him, and would not be persuaded to injure a hair upon his head, -who, when he fell in his high places, was lamented over

by David with the bitterness of a son, and his death avenged upon the sacrilegious man who had lifted his sword against the Lord's anointed. In friendship and love, and also in domestic affections, he was not less notable than in heroic endowments; and in piety to God he was most remarkable of all. He had to flee from his bedchamber in the dead of night; his friendly meetings had to be concerted upon the perilous edge of captivity and death; his food he had to seek at the risk of sacrilege; for a refuge from death, to cast himself upon the people of Gath, to counterfeit idiocy, and become the laughing-stock of his enemies. And who shall tell of his hidings in the cave of Adullam, and of his wanderings in the wilderness of Ziph,-in the weariness of which he had power to stand before his armed enemy with all his host, and, by the generosity of his deeds and the affectionate language which flowed from his lips, to melt into childlike weeping the obdurate spirit of King Saul, which had the nerve to evoke the spirits of the dead? King David was a man extreme in all his excellencies,—a man of the highest strain, whether for counsel, for expression, or for action, in peace and in war, in exile and on the throne. That such a warm and ebullient spirit should have given way before the tide of its affections, we wonder not. We rather wonder that, tried by such extremes, his mighty spirit should not often have burst control, and enacted right forward the conqueror, the avenger, and the destroyer.

To conceive aright of the gracefulness and strength of King David's character, we must draw him into comparison with others in a similar condition, and then we shall see what hero in the vain world is to cope with him. Conceive a man who had saved his country and clothed himself with gracefulness and renown in the sight of all the people by the chivalry of his deeds, won for himself intermarriage with the royal line, and by unction of the Lord's prophet been set apart to the throne itself; such a one conceive driven with fury from house and hold, and through tedious years deserted of every stay but heaven, with no soothing sympathies of quiet life, harassed forever between famine and the edge of the sword, and kept in savage holds and deserts; and tell us, in the annals of men, of one so disappointed, so pereaved

and straitened, maintaining not fortitude alone, but a sweat composure and a heavenly frame of soul, inditing praise to no avenging deity, and couching songs in no revengeful mood, according with his outcast and unsocial life; but inditing praises to the God of mercy, and songs which soar into the third heavens of the soul,-not, indeed, without the burst of sorrow and the complaint of solitariness, and prophetic warnings to his bloodthirsty foes, but ever closing in sweet preludes of good to come, and desire of present contentment. Find us such a one in the annals of men, and we yield the argument of this controversy. Men there have

been, driven before the wrath of kings to wander outlaws and exiles, whose musings and actings have been recorded to us in the minstrelsy of our native land. Draw these songs of the exile into comparison with the Psalms of David, and know the spirit of the man after God's own heart; the stern defiance of the one, with the tranquil acquiescence of the other; the deep despair of the one, with the rooted trust of the other; the vindictive imprecations of the one, with the tender regret and forgiveness of the other. Show us an outlaw who never spoiled the country which had forsaken him, nor turned his hand in self-defence or revenge upon his persecutors,-who used the vigor of his arm only against the enemies of his country,-yea, lifted up his arm in behalf of that mother which had cast her son, crowned with salvation, away from her bosom, and held him at a distance from her love, and raised the rest of her family to hunt him to the death; in the defence of that thankless, unnatural mother-country, find us such a repudiated son lifting up his arm and spending its vigor in smiting and utterly discomfiting her enemies, whose spoils he kept not to enrich himself and his ruthless followers, but dispensed to comfort her and her happier children. Find us, among the Themistocles and Coriolani and Cromwells and Napoleons of the earth, such a man, and we will yield the argument of this controversy which we maintain for the peerless son of Jesse.

But we fear that no such another man is to be found in the recorded annals of men. Though he rose from the peasantry to fill the throne and enlarge the borders of his native land, he gave himself neither to ambition nor to glory;

though more basely treated than the sons of men, he gave not place to despondency or revenge; though of the highest genius in poetry, he gave it not license to sing his own deeds, nor to depict loose and licentious life, nor to ennoble any worldly sentiment or aítachment of the human heart, however virtuous or honorable, but constrained it to sing the praises of God and the victories of the right hand of the Lord of hosts, and his admirable works which are of old from everlasting. And he hath dressed out religion in such a rich and beautiful garment of divine poesy as beseemeth her majesty, in which, being arrayed, she can stand up, before the eyes of her enemies, in more royal state than any personification of love or glory or pleasure to which highlygifted mortals have devoted their genius.

The force of his character was vast, and the scope of his life was immense. His harp was full-stringed, and every angel of joy and of sorrow swept over the chords as he passed; but the melody always breathed of heaven. And such oceans of affection lay within his breast as could not always slumber in their calmness; for the hearts of a hundred men strove and struggled together within the narrow continent of his single heart. And will the scornful men have no sympathy for one so conditioned, but scorn him be- . cause he ruled not with constant quietness the unruly host of divers natures which dwelt within his single soul? Of selfcommand surely he will not be held deficient who endured Saul's javelin to be so often launched at him, while the people without were willing to hail him king; who endured all bodily hardships and taunts of his enemies when revenge was in his hand, and ruled his desperate band like a company of saints, and restrained them from their country's injury. But that he should not be able to enact all characters without a fault, the simple shepherd, the conquering hero, and the romantic lover; the perfect friend, the innocent outlaw, and the royal monarch; the poet, the prophet, and the regenerator of the church; and withal the man, the man of vast soul, who played not these parts by turns, but was the original of them all, and wholly present in them all,-oh! that he should have fulfilled this high-priesthood of humanity, this universal ministry of manhood, without an error,