the wilderness, who
had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey.'
The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle dallying
with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church and
state--not their alliance, but their separation--on the spirit of the
world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed
to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the cross of
Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a poetical and
pastoral excursion,--and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a
striking contrast between the simple shepherd boy, driving his team
afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 'as though
he should never be old,' and the same poor country-lad, crimped,
kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a
wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and
pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the loathsome
finery of the profession of blood.

Such were the notes our once-lov'd poet sung.

And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together,
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the _good cause_;
and the cold dank drops of dew that hung half-melted on the beard of
the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there
was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything
into good The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on
it:

Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.

On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For
those two hours,' he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing
with W. H.'s forehead!' His appearance was different from what I had
anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the dim
light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect,
a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His
complexion was at that time clear,