sober standard of
feeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publication
will be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing his
own thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommended
and exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has been
attained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in a
thousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deaf
yet to lovely sights and sounds--and a true poet is as certain of
recognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we have
no prayer-book printed on paper--perhaps it would be better if we had;
but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr Keble, is compiled and
composed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotland
than in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that is
felt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said,
no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, and
which in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inward
observances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling _here_; and
therefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart,
will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration--for the
Christian creed is "wide and general as the casing air," and felt as
profoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms is
heard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities of
England, where so often

"Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."

Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about--to
show off upon--as if the writing and the reading of it were to be
reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets
have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most
unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy--for it implies
much voluntary self-degradation--is mere popularity. Against all such
low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the
muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on
the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry is
praise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from some
unseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer or
wanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holier
solemnity in