rown athwart the chasm,
As on the topmost ridge he homeward hies.
How deep the hush! the torrent's channel, dry,
Presents a stony steep, the echo's haunt.
But hark a plaintive sound floating along!
'Tis from yon heath-roofed shieling; now it dies
Away, now rises full; it is the song
Which He who listens to the hallelujahs
Of choiring seraphim delights to hear;
It is the music of the heart, the voice
Of venerable age, of guileless youth,
In kindly circle seated on the ground
Before their wicker door."

Crabbe, who was as keen an observer of rural scenes, had a much better
faculty of verse; indeed, he had a faculty of language so large that it
carried him beyond the real drift of his stories. I do not _know_ the
fact, indeed; but I think, that, notwithstanding the Duke of Rutland's
patronage, Mr. Crabbe must have written inordinately long sermons. It is
strange how many good men do,--losing point and force and efficiency in
a welter of words! If there is one rhetorical lesson which it behooves
all theologic or academic professors to lay down and enforce, (if need
be with the ferule,) it is this,--Be short. It is amazing the way in
which good men lose themselves on Sunday mornings in the lapse of their
own language; and most rarely are we confronted from the pulpit with an
opinion which would not bear stripping of wordy shifts, and be all the
more comely for its nakedness.

George Crabbe wrote charming rural tales; but he wrote long ones. There
is minute observation, dramatic force, tender pathos, but there is much,
of tedious and coarse description. If by some subtile alchemy the better
qualities could be thrown down from the turbid and watery flux of his
verse, we should have an admirable pocket-volume for the country; as it
is, his books rest mostly on the shelves, and it requires a strong
breath to puff away the dust that has gathered on the topmost edges.

I think of the Reverend Mr. Crabbe as an amiable, absent-minded old
gentleman, driving about on week-days in a heavy, square-topped gig,
(his wife holding the reins,) in search of way-side gypsies, and on
Sunday pushing a discourse--which was good up to the "fourthly"--into
the "seventhly."

Charles Lamb, if he had been clerically disposed, would, I am sure, have
written short sermons; and I think that his hearers would have carried
away the gist of them clean and clear.

He never wrote anything that could be