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He ransacks the mansions of the dead, turns the grave into a pulpit, and makes putrefactions and mortality prcach lessons to the living. He surveys with Newtonian exactness, the starry expanse and the countless radiant worlds that roll in the nocturnal sky; from these he investigates the glory and perfections of the creating and sustaining God; and from these he enhances the wonders of Redeeming Love.—IIe mounts the believer on the summit of creation, as upon a stupendous eminence, to enlarge his prospect, and exalt his conceptions of the majesty and glory of that God, who redeemed his Church with his own blood.- -When imagination itself, with all the assistance of science, is lost in the immensity and awful grandeur of the works of nature; immediately he contracts the universe into a span, and the enormous orbs into fleeting atoms, or the small dust that remains in the balance when the works of redemption are brought in view.

Thus, he unites the most improved philosopher with the sound believer; and makes reason and nature subservient to faith and revelation. Whilst he allows reson its freest einquiry and fullest scope, he gives up with none of the peculiarities of the gospel; but holds forth with the clearest light, and in various points of view, these truths wherein the offence of the Cross consists.

May these heavenly doctrines, and precious truths, which flowed in such copious gladdening streams from his lips and pen, be transmitted pure and unadulterated, to the latest posterity; and may that divine Spirit, which gave them their proper energy and influence upon his heart and life, ever accompany them to remotest ages.

VERSES TO MR. HERVEY,

ON HIS

MEDITATIONS.

IN these lov'd scenes, what rapt'rous graces shine, Live in each leaf, and breathe in every line! What sacred beauties beam throughout the whole, To charm the sense, and steal upon the soul ! In classic elegance, and thoughts-his own, We see our faults, as in a mirror shown ; Each truth, in glaring characters exprest, All own the twin resemblance in their breast: His easy periods, and persuasive page, At once amend, and entertain the age : Nature's wide fields all open to his view, He charms the mind with something ever new; On fancy's pinions, his advent'rous soul Wantons unbounded, and pervades the whole: From death's dark caverns in the earth below, To spheres, where planets roll, or comets glow. See him explore, with more than human eyes, The dreary sepulchre, where Grenville lies : Converse with stones, or monumental brass, The rude inscriptions-or the painted glass : To gloomy vaults descend with awful tread, And view the silent mansions of the dead.

To gayer scenes he next adapts his lines, Where lavish'd Nature in embroid'ry shines: The jess'mine groves, the woodbine's fragrant bow'rs, With all the painted family of flow'rs; There, Sacharissa! in each fleeting grace, Read all the transient honors of thy face. With equal dignity, now see him rise To paint the sable horrors of the skies. When all the wild horizon lies in shade

And midnight phantoms sweep along the glade;
All nature hush'd-a solemn silence reigns,
And scarce a breeze disturbs the sleeping plains.
Last, yet not less, in majesty of phrase,
He draws the full-orb'd moon's expansive blaze;
The waving meteors, trembling from on high,
With all the mute artill'ry of the sky :
Systems on systems, which in order roll,
And dart their lambent beams from pole to pole.
Hail, mighty genius! whose excursive soul
No bounds confine, no limits can controul,
Whose eye expatiates, and whose mind can rove,
Thro' earth, thro' æther, and the realms above :
From things inanimate can direct the rod,*
In just gradation, to ascend to God.

Taught by thy lines, see hoary age grows wise,
And all the rebel in his bosom dies:

E'en thoughtless youth, in luxury of blood,
Fly the infectious world, and dare-be good :
Thy sacred truths shall reach th' impervious heart;
Discord shall cease, Disease forget to smart,
E'en malice, love, and calumny commend ;
Pride beg an alms, and av'rice turn a friend.
Centred in CHRIST, who fires the soul within,
The flesh shall know no pain, the soul no sin;
E'en in the terrors of expiring breath,

We bless the friendly stroke, and live-in death.
Oxford, April 28, 1748.

