Mr. Montgomery had a strictly religious education; he was the son of religious parents, and belonged to a pre-eminently religious body, the Moravian brethren; and the spirit of that parentage, education, and association, is deeply diffused through all that he has written. He is essentially a religious poet. It is what of all things upon earth we can well believe he most would desire to be; and that he is in the truest sense of the word. In all his poems the spirit of a piety, profound, and beautifully benevolent, is instantly felt. Perhaps there are no lyrics in the language which are so truly Christian; that is, which breathe the same glowing love to God and man, without one tinge of the bigotry that too commonly eats into zeal as rust into the finest steel. We have no dogmas, but a pure and heavenly atmosphere of holy faith, filial and fraternal affection, and reverence of the great Architect of the universe, and of the destinies of man. There is often a tone of melancholy, but it is never that of doubt. It is the sighing of a feeling and sensitive heart over the evils of life; but ever and anon this tone rises into the more animated one of conscious strength and well placed confidence; and terminates in that pæan of happy triumph which the Christian only can ascend to. There is no "dealing damnation round the land" in the religious poetry of James Montgomery; we feel that he has peculiarly caught the genuine spirit of Christ; and a sense of beauty and goodness, and of the glorious blessedness of an immortal nature, accompanies us through all his works. That is the spirit which, more than all other, distinguishes his lyrical compositions; and how many and how beautiful are they! as, The Grave, The Joy of Grief, Verses on the Death of Joseph Browne, a prisoner for conscience' sake in York Castle, commencing, "Spirit, leave thine house of clay;" The Common Lot, The Harp of Sorrow, The Dial, The Molehill, The Peak Mountains, A Mother's Love, those noble Stanzas to the Memory of the Rev. Thomas Spencer, The Alps, Friends, Night, and the many in the same volume with the Pelican Island, perhaps some of them the most beautiful and spiritual things he ever wrote. The poetry of Montgomery is too familiar to most readers, and especially religiously intellectual readers, to need much quotation here; but a few stanzas may be ventured upon, and will of themselves more forcibly indicate the peculiar features of his poetical character, than much prose description. The opening stanzas on the death of Thomas Spencer embody his very creed and doctrine as a poet. "I will not sing a mortal's praise, To thee I consecrate my lays, To whom my powers belong; Those gifts upon thine altar thrown, O GOD! accept;--accept thine own: My gifts are Thine,--be Thine alone The glory of my song.