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 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 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 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, 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, Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove Within her ample spaces, o'er the smooth And level pavement. From the arched roof, Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 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, If true, here only, and of delicious taste, Of some irriguous valley spread her store; 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 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, |