BY A PHYSICIAN.

CELESTIAL Meditant! whose ardors rise
Deep from the tombs, and kindle to the skies
How shall an earthly bard's profaner string
Resound the flights of thy seraphic wing?
When great Elijah, in the fiery car,
Flam'd visible to heav'n, a living star,
A seer remain'd to thunder what he knew,

* An allusion to the custom of shewing curious objects, and particularizing their respective delicacies by the pointing of a

rod.

And with his mantle caught his spirit too.

Wit, fancy, fire, and elegance, have long Been lost in vicious or ignoble song ;

Sunk from the chastely grand, the poor sublime, They flatter'd wealth or pow'r, and murder'd time. 'Tis thine their devious lustre to reduce,

To prove their noblest pow'r, their genuine use;
From earth-born fumes to clear their tainted name,
And point their flight to heav'n-from whence they came.
O more than bard in prose! to whom belong
Harmonious style and thought, in rhymeless song;
Oft, by thy friendly conduct, let me tread
The softly-whispering mansions of the dead;
Where the grim forms, calcining hinds and lords,
Grin at each fond distinction pride records.
Dumb, with immortal energy they teach;
Lifeless, they threaten; mould'ring as they preach.
To each succeeding age, thro' ev'ry clime,
The span of life, and endless round of time.
Hence may propitious melancholy flow,
And safety find me in the vaults of woe.

While ev'ry virtue forms thy mental feast,
I glow with fair sincerity at least :

I feel (thy face unknown) thy heart refin'd,
And taste, with bliss, the beauties of thy mind;
Collecting clearly, thro' thy sacred plan,
What reverence of GOD! what love to man!
-O! when at last our deathless form shall rise;
And flowers and stars desist to moralize ;
Shall then my soul, by thine inform'd, survey,
And bear the splendors of essential day?
But while my thoughts indulge the glorious scope,
(My utmost worth beneath the humblest hope,)
Conscience or some exhorting angel, cries,
"No lazy wishes reach above the skies.
"Would you indeed the perfect scenes survey,
And share the triumphs of unbounded day;
"His love-diffusive life with ardor live;
And die like this divine contemplative."

BY A PHYSICIAN.

To form the taste, and raise the nobler part, To mend the morals, and to warm the heart; To trace the genial source, we Nature call, And prove the God of Nature friend of all; HERVEY for this his mental landscape drew, And sketch'd the whole creation out to view.

Th' enamel'd bloom, and variegated flow'r,
Whose crimson changes with the changing hour;
The humble shrub, whose fragrance scents the morn,
With buds disclosing to the early dawn;
The oaks that grace Britania's mountain side,
And spicy Lebanon's superior pride :*

All loudly Sov'REIGN EXCELLENCE proclaim,
And animated worlds confess the same.

The azure fields that form th' extended sky,
The planetary globes that roll on high,
And solar orbs, of proudest blaze combine,
To act subservient to the great design.
Men, angels, seraphs, join the gen❜ral voice;
And in the Lord of Nature ALL rejoice.

HIS, the grey Winter's venerable guise,
Its shrouded glories, and instructive skies ;†

His, the snow's plumes that brood the sick'ning blade ;
His, the bright pendant that impearls the glade;
The waving forest, or the whispering brake;
The surging billow, or the sleeping lake.
The SAME who pours the beauties of the spring,
Or mounts the whirlwind's desolated wing.
The SAME who smiles in nature's peaceful form,
Frowns in the tempest, and directs the storm.

'Tis thine, whose life's a comment on thy page;
Thy happy page! whose periods sweetly flow,
Whose figures charm us, and whose colours glow;
Where artless piety pervades the whole,
Refines the genius and exalts the soul.
For let the witling argue all he can,

It is religion still that makes the man.

'Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright, Tis this that gilds the horrors of the night.

* The Cedar. + Referring to the Winter-Piece.