Our object in the present article has been, rather to attract attention to this aspect of Russian affairs, than to enter ourselves into the details of it: to point out the fundamental and original distinction of the Russian church-character, the perpetuity of this feature, and its results when wrought out by an enslaved priesthood among a nation of serfs. We have also indicated the way in which the ecclesiastical character of the country identifies itself with the political, through means of the present form of Church government; and how the ambition of the monarch is aided by that of the whole Eastern Church, of which he is regarded as the head and champion. We think the line. of investigation which we have marked out an important one, and hope, some day or other, to see it pursued by some abler hand.

ART. IV. Lethe and other Poems. By SOPHIA WOODROOFFE. Posthumously edited by G. S. FABER, B.D. Master of Sherburn Hospital and Prebendary of Salisbury, Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley.

GENERALLY speaking, we are somewhat disposed to look with a jealous eye upon specimens of precocious talent. They are commonly much overrated by fond partiality: they are frequently no more, than a rapid expansion, a premature development, of the faculties. And, even on the supposition of real genius, there is a double danger attendant on their production : danger to health of body, from the stimulus of early and intense excitement; and danger to health of mind, from the intoxication of injudicious panegyric, which has a perilous tendency "to raise,

f

At least, distempered, discontented, thoughts,

Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires,

Blown up with high conceits engendering pride."

Such is our constitutional bias: such our habitual hesitation. Nevertheless,

"Good reasons must, of force, give place to better:"

and in the volume before us we find an exception to our reasonings and a relief to our apprehensions; the poems, contained in it being of unquestionable excellence; and the youthful writer having been, by death, removed alike from the stings of criticism and the misleadings of adulation. She appears to have been a most amiable and unassuming person, of a gifted

and highly cultivated mind, free from the flutters of juvenile ambition, and obeying the poetic impulse so far only as to strew with flowers of genius the path of domestic peace and virtue.

The learned Master of Sherburn, Editor of this Collection, has ushered it in with a preface at once tender and manly; making no undue attempt to prepossess the reader, but leaving the Poems to stand (as they very well may) on the foundation of their own merits. It is a pleasing and a touching spectacle to see the invincible refuter of Romanism and Infidelity thus descending, under the influence of an affectionate regard for the memory of an accomplished relative, to the humble occupation of an editor. "A voluntary descent from the dignity of science (says Johnson in his Life of Watts) is perhaps the hardest lesson that humility can teach." Proceed we now to the Poems themselves.

The first and most considerable among them is "Lethe;" the plan of which appears to us original-the execution, eloquent and powerful.

A young Greek has lost, successively, his parents, his brother, his two sisters, and Evadnè, his intended bride. The last is carried off by a body of Persians, who had placed themselves in ambush near his residence in Attica (for the opening of the story seems to be fixed shortly before the battle of Marathon): and of her subsequent fate he long remains in ignorance. With the agony of his grief is mingled an intense desire to know both what becomes of her in captivity and exile, and what is the condition of the soul after death. On the former point, he arrives eventually at the mournful certainty, that his Evadne had perished on the latter, he questions the various sects of philosophers, but without obtaining any satisfaction. In the wildness, the madness of despair, he calls successively upon the Wind, the Ocean, the Night, the Stars, the Course of Nature, "to tell of other climes that know not death." But the answer comes not. He invokes forgetfulness: and, after long delay, the boon is granted. A phantom presents him with the water of Lethè, bidding him, however, consider well what he is about to do. Regardless of the warning, he drinks: but, after the "fierce joyaunce" of relief has passed away, his loss of memory renders him more miserable than before.

"It was a self-consuming of the heart,

A very searing of the soul and brain."

At length the phantom reappears, the spell is removed, and memory returns. He now wanders to Egypt, to Italy, to Babylon, to Tyre, to Palmyra, and finally to Palestine. Here he

is led to the consolations of true religion by a friendly and hos.. pitable Jew: who appears (for there is something of indistinctness in this passage) to have recently returned from the Babyonian Captivity, to

"A land, which, fair and fertile, bore
Yet traces left by slavery, war, and wrath;
A land of snow-clad mountains, sunny hills,
Green vales, and fruithful plains, and flowery rills."

Such is the story. The poetry varies with the tale: by turns, beautiful, pathetic, magnificent, and sublime. As a specimen, we subjoin the wild but lofty addresses to the Wind, the Ocean, the Night, and the Stars.

“O thou invisible and wondrous Wind!

Thou never weary voyager! whose wings
Leave the swift Morning's pinion far behind,

Whose mystic tones discourse of many things,
Thou art immortal. Hast thou not one breath,
To tell of other climes that know not death?

66.6 Speak to me! Answer me! I must be heard!'
"Thus, in my spirit's phrenzy, I exclaimed.
But all was mute. No gale, no zephyr, stirred
To give an answer to the prayer I framed.
Of this, the wandering breezes could not teach.
Sick to the very heart, I sought the smooth sea-beach:

"And called on Ocean. Thou of many voices,
The crown'd with many a foamy coronet,
Know'st thou no place, where the worn heart rejoices,
Escap'd from this world's ever feverish fret?
Hast thou within thy bosom no abode,

For the freed soul which hath cast off its mortal load?

