says George Gilfillan. Yes! that is the picture, and it is only by such an image before the eye that the reader can ever dimly realise this dreadful world. The awful plain prepared by Almighty vengeance is girt with vast and horrid rocks; we hear the rush of fiery streams; and far off, on peak beyond peak, we catch the dim trembling of the vivid lightning; there is no light in this world; there is no darkness,-it is "darkness visible."

"A dungeon, horrible on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed;

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never come."

The imagination diffuses itself over a world yet lying beyond the immediate theatre of action-a world of alternate frost and fire. Infernal Heclas-vast and wide. Away we are borne on through the latitudes and longitudes of Hell.

"Rocks, caves, lakes, seas, bogs, dens, and shades of death; A universe of death,

Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds
Perverse."

A territory unpeopled. Alas! all the scheme of the poem turns upon those damned agencies

by which the world of horror and of woe should be crowded with victims. Upon a hill, a grizly and volcanic cone, rich in precious metals, rises the Palace Chamber, the Council Hall, the Valhalla of these lost spirits. The terrible Pandemonium ;-thither, where enwombed lay the heaps of gold, and silver, Mammon led the way. The hill opened out its ribs, the solid gold is dug.

"Let none admire

That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wond'ring tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength, and art, are easily outdone
By spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toil
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
Nigh on the plain in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wond'rous art founded the massy ore,
Severing each kind, and scumm'd the bullion dross;

A third as soon had form'd within the ground

A various mould, and from the boiling cells

By strange conveyance fill'd each hollow nook,
As in an organ, from one blast of wind,

To many a row of pipes, the sound-board breathes.

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge

Rose like an exhalation, with the sound

Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did they want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures grav'n:
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equall'd in all their glories, to inshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. Th' ascending pile
Stood fix'd her stately height; and straight the doors,
Op'ning their brazen folds, discover wide

Within her ample spaces, o'er the smooth

And level pavement. From the arched roof,
Pendant by subtle magic, many a row

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naptha and asphaltas, yielded light
As from a sky."

From Pandemonium we fly to Paradise; and as every figure in the description of Hell heightens some previous horror, and adds tɔ the weight of some already oppressing sense of woe, so in Eden every image heightens our idea of enjoyment; all is Oriental and wild. The space is not so vast as that of Hell; it is locked in by careful enclosures; and here there are but two inhabitants, and those to be soon banished; while the population of Hell, already immense, is to increase with the roll of ages. But Eden-it is a wilderness of beauty; what

a perfect opulence of sweets! the trim hand of civilization has never touched these gardens.

"Thus was this place

A happy rural seat of various view;

Groves whose rich trees wept od'rous gums and balm,
Others whose fruit burnish'd with golden rind
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true.

If true, here only, and of delicious taste,
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,
Or palmy hillock; or the flow'ry lap

Of some irriguous valley spread her store;
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant: meanwhile murm'ring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their choir apply; air, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on th' eternal spring, Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gath'ring flow'rs,
Herself the fairest flower, by gloomy Dis

Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain

To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove

Of Daphne by Orontes, and th' inspired

Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive."

Now is there not rich work here for the dilating and delighted fancy? This beauty relieved and set off by the shaggy hill through which the river winds its way, the crisped brook rolling by sands of gold, from sapphire founts. Ah! what a spot is this! with that nuptial bower, showering down roses on the sleeping lovers, the green bank, by that smooth lake, where Eve first beheld her reflected form,-that sylvan lodge,-deep forests, undesecrated by sin or shame, and peopled by birds of glorious plumage this is Eden.

And then the characters of the poem of Satan; we have said something, and would willingly say more, but that space forbids our doing so. We have then other spirits beside Satan-celestial and infernal; the latter appear before us in the discussions in council in Pandemonium, in full length. We notice their relative stature, and with what excited interest we are compelled to listen to their separate advices. What study of character is here! do they not ever speak like spirits? We feel that the poet has impersonated character and sentiment; yes, there are the gods men have worshipped, for in all ages men have bowed before, and paid homage to, abstract images of themselves. Men, the very copy of these lost spirits,