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ministry; and had the fastidious admirer of neat and interesting villages, taken a look at them during the earlier years of their missionary enterprise, he would have nauseated the whole procedure as the effect of mean, revolting fanaticism. Now let it not be forgotten that what the Moravians were then, some of the later class of missionaries are at this moment. They have positively not had time for the production of the same striking and numerous results; but they are very busy and very promising in that line of operation which leads to them. To be an admirer of the result is a very different thing from being an admirer of the operation. To be the one, all that is necessary is a taste for what is wonderful, or what is pleasing; and what can be more wonderful, and, at the same time, more pleasing, than a groupe of Hottentot families reclaimed from the barbarism of their race, and living under obedient control to the charities and decencies of the Gospel? But that a person may become an admirer of the operation, he must approve the faith; he must be influenced by a love of the Lord Jesus Christ; he must have a belief in the efficacy of prayer; he must have a relish for that which a majority we fear of professing Christians would stamp with the brand of enthusiasm; in a word, his natural enmity to the things of God must be beginning to give way, and he be an admirer of the truth in all its unction and in all its simplicity. Let not, therefore, the later missionaries be mortified at the way in which they have been contrasted with the Moravians. They are just passing through the very ordeal through which these worthy men passed before them. It is a trial of their faith, and of their patience; and if they keep with the same stedfastness, to the simplicity that is in Christ; if they maintain the same enduring dependence upon God; if they resist the infection of a worldly spirit with the same purity of heart which has ever marked the United Brethren, and preserve themselves through all the varieties of disappointment and success as free from the temptations of vain glory, or bitterness, or emulation; then may they look forward to the day when they shall compel the silence of gainsayers by exhibitions equally wonderful and promising.

Before we take up the subject of the present article, it may be proper to state, that a very complete summary of Moravian missions may be met with in Dr. Brown's History of the Propagation of Christianity; a work singularly suited to the present eager inquiry after missionary intelligence, as giving a lucid and connected view of all that has been done or attempted in this way, since the period of the Reformation.

The United Brethren failed in their first attempt to settle on the coast of Labrador, in 1752; nor did they renew their attempt till an offer was made by Jens Haven, in 1764, to ga

out as a missionary to that country. He had been for some years a missionary in Greenland; and from the strong affinity between the two languages, he was able to make himself understood by the Esquimaux. This secured him a degree of acceptance among that barbarous people, which was never before experienced by any European;-a circumstance highly agreeable to Sir Hugh Palliser, at that time Governor of Newfoundland, and which obtained for the missionary, the countenance of the Board of Trade and Plantations.

It was found necessary, however, to defer the missionary work for some years, till Mikak, an Esquimaux woman, was brought to London, and attracted the same kind of notice among people of rank and influence in the metropolis, that was afterwards excited by the appearance of the well known Otaheitean in this country. She here met with Jens Haven, and earnestly solicited his protection for her poor countrymen, many of whom had been slaughtered in a late affray with the English. She was of great use in advancing the business of the mission; and a grant was at length obtained from the Privy Council, by which the Brethren's Society for the furtherance of the Gospel, obtained permission from the King and his Ministers, to make settlements on the coast of Labrador, and to preach the Gospel to the Esquimaux.

Under cover of this permission, Haven accompanied with others, sailed for the coast of Labrador, purchased land from the Esquimaux, and in 1771, was busied in the erection of various conveniences for a settlement at Nain, where they were suffered to reside without disturbance from the natives who visited them. In 1776, they formed another settlement at Okkak, an island, about 150 miles to the northward; and one year after a third settlement at Hopedale to the south of Okkak, completed the present list of the Moravian establishments in that country.

(To be continued.)

Art. II. The Excursion: being a portion of the Recluse, a Poem. By William Wordsworth. 4to. pp. 448. Price 27. 2s. Longman and Co. 1814.

WHO can behold this beautiful world, and imagine, for a moment, that it was designed to be the abode of miserable beings? The earth arrayed in verdure, adorned with flowers, diversified with hill and dale, engirdled with the ocean, overcanopied with heaven; this earth so smiling and fruitful, so commodious and magnificent, is altogether worthy of its Maker, and not only a fit habitation for Man, created in the image of

God, but a place which Angels might delight to visit on embassies of love. All nature, through all her forms of existence, calls on man to rejoice with her in the goodness of the universal Parent. The stars in their courses, the sun and moon in their changes, by day and by night, display his glory; the seasons in succession, the land and the waters, reciprocally, distribute his bounty; every plant in its growth is pleasing to the eye, or wholesome for food; every animal in health is happy in the exercise of its ordinary functions; life itself is enjoyment. Yet in, the heart of man there is something which incapacitates him from the full fruition of the blessings thus abundantly dealt around him something which has introduced disorder into his mind, and disease into the frame; darkening and bewildering his intellect; corrupting and inflaming his passions; and hurrying him by a fatality of impulse to that excess in every indulgence, which turns aliment into poison, and from the perversion of the social feelings produces strife, misery, and confusion to families, to nations, to the world. What is it? It is sin!This cannot have been in man from the beginning, otherwise his Creator could not be a God of holiness, order, and beneficence; nor would He have formed the universe so excellently fair, and so admirably conducive to the felicity of its inhabitants.

