and then breaks out either in
passing compliment--amounting to but a bow--or in eloquent laudation,
during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaks
nobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorning
all the land; but in none--no, not one of the houses of the humble, the
hovels of the poor into which he takes us--is the religion preached in
those cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealing
organ, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree,
lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tutelary spirit of the
lowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find the
Christian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as ever
was produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and of
the world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which he
breathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to be
one of the order of the High Priests of nature?

Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a very
interesting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and does
not pretend to present a model of virtue?--that there are miseries which
shut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being too
severely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of their
suffering, to look to that source for comfort?--that this is human
nature, and the description only follows it?--that when "in peace and
comfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven," and that
her habit in that respect was only broken up by the stroke of her
calamity, causing such a derangement of her mental power as should
deeply interest the sympathies?--in short, that the poet is an artist,
and that the privation of all comfort from religion completes the
picture of her desolation?

Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet so
pathetically speak?

"Of one whose stock
Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof.
She was a woman of a steady mind,
Tender and deep in her excess of love;
Not speaking much--pleased rather with the joy
Of her own thoughts. By some especial care
Her temper had been framed, as if to make
A Being who, by adding love to fear,
Might live on earth a life of happiness.
Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side
The humble worth that satisfied her heart--
Frugal, affectionate,