When we bear in mind that these beautiful passages of poetry are not the mere ornamental descriptions of things gone by and done with; but that, though races are extinguished, and millions of negroes, kidnapped to supply their loss, have perished in their misery, the horrors and outrages of slavery remain, spite of all we have done to put an end to them,--we can not too highly estimate the productions of the muse which are devoted to the cause of these children of misery and sorrow, nor too often return to their perusal. According to the calculations of the Anti-slavery Society, there were, half-a-century ago, when the anti-slavery operations began, _from two to three millions of slaves in the world_; there are now said to be FROM SIX TO SEVEN MILLIONS! There were then calculated to be _one hundred thousand slaves annually ravished from Africa_; there are now calculated to be FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND ANNUALLY! With these awful facts before us, I fear it will be long before the eloquent appeals of such writers as Montgomery and Cowper will cease to possess a living interest. In the World before the Flood, and Greenland, the same great purpose of serving the cause of virtue is equally conspicuous. The one relates the contests and triumphs of the good over the vicious in the antediluvian ages, and is full of the evidences of a fine imagination and a lofty piety. Many think this the greatest of Mr. Montgomery's productions. It abounds with beauties which we must not allow ourselves to particularize here. In Greenland he celebrates the missionary labors of the body to which his parents and his brother belonged. In the Pelican Island he quitted his favorite versification, the heroic, in which he displays so much force and harmony, and employed blank verse. There is less human interest in this poem, but it is, perhaps, the most philosophical of his writings, and gives great scope to his imaginative and descriptive powers. He imagines himself as a sort of spiritual existence, watching the progress of the population of the world, from its inanimate state till it was thronged with men, and the savage began to think, and to be prepared for the visitation of the Gospel messengers of peace and knowledge. It may be imagined that vast opportunity is given for the recital of the wonders, awful and beautiful, of the various realms of nature--the growth of coral islands and continents in the sea, and the varied developments of life on the land. The last scene, with a noble savage and his grandchild, in which the old man is smitten with a sense of his immortality, and of the presence of God, and praying, is followed in his act of devotion by the child, is very fine. But I must only allow myself to quote, as a specimen of the style of this poem, so different to all others by the same author, one of its opening passages already referred to.