these yearnings for a sense which would reveal to us something of which we now have strange and unrealized dreams? In the voice of the waves, in the moanings of the wind, who has not heard, if I may use the expression, something which sound did not convey? How often in the glories, the grandeur, or the gloom of scenery, have we felt that there was something which sight could not realize? Poets have in vain endeavoured to embody these vague feelings in words. Byron felt it when he wrote of "Those orbs of light, So wildly, spiritually bright, "Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, High instincts before which our mortal nature our present intellectual faculties, our notions of the external world would be very different from those which we now entertain. Of all that vision conveys to us we should not only be wholly ignorant, but the remotest imagination could not enter our minds. In the case in which I suppose, sight would be a thing unthought of, unimagined, and unconceived. But have we any reason to believe that the senses with which we are now endowed, are all of which even the physical organization of our present frame is capable? May not that frame be capable of being endowed with some sense as remote from all our present conceptions as vision would be from those of a race who had been from creation blind-a sense which might alter and correct all our perceptions of the external world as completely as the gift of vision would enlighten and change The more philosophic Wordsworth has spoken the ideas formed of it by the blind? How of unwise, then, and how rash is the judgment which would bring those things which appear to us the mysteries of religion, to the test of sense, while we can have no assurance that these senses give us full information, even of matters within the region of sense. It may be something as trifling as a minute film across the eye which prevents the development in our bodily senses of some power of which we have never dreamed; some power which would show us that statements which appear to our ignorance to contradict the evidence of our senses are only inconsistent with their imperfect testimony; a power, in the absence of which we are as incapable of taking in all that even sense can tell us of the external world as man admittedly would be in the absence of sight. We never can be certain that our senses convey to us all the knowledge as to the external world which our nature is fitted, even by this mode of information, to receive. Plurality of senses is, perhaps, given us to understand that it cannot be so. But all the probability is that they do not. the few cases of persons born blind, who subsequently attained the faculty of sight, we are struck by the accounts they give of indescribable yearnings after something, which were satisfied by sight. No doubt this may have been produced by conversation about vision; but I cannot help thinking that it was produced by the existence in the mind of a mental faculty adapted to receive the ideas of sight a faculty in the soul which sought its proper object. In Is it fanciful to say that all of us, in our communings with external nature, have felt Is not this the feeling that " now we see "Hence, in a season of calm weather, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, Is it unphilosophical to say that feelings like these are but the voice of our nature telling us that we have faculties that yearn for information from the external world which we might receive from senses yet unknown, and that a slight change in our organization might pour upon our perceptions a flood of light which would irradiate and glorify, and make intelligible them all, and show us that even in these forms which we supposed in our presumption that we fully comprehended, there are visions of beauty which no sense we now enjoy can realize, and which, therefore, our mind never framed-"good things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." I now feel how inadequately I have been | have led me astray in believing that the subable to convey to you the interest which such a subject as I have chosen might well excite. I do not think, as I have said in the commencement, that I have been unduly influenced by feelings which naturally arise in my mind from even a remote relationship to Berkeley. Accident has given me other associations in connection with his name. More than thirty years have passed since I became familiar with the manse-house of Berkeley's see, when it was occupied by one who justly recalled the title of his predecessor in another great and good Bishop of Cloyne. It was from the lips of the great astronomer whose discovery of the parallax of the fixed stars made his name famous throughout Europe, that I first heard an explanation of Berkeley's theory, walking on the garden terrace which Berkeley's