What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the meaning of the two lines which almost immediately follow? “A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, He loves to commune with the fields and floods." How can a soulless thing be a spirit? Then comes a panegyric on the Sunday. A baptism follows; after that a marriage: and we then proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and the burial of the dead. Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has found something new to say about him. “O Death! though dreadless vanquisher of earth, The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth! Careering round the world like tempest wind, Martyrs before, and victims strew’d behind; Ages on ages cannot grapple thee, Dragging the world into eternity!” If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the difference may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him, are to us great mysteries. We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest Cassio, “Why, this is a more excellent song than the other.” Mr. Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it, One great Enchanter helm’d the harmonious whole" What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a {207}helm has to do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his argument thus: “And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named; The spacious world, and all its wonders, born Designless, sell-created, and forlorn; Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream, Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?" We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr. Robert Montgomery’s logic. He informs us that lightning is designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is designless and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that it is the Deity who bids “thunder rattle from the skiey deep.” His theory is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that the lightning made itself. But Mr. Robert Montgomery’s metaphysics are not at present our game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Atheism. “Then, blood-stain’d Murder, bare thy hideous arm, And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm: Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime; Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!”