a ter

"The shadows grew pale and melted, as the white vapor formed by the frost melts and becomes a warm breath, and all was void. Then there arose and came into the temple rible sight for the heart— the dead children who had awakened in the church-yard, and they cast themselves before the lofty form upon the altar, and said, 'Jesus! have we no Father?' and he answered with streaming eyes, 'We are all orphans, I and you; we are without a Father."

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Thereupon the discords shrieked more harshly; the trembling walls of the temple split asunder, and the temple and the children sunk down, and the earth and the sun followed, and the whole immeasurable universe fell rushing past us; and aloft upon the summit of infinite Nature stood Christ, and gazed down into the universe, checkered with thousands of suns, as into a mine dug out of the Eternal Night, wherein the suns are the miners' lamps, and the milky ways the veins of silver.

"And when Christ beheld the grinding concourse of worlds, the torch-dances of the heavenly ignes fatui, and the coralbanks of beating hearts; and when he beheld how one sphere after another poured out its gleaming souls into the sea of death, as a drop of water strews gleaming lights upon the waves, sublime as the loftiest finite being, he lifted up his eyes to the Nothingness, and to the empty Immensity, and said, — ‘Frozen, dumb Nothingness! cold, eternal Necessity! insane Chance! know ye what is beneath you? When will ye destroy the building and me? Chance! knowest thou thyself when with hurricanes thou wilt march through the snow-storm of stars and extinguish one sun after the other, and when the sparkling dew of the constellations shall cease to glisten as thou passest by? How lonely is every one in the wide charnel of the universe! I alone am in company with myself. O Father! O Father! where is thine infinite bosom, that I may be at rest? Alas! if every being is its own father and creator, why cannot it also be its own destroying angel? . . . . . Is that a man near me? Thou poor one! thy little life is the sigh of Nature, or only its echo. A concave mirror throws its beams upon the dust-clouds composed of the ashes of the dead upon your earth, and thus ye exist, cloudy, tottering images! Look down into the abyss over which clouds of ashes are floating by. Fogs full of worlds arise out of the sea of death. The future is a rising vapor, the present a falling one. Knowest thou thy earth?' Here Christ looked down, and his eyes filled with tears, and he said, 'Alas! I, too, was once like you then I was happy, for I had still my infinite Father, and still gazed joyfully from the mountains into the infinite expanse of heaven; and I pressed my wounded heart on his soothing image, and said, even in the bit

terness of death, "Father, take thy Son out of his bleeding shell, and lift him up to thy heart." Ah, ye too, too happy dwellers of earth, ye still believe in him. Perhaps at this moment your sun is setting, and ye fall, amid blossoms, radiance, and tears, upon your knees, and lift up your blessed hands, and call out to the open heaven, amid a thousand tears of joy, "Thou knowest me too, thou infinite One, and all my wounds, and thou wilt welcome me after death, and wilt close them all." Ye wretched ones! after death they will not be closed. . . When the man of sorrows stretches his sore wounded back upon the earth to slumber towards a lovelier morning, full of truth, full of virtue and of joy, behold, he awakes in the tempestuous chaos, in the everlasting midnight, and no morning cometh, and no healing hand, and no infinite Father! Mortal who art near me, if thou still livest, worship him, or thou hast lost him for ever!

“And as I fell down and gazed into the gleaming fabric of worlds, I beheld the raised rings of the giant serpent of eternity, which had couched itself round the universe of worlds, and the rings fell, and she enfolded the universe doubly. Then she wound herself in a thousand folds round Nature, and crushed the worlds together, and, grinding them, she squeezed the infinite temple into one church-yard church, - and all became narrow, dark, and fearful, and a bell-hammer stretched out to infinity was about to strike the last hour of Time, and split the universe asunwhen I awoke.

der,

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My soul wept for joy, that it could again worship God; and the joy, and the tears, and the belief in him were the prayer. And when I arose, the sun gleamed deeply behind the full purple ears of corn, and peacefully threw the reflection of its evening blushes on the little moon, which was rising in the east without an aurora. And between the heaven and the earth a glad fleeting world stretched out its short wings, and lived like myself in the presence of the infinite Father, and from all nature around me flowed sweet, peaceful tones, as from evening bells.”—pp. 416, 417.

There is no need of our going farther in our catalogue of writers, or attempting to abridge for our readers Mr. Hedge's table of contents. We trust that we may induce some of them, at least, to consult it for themselves. There is no book accessible to the English or American reader which can furnish so comprehensive and symmetrical a view of German literature to the uninitiated; and those already conversant with some of the German classics will find here valuable and edifying extracts from works to which very few in this country can gain access.

ART. IX. 1. Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry. By ALEXANDER BETHUNE, a Laborer. Edinburgh Fraser & Co. 1838. 18mo.

2. Practical Economy explained and enforced in a Series of Lectures. By ALEXANDER BETHUNE, Laborer, Author of "Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry," and JOHN BETHUNE, a Fifeshire Forester. Edinburgh Adam & Charles Black. 1839. 18mo. pp.

