But the subject is one in which we can see our way as but "through a glass darkly." Nay, it is possible that the master problem which it involves no created intelligence can thoroughly unlock. It has been well said, that the "poet's heart" is informed by a "terrible sagacity;" and I am at times disposed to regard Milton's conception of the perplexity of the fallen spirits, when reasoning on "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute," and finding "no end in wandering mazes lost," much rather as a sober truth caught from the invisible world, than as merely an ingenious fancy. The late Robert Montgomery has rather unhappily chosen Satan as one of the themes of his muse; and in his long poem, designated in its second title "Intellect without God," he has set that personage a-reasoning in a style which, I fear, more completely demonstrates the absence of God than the presence of intellect. It has, however, sometimes occurred to me, that a poet of the larger calibre, who to the Divine faculty and vision added such a knowledge of geologic science as that which Virgil possessed of the Natural History of his time, or as that which Milton possessed of the general learning of _his_, might find, in a somewhat similar subject, the materials of a poem which "posterity would not willingly let die." There is one of the satirists justly severe on a class of critics "Who, drily plain, without invention's aid, Write dull receipts how poems may be made." But at some risk of rendering myself obnoxious to his censure, I shall attempt indicating at least the general scope and character of what the schoolmen might term a _possible_ poem; which, if vivified by the genius of some of the higher masters of the lyre, broad of faculty, and at once great poets and great men, might prove one precious boon more to the world, suited, conformably to the special demands of these latter times, to "assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man."