taste had formed. It was under the roof of the house in which he lived-I believe in the very room in which he studied-that a copy of his works was first placed in my hand; and I was invited to study the theory which denied the existence of the material world by one whose genius had done so much to explain its wonders. I have still a vivid remembrance of being brought by Bishop Brinkley to look at the jars of tar-water discovered at the roots of hedges in the palace gardens, which had been torn up in some improvements, in ignorance of the fact that the trees were planted by the hand of the author of Siris. The name of Berkeley recalls to me memories more sacred still: "The touch of a vanish'd hand, The sound of a voice that is gone." Yet I do not think that associations like these ject was one calculated to interest you; and "Si Christianus fueris, si amans patriæ, WILLIAM ALEXANDER-MRS. ALEXANDER. [The Right Rev. William Alexander, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe, was born in Londonderry in April, 1824. His father was the Rev. Robert Alexander, rector of Aghadoey. He graduated in Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1847; and in the same year was ordained. After he had passed through various minor ecclesiastical appointments, he was made Dean of Emly in 1863; and in 1867, on the death of Dr. Higgin, was raised to the bishopric of Derry. Though for many years past Dr. Alexander's muse has been silent, it was as a poet that he first became known in the intellectual world. One cannot read the productions of his youthful pen without deeply regretting that the heavy duties of his office, and his devotion to purely ecclesiastical literature, have weaned him so completely from his first literary love. 1 The reader will find a notice of Bishop Berkeley, with extracts from his writings, in vol. i. p. 205 of the Cabinet. -ED. It is equally to be regretted that his poems are not to be found collected in accessible form. The only volume in which his poetic writings have ever been bound together took the shape of Specimens, published in obedience to the demands of a special occasion, and, of course, now visible to the eye only of research. Dr. Alexander, in 1853, wrote the ode in honour of the late Lord Derby's installation; and, in 1860, gained the Sacred Prize Poem with "The Waters of Babylon." In 1867 he was a candidate for the professorship of poetry in Oxford; he was defeated by Sir F. H. Doyle after a close contest. Silent as a poet, Dr. Alexander is eminent as a pulpit orator; and there are few preachers of his Church who have such a power of poetic imagery and graceful expression. He is also a frequent contributor to ecclesiastic literature, the most noticeable of his works being Witness of the Psalms to Christ and Christianity, which formed the Bampton Lectures for 1876. In 1849 Dr. Alexander married Miss Cecil Frances Humphreys, who has since acquired a very wide-spread reputation as an authoress of sacred songs. Her works-Moral Songs, Hymns for Children, and Poems on Old Testament Subjects-have passed through forty or fifty editions. We give the best known and most popular of her poems-"The Burial of Moses"-the sonorous rhythm of which rises to the height even of the great subject. Mr. Robert Jocelyn Alexander, the son of those distinguished parents, has already given proof of inheriting their gifts. In 1873 he was the winner of the Newdigate Prize Poem -his subject being "The Last of the Red Indians." In 1877 he was equally successful with a Sacred Prize Poem, "Ismail;" and he has also gained the Chancellor's Prize Essay in prose-the subject being, "The Influence of the Schoolmen upon Modern Literature." This work displays great originality of thought, and traces in an ingenious and interesting way some of the notions we usually consider of most modern invention to the now mouldy writings of the forgotten scribes in the old monasteries.] DEATH OF AN ARCTIC HERO. BY BISHOP ALEXANDER, At last an orange band, Set in a dawn of ashen gray, To things that winter in that dreadful land Awfully calm and uncompassionate; Broadening and brightening to infinity, Oh, Admiral! thou hadst a shrine A sacrament, but not of bread and wine. Are truths, and silences, and mysteries- Only at home ye will be sure to say found what? The bourne whence traveller returneth not!