278.

3. Poems, by the late JOHN BETHUNE; with a Sketch of the Author's Life, by his Brother. London: Hamil

ton, Adams, & Co. 1841. 18mo. pp. 304.

4. The Scottish Peasant's Fireside, a Series of Tales and Sketches illustrating the Character of the Peasantry of Scotland. By ALEXANDER BETHUNE, Laborer. Edinburgh Adam & Charles Black. 1843. 18mo. pp.

330.

5. Memoirs of Alexander Bethune, embracing Selections from his Correspondence and Literary Remains. Compiled and edited by WILLIAM CROMBIE, Author of "Hours of Thought," &c. Aberdeen G. & R. King. 1845. 18mo. pp. 390.

:

WE have been deeply interested in these volumes, not because the two brothers whose writings and biographies are contained in them had any very remarkable gifts of intellect, or were ever likely to gain a distinguished place, either by their genius or their eccentricities, in the list of uneducated poets. They were representatives of a class the best class, it is true, but we hope also a tolerably numerous one among the peasantry of Scotland, who have always been noted for the possession of higher traits of character than are usually found compatible with extreme poverty. The hardships which they endured were very great; they were born poor, and misfortune seemed to pursue through life with unrelenting severity. Their industry, sobriety, and good sense, their noble independence and firmness of spirit, and their spotless lives, would have sufficed to raise them, one would hope, to a position of tolerable comfort, even if the circumstances by which they were surrounded from the first had been more unfavorable than they

them

were. But they were unlucky in every thing they undertook; accident, disease, and death repeatedly interfered with the execution of their plans, and finally carried them. both off, when they had hardly attained middle age, and before their case had been made sufficiently public to attract universal sympathy and respect. Their story is a painfully interesting one, and, though from a very different cause, is still as rich in instruction as the more tragic record of the life of Burns. We gladly do our part to make it better known on this side of the Atlantic, where they could never have supposed that their names would be mentioned.

Alexander Bethune, the elder of the two brothers, was born in the parish of Letham, Fifeshire, in July, 1804. His father, who had been a servant before his marriage, and was an ordinary farm-laborer afterwards, was obliged frequently to shift his residence to procure employment. In 1812, when John, his second son, was born, he was living at a place called The Mount, once well known as the home of Sir David Lindsay, whom Scott celebrates in lines which have rather more sound than poetry :

The mother, though she also had been a domestic, was better educated than her husband, and was fond of repeating ballads and other poetry, which first gave the boys a liking for rhymes. She was religiously inclined, thoughtlessly generous to others who were no poorer than herself, and not a good housewife, so that her household were more indebted to her for the cultivation of their minds than for any domestic comforts. She taught the two boys to read, and gave them a little instruction in writing and arithmetic ; whatever facility they afterwards acquired in the use of the pen or with figures was gained by their own exertions, as Alexander went to school only for three or four months, and John only for one day. To herd cows, to carry to their father his dinner, when he was at work in some distant field, and to help him throughout the afternoon in his task of clearing the ground of furze, was the employment of both lads while they were from eight to twelve years of age. At the latter period, they began the ruder toil of ditching or break

ing stones on the highway, and were able to earn, when they worked by the piece, from 1s. to 1s. 3d. a day. During the winter, the weather being often very severe, and their work on the road giving no motion to their lower limbs, the legs and feet of John, then only twelve years old, were with difficulty preserved from freezing; and the older brother complained, that, on first attempting to move in the morning, "his joints creaked like machinery wanting oil."

But these hardships did not overcome their love of reading, and whatever books they could borrow in the neighbourhood were diligently studied by the light of the evening fire. In the summer of 1825, a poor student from the College of St. Andrews, who was struggling hard for an education, taught a small school at Lochend, where the Bethunes then lived. Alexander obtained some instruction from him in his hours of leisure, and the bent of his mind was still more affected by the long recitations of poetry, with which this young student, who had an excellent memory, often favored him. He began to copy out some extracts from books, both in poetry and prose, and to make remarks upon them, in which he strove to imitate the style of the originals. Bunyan, Cowper, Burns, and Blair, the author of "The Grave," were his great favorites. If he had not possessed good judgment, a manly and sedate turn of mind, and a very even temper, these studies would probably have been only an injury to him, by making him more sensible to the hardships of his lot, and giving him more ambition than circumstances could ever gratify. But his letters, poems, and other writings show no traces of a restless or repining spirit, and he makes no parade of fortitude or self-denial. He was too proud to complain, and seems to have carried the feeling of independence even to an unreasonable extent. Now and then, some expressions of impatience escaped him against the rich who made a poor use of their wealth, while he saw clearly how much might be accomplished by it; but the feeling even in this case was dictated more by regard for others than for himself. The only change he desired in his own lot was one to be produced entirely by his own exertions.

The family was not so poor but that there was a possibility of their becoming poorer. As the father grew old, his health failed, his earnings were cut off, and the attempts made