trust the resolution was not made in vain--I determined in that moment that my country should not have reason to be ashamed of me.' Scotland has no reason to be ashamed of James Montgomery. Of all her poets, there is not one of equal power, whose strain has been so uninterruptedly pure, or whose objects have been so invariably excellent. The child of the Christian missionary has been the poet of Christian missions. The parents laid down their lives in behalf of the enslaved and perishing negro; the son, in strains the most vigorous and impassioned, has raised his generous appeal to public justice in his behalf. Nor has the appeal been in vain. All his writings bear the stamp of the Christian; many of them--embodying feelings which all the truly devout experience, but which only a poet could express--have been made vehicles for addressing to the Creator the emotions of many a grateful heart; and, employed chiefly on themes of immortality, they promise to outlive not only songs of intellectually a lower order, but of even equal powers of genius, into whose otherwise noble texture sin has introduced the elements of death. _28th October 1841._ ----- {1} 20th October 1841. CRITICISM--INTERNAL EVIDENCE. The reader must have often remarked, in catalogues of the writings of great authors--such as Dr. Johnson, and the Rev. John Cumming, of the Scotch Church, London--that while some of the pieces are described as _acknowledged_, the genuineness of others is determined merely by _internal evidence_. We know, for instance, that the Doctor wrote the _English Dictionary_, not only because no other man in the world at the time could have written it, but also because he affixed his name to the title-page. We know, too, that he wrote some of the best of Lord Chatham's earlier speeches, just because he said so, and pointed out the very garret in Fleet Street in which they had been written. But it is from other data we conclude that, during his period of obscurity and distress, he wrote prefaces for the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for some six or seven years together,--data derived exclusively from a discriminating criticism; and his claim to the authorship of _Taylor's Sermons_ rests solely on the vigorous character of the thinking displayed in these compositions, and the marked peculiarities of their style. Now, in exactly the same way in which we know that Johnson wrote the speeches and the Dictionary, do we know that the Rev. John Cumming drew up an introductory essay to the liturgy of a Church that never knew of a liturgy, and that he occasionally contributes tales to morocco annuals, wonderful enough to excite the astonishment of ordinary readers. To these compositions he affixes his name,--a thing very few men would have the courage to do; and thus are we assured of their authorship. But there are other compositions to which he does not affix his name, and it is from internal evidence alone that these can be adjudged to him: it is from