It is true, that we are encompassed with perils from the elements, from accidents, and from the constitution of things; but waiving the inquiry how far these may be the consequences of sin, all the sorrows inflicted by the act of God,' in earthquakes, famine, pestilence and storms, are but a drop in the cup of bitterness which man has mingled for himself. Fallen then, as he is, from his primitive state, and shorn of her beauty, though far less in proportion, as nature may be, on account of his transgression, there are still in the human breast those high capacities of enjoyment, connected with improvement, which were his original inheritance; and still throughout the universe there are those forms of sublimity and grace which are calculated to awaken and gratify those capacities: yet, without a new birth, if we may borrow the figure, the noblest powers of the understanding and the imagination remain latent, or, at most, are only passive to receive impressions, not to solicit them, and still less to reproduce them in solitude by reflection. We know that the grossest of rational beings are unconsciously affected by the gaiety and grandeur that surround them in the scenery of morning or midnight, the elevation of mountains, the immensity of forests, the luxuriance of vegetable, and the variety of animal life; yet how much happier would they be if they knew their happiness, and sought it where they could never fail to find it, in every sight and every sound, melancholy or cheerful, terrible or soothing. Minds opened, refined, and ennobled by education, and

led to communion with nature in quest of knowledge and pleasure, which stray hand in hand through all her walks, are prepared to meet the objects of their desire at all times and every where:' but hearts, regenerated by the Spirit of God, allied to minds thus expanded, are alone capable of exercising all the energies, and of enjoying all the privileges of the human soul in its intercourse with the visible creation, as the mirror of the power and perfections of Deity; or, rather, as "the hiding of his power," the veil of glory which he has cast round the thick darkness wherein he dwells withdrawn from mortal sight, yet makes his presence felt wherever there is motion, breath, or being.

It was one of the most captivating dreams of ancient philosophy, one of its infant dreams, for the earliest idolatry sprang from this source, that there was a living Spirit in every orb of the universe; the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth itself, were conscious beings, acting and re-acting one on another by their respective influences. Superstition afterwards multiplied intelligences through the minor forms of nature, and turned them all into divinities. Hence the sympathetic intercourse, which exalted understandings may hold with animate and inanimate things, as the effects of one great cause, was debased into a false religion, in which the devotees, by a direct inversion of what reason would teach on such a subject, worshipped objects inferior to themselves, creatures of God, or creatures of the imagination. Language itself in its origin was composed of pictures in words; things that were representing things that were not; and men spoke, as well as wrote, in hieroglyphics, before abstract terms and letters were invented. Poetry in all ages has retained the figures of primitive speech as its most graceful and venerable ornaments: hence its professors have invariably realized the dream of philosophy, and given souls, not only to the host of heaven, but to all the shapes and substances on earth. Mountains, trees, rivers, elements, &c. are personified, apostrophized, and made both the subjects and the objects of hope, fear, love, anger, revenge, and every human affection. With the multitude of poets these are only technical modes of expression employed to charm or astonish their readers; but with Mr. Wordsworth, the Author of the extraordinary volume before us, they are far otherwise. Common place prosopopoeias he disdains to use; he has a poetical mythology of his own. He loves nature with a passion amounting almost to devotion; and he discovers throughout her works an omnipresent spirit, which so nearly resembles God in power and goodness, that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the reverence which he pays to it, from the homage due to the Supreme alone. In proportion, all subordinate identities and phenomena, whether on the earth or in the sky, excite in him

joy or wonder, corresponding to the character of simplicity or complexity, beauty or sublimity, inherent in them, and holding mysterious affinity with congenial qualities in the Poet's own soul. Hence, in the poems formerly published, he frequently divulged sensations of rapture, surprise, or admiration, unintelligible to vulgar minds; and avowed sympathies too profound for utterance, in the contemplation of every-day objects, which ordinary eyes pass over as mere matters of fact, no more demanding attention than a truism requires demonstration. Consequently, such passages provoked the scorn of superficial readers, and even incurred the heaviest censure of self-constituted critics in the highest place, solely because the poet, when most solemnly touched, either awakened ludicrous associations, or failed to present his peculiar ideas in such colours as to excite answering emotions in bosoms unaccustomed to feel and reflect after his manner. Few people would be sentimentally struck by the unexpected appearance ' of a host of dancing daffodils' on the margin of a lake, 'whose sparkling waves danced beside them;" and still fewer would carry away the image and treasure it up in memory for the occasional exhilaration of their private thoughts; yet Mr. Wordsworth, after fancifully describing such a merry dance of flowers and sunbeams on the waters, says,

Oft when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.' Poems, Vol. II. p. 50.

Perhaps every one who has been brought up in the country, the first time he hears the cuckoo in spring, is vividly reminded of the sports of his boyhood, by a sound so familiarly old, that he never remembers not to have heard it at that season of the year. None, however, except a poet of the most curious sensibility, who at once lives along the line of past existence, and can dwell on any part of it at pleasure, would be thrown into such a trance, at the call of the cuckoo, as to realize the scenes of infancy with raptures like the following

I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain,
And listen till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace,

Again appears to be

An unsubstantial fairy place,

That is fit home for thee.' Poems, Vol. II. p. 59.

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