This early devotion to poetry, irresistible as it was, he was wont himself to regard as the source of many troubles. That it retarded his improvement at school, and finally altered his destination in life, seducing him to exchange an almost monastic seclusion from society, for the hurry and bustle of a world, which, for a time, seemed disposed to repay him but ill for the sacrifice. We can not think that his opinions of this change remain the same now. In whatever character James Montgomery had performed his allotted work in this world, I am persuaded that he would have performed it with the same conscientious steadfastness. In his heart, the spirit of his pious parents, and of that society in which he was educated, would have made him a faithful servant of that Master whom he has so sincerely served. Whether he had occupied a pulpit here, or had gone out to preach Christianity in some far-off and savage land, he would have been the same man, faithful and devout. But it may well be questioned whether in any other vocation he could have been a tenth part as successfully useful as he has been. There was need of him in the world, and he was sent thither, spite of parentage, education, and himself There was a talent committed to him that is not committed to all. He was to be a minister of God, but it was to be from the hallowed chair of poetry, and not from the pulpit. There was a voice to be raised against slavery and vice, and that voice was to perpetuate itself on the rhythmical page, and to kindle thousands of hearts with the fire of religion and liberty long after his own was cold. There was a niche reserved for him in the temple of poetry, which no other could occupy. It was that of a bard who, freeing his most religious lays from dogmas, should diffuse the love of religion by the religion of love. He himself has shown how well he knew his appointed business, and how sacredly he had resolved to discharge it, when, in A Theme for a Poet, he asks,-- "What monument of mind Shall I bequeath to deathless fame, That after-times may love my name?" And after detailing the characteristics of the principal poets of the age, he adds:-- "Transcendent masters of the lyre! Not to your honors I aspire; Humbler, yet higher views Have touched my spirit into flame; The pomp of fiction I disclaim: Fair Truth! be thou my muse: Reveal in splendor deeds obscure-- Abase the proud, exalt the poor. "I sing the men who left their home, Amid barbarian tribes to roam, Who land and ocean crossed,-- Led by a loadstar, marked on high By Faith's unseen, all-seeing eye,-- To seek and save the lost; Where'er the curse on Adam spread. To call his offspring from the dead.