"No cavern, glittering sheen with rainbow gems:
Where sea-weed tapestries the sparry walls;

Whose roof is raised on branching coral-stems;

And, through whose winding corridors and halls,
Now loud, now soft, the dulcet echoes float

From where the sea-nymph's shell sends forth its liquid note ?''

"The sea rolled on, and gave me no reply.

But now I saw dark Night, the black-browed Queen

Of dreams and shapes and shadows, drawing nigh
With stately step and calm majestic mien.
"Thou, who giv'st slumber to each weary lid,
The secret of repose with thee is surely hid !

"Thou wert the first of all things. Know'st thou not,
Of all o'er which thy pinions brooding hang,
Some distant isle, some lone and lovely spot,

Far from the stir, the hurry, and the clang,
Which are on earth: and where no grief may come
To cloud the brightness of the spirit's home?"
"Night answered not: and, sad, I gazed to heaven.
No clouds were there and to its azure arch,
A thousand starry Hosts their light had given.
Awe-struck, I viewed their proud and solemn march,
As silently they gathered in the field

Above me, flashing like a polished shield.

"Ye Holy Watchers of the midnight gloom:

Ye, whom a strange and secret power doth bind
Unto the destiny of man ; to whom

His words and deeds are manifest:
: ye kind
And gentle beings, who present his vows
Before the throne of Jove, to you a mortal bows.
"You, the benign and powerful, you guide

The weary wanderer through the desert vast;
And, o'er the lonely bark which roams the wide
And trackless deep, a tranquil lustre cast:
Hear, then, my prayer. Above, below, around,
Where have the dead a place of resting found??

They looked upon me with their piercing eyes,
As if to search each sealed and inward thought.
They looked. But, wafted from the burning skies,
No answer to my listening soul was brought.
They looked with such a pure unearthly light,
That, all abashed, I shrank before their sight.'

Among the minor and detached Articles of this Collection there are two Translations from the Greek; a Chorus from Hecuba, and the Hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter: both of them meriting the highest commendation; the pathos of the chorus, and the majesty of the hymn, being, each of them, admirably transfused into appropriate metre. If we acknowledge something like a preference of the latter, it may, with much probability, be accounted for, from the superior dignity of the subject. We give the Hymn, yvwory Oew, entire: as it would be difficult to make an extract from it without seriously impairing its majestic beauty.

"Most glorious of immortals! Many-named! Good and all-powerful ever! Jupiter,

Author of Nature, universal king,

Hail: for, by right, thou rulest mortal men!

We are thine offspring: unto us alone,

Among the dwellers on the earth, is given
The mimic gift of speech. Therefore, to thee
We will sing praises, and extol thy might.

Round, in its place, the Universe thou rollest:
And, by thy sovereign will, guidest each orb,
As it revolves. In thine unconquered hand,
The double-pointed arrows of the lightning,
Thy fiery ever-living minister,

Thou wieldest: and all Nature, at the stroke,
Trembles. O thou, the all-pervading Mind,
Mingled with great and small; thou, Lord Supreme,
Nought is without thee: or in the divine
Etherial heaven, or in the sea, or earth;
Save the blind actions of the wicked man!
'Tis thine, to order what things are confused,
Prune the redundant, th' adverse reconcile :
For thus thy Law with evil mixes good.

Thrice happy they, who love and follow it,
The virtuous! But the wicked, woe to them:
For they abhor and break it; They, nor see,
Nor will obey. From what alone can give
Life to their souls, madly they turn away:
Some, eager climbing the steep path of glory;
Some, aye unsated, craving after gain;
Some, eftsoon lulled, by Pleasure's siren voice,
To sloth and soft repose. But, O do thou,
All-giver, dwelling midst the clouds in darkness,
Ruler of lightning, hear: and free the minds
Of men from fatal ignorance; and teach
To follow thine all-just, all-guiding, will:
That we, since thou hast honoured us in much,
May, as befitteth us, return thee honour,
Ever thy works extolling. For what gift,
On mortals or on gods, can be bestowed,
More excellent than this? FOR EVERMORE

RIGHTLY TO PRAISE THINE UNIVERSAL LAW."

Four short pieces, translated from Metastasio, have all his gracefulness, taste, and delicacy: though we feel ourselves compelled to protest against the word "brooklet" in the first of them; especially, since "streamlet," which has the authority of Thompson, was at hand. With no less determination, we repudiate "wavelets:" which, alas, may be found in the first stanza of Lethe.

The four versions from the German do more credit to our young translator than to the original writers, whose productions (sooth to say) scarcely merited her notice. The copies, themselves, indeed, are finely executed: but they are certainly taken from very indifferent paintings. Time and talent may be better