— How shall we bury him? Then, silence all! And yet far grandlier will we bury him. Give him lights auroral-give him glories, Let the wild winds, like chief mourners, walk, Hush! for the breeze, and the white fog's swathing sweep, I cannot hear the simple service read, BELOW AND ABOVE. BY BISHOP ALEXANDER. Down below, the wild November whistling Through the beech's dome of burning red, And the Autumn sprinkling penitential Dust and ashes on the chestnut's head. Down below, a pall of airy purple, Up above, the tree with leaf unfading Down below, the white wings of the sea-bird, Dash'd across the furrows dark with mould, Flitting with the memories of our childhood Through the trees now waxen pale and old. Down below, imaginations quivering Up above, the host no man can number, Up above, the thoughts that know not anguish, Down below, a sad mysterious music, Up above, a music that entwineth, All whose wondrous meaning hath been found. Down below, the church to whose poor window Up above, the burst of Hallelujah, Down below, cold sunlight on the tombstones, And the new-made grave within the churchyard, Up above, a crown'd and happy spirit, O the sobbing of the winds of Autumn, O the pale, and plash'd, and sodden roses, O the rest for ever, and the rapture, THE BURIAL OF MOSES. BY MRS. ALEXANDER. By Nebo's lonely mountain, on this side Jordan's wave, In a vale, in the land of Moab there lies a lonely grave; And no man knows that sepulchre, and no man saw it e'er; For, the angels of God upturned the sod, and laid the dead man there. That was the grandest funeral that ever passed on earth; But no man heard the trampling, or saw the train go forth Noiselessly, as the Daylight comes back when Night is done, And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek grows into the great sun. This was the truest warrior that ever buckled sword; Noiselessly, as the spring-time her crown of verdure weaves, And all the trees on all the hills open their thou- This the most gifted poet that ever breathed a sand leaves; word; So, without sound of music, or voice of them that And never earth's philosopher traced with his wept, golden pen, Silently down from the mountain's crown, the On the deathless page, truths half so sage as he great procession swept. wrote down for men. Perchance the bald old eagle, on gray Beth-Peor's And had he not high honour, -the hill-side for a height, pall? Out of his lonely eyrie, looked on the wondrous To lie in state, while angels wait, with stars for sight; tapers tall? Perchance the lion stalking still shuns that hal- And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, over lowed spot, his bier to wave! For, beast and bird have seen and heard that And God's own hand, in that lonely land, to lay which man knoweth not! him in the grave! But when the Warrior dieth, his comrades in the In that strange grave without a name,—whence war, his uncoffined clay With arms reversed and muffled drum, follow his Shall break again, O wondrous thought! before funeral car; the judgment-day, They show the banners taken, they tell his battles And stand, with glory wrapt around, on the hills won, he never trod, And after him lead his masterless steed, while And speak of the strife that won our life, with the peals the minute-gun.. incarnate Son of God. Amid the noblest of the land we lay the Sage to O lonely grave in Moab's land! O dark Beth-Peor's rest, hill! And give the Bard an honoured place, with costly Speak to these curious hearts of ours, and teach marble drest, them to be still. In the great minster transept, where lights like God hath his mysteries of grace, ways that we glories fall, cannot tell; And the organ rings, and the sweet choir sings, He hides them deep, like the hidden sleep of him along the emblazoned wall. he loved so well! [Francis Davis, "the Belfast Man," was born | but twelve years old, and was consigned by in Ballincollig, county Cork, on March 7, 1810. His father, formerly a respectable farmer, had through folly enlisted in the army, and his mother, descended from a Highland Scotch family, was a woman of great intellectual and moral strength. To her the boy owed the first development of his natural gifts, and in her he was to a great extent compensated for the loss of those social advantages caused by the unfortunate position of his other parent. In the deepest poverty she inspired her son with a love for noble thoughts in verse, and to her may be attributed that manly independence and truthful character which have distinguished Mr. Davis throughout his long life. Of this best of friends he was bereaved when his father to the care of a rich but miserly relative, from whom he well earned board and shelter. In the meantime his father died, and the boy, unable longer to endure the hard treatment of his guardian, was received by a small farmer, who eked out a scanty subsistence by working at the loom. Francis, anxious to free himself from the galling dependence which he had endured, soon became a skilled weaver. He then settled in Belfast, and "as the weaver plied his shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme." The agitation for Catholic Emancipation provided the youthful poet with a theme for many songs and ballads, which were sung in the streets of Irish towns, and did undoubted service to the cause. |