THE BURNT OFFERING.

LET it burn!

'Tis fitting that the heart

Should sometimes to its old loves turn;
Nor spend upon the present all its art;
Nor for new idols in the future yearn!

Let it flame!

There hath been much of treason,
And much of violence and shame,

To the old worship of that spring-life season;
And compromisings of a sacred claim!

Let it blaze!

The old idolatries

Come fiercely on me; as the rays

Of his forsaken god, from burning skies,
Blast the sun-worshipper's apostate gaze!
Be it ashes!-

Hearts seared with first-love fires

So waste, amid the thought that flashes,

And the hot force of world-condemned desires;
Till death dries up the blood of their thick gashes!

All is dark!

Exhaled the sacrifice!

But faintly the rekindled spark

Of my heart's worship old revivifies;

To flee for ever, like the dove o' the ark.

Present eyes,

And present lips and limbs,

Are still the prevalent deities

Of the love-needing heart, whose ancient hymns,

With modulations new, unto new gods arise!

* W. *

NATURE AND HER FORMS.

TRANSLATED FROM THE KOSMORAMA' OF CAROVE, AUTHOR OF 'THE
STORY WITHOUT AN END."

ONE spirit, one love, pervades the universe, one only pulse warms, and animates the whole;' and every single sound, however different, mingles into one divine universal harmony. This we acknowledge, not merely as necessarily true in science, but we feel it in the loftiest, holiest, moments of our existence.

We feel it, when we stand on the open eminence, in the radiance of spring, and look down on the green plains, the glistening rivulets, the peaceful villages, the towns, the hills, the woods, on the distant shepherd surrounded by the fragrant breezes; and the whole earth seems but one altar from which the incense of her grateful homage ascends towards heaven. We feel it when we

look up to the clear, soft, bright, blue firmament, into which the exhalations rise and melt away; from which the benign and salutary light and warmth of life flow down in the breath of spring, and in the rays of the sun. We feel it when we perceive the thousand voices of the wood, and the silent exultation of every creature around; and all-all this magnificence finds entrance into the open and comprehending mind, and, dissolved into one sense of the omnipresent God, and the holy unity of the Creator and the creation, breaks forth again in grateful praise and silent prayer.

We feel it also when, on the feast day, with the assembled community in their best attire, we kneel before the Highest; and the full choir unites with the powerful tones of the organ and the rising incense, in the dome of the sacred edifice; and all hearts beat together, kindled into one flame of devotion and adoration; and the spirit of holiness sinks down as the dew of heaven sinks into each open flower-cup, and re-ascends as a sweet fragrance and an offering of love-the one in all-all in the alone, uniting

one.

But man perceives it likewise when he looks into the eye of the being he loves, and sees his own immortality reflected thereand has free entrance into the congenial heart, as if it were his own home, and there discovers with delight a second self; when he looks into the beloved eye, and his searching, sighing look is met by one more sighing and more searching,-and they seek one another, and meet and recognise that other being each had needed and had sought; and they are two, and yet are one; and then each soul flows forth into the other, and feels perfect satisfaction, because God himself is purest Love, and God is in them, and they are in God; and to them time has passed away, because to them eternity has begun.

Then, oh, then! will man intensely feel that in appearance the world may be, and must be, a divided endless multitude, but that the many in their deepest root, in their individual being, in their highest elevation,-still, indeed, are many,—but are likewise one in spirit and in love,-one in God! In such moments of exalted feeling, as well as in the highest perceptions of the pure reason, each distinction will be equally transpar entand transient ; a name is then to us no more than

-Sound and smoke,

The misty glow of heaven!'

The temporal dissolved into its original element-the eternal; the varied colours re-ascended into pure unrivalled light ;—all is spirit, heaven, divine existence !

But we should be incapable of participating in the holy feelings of union, of arriving at the consciousness of the eternal, had we not been in the separate, the distinct, the individual,-did we not

return back to it again. A simile, which is to be regarded merely as a simile, may render this idea more intelligible. The sun revolves indeed upon his own axis, apparently regardless of all other objects; but, in truth, his being is only full and complete, when the planets, the reflections of himself, revolve around him; when he, beaming forth his rays, finds in the planets his life and his completion; when they, moving in distinct orbits, and in their path meeting the emitted rays, find, and ever and continually receive, their life and their completion in the sun. Then only does the glory of the sun become actual and manifest when the planets, separated from him, obey his powerful attraction; then only does it become apparent that they are, and must be, one with the sun, and that on his influence their fertility depends, when the planets, in their course tread with him in living oscillating movement, and thus produce the varying seasons. In like manner, we should not have known the joy of spring, had not the spring been preceded by the severe and rugged winter;-we should not have known the delight of devotion, had not the union with God, which we recognise in devotion, followed an apparent separation from him. We should not have known the happiness of love, had not the satisfaction it gives succeeded to the suffering and sighing of absence; and, again, it is only by the withdrawal of our highest gratifications, that we are capable of knowing their full enjoy

ment.

So does it appear how everything (though sometimes only seemingly) becomes manifest and attains to its own sense, and knowledge, and perception, and enjoyment, according to its true and complete infinitude, through its opposite-unity. The eternal and the infinite is the commencement and termination of being,-in it the endless circle has its consummation;—but duality, -separation and contrast-is necessary in order that the former may arrive at the latter,-that the latter may again arrive at the former. E. R. B.

AN ODD SUBJECT.

POLITICIANS, who are plunged deep in the study of the destinies of nations, who catch eagerly at clues wherewith to thread the intricacies of party; philosophers, who explore the before untraversed regions of science, to cull truths that may enrich the mind, as the herbalist culls his balmy treasures to strengthen the body; poets, whose eyes wander over each fresh object with the most keenly conscious sense of beauty whereon it may dwell, of all kinds, in all degrees, whether in that physical perfection, a flower, or that spiritual perfection, a woman's soul-but at the same time alike unconscious of the rich return they render for each received impression, and of the mysterious magic by which they weave their

beautiful and many-coloured web; metaphysicians, miners of the mind, who search into its profoundest depths for the true gold which furnishes forth the current coin of the realm of intellect; philanthropists, whose hearts are the urns wherein is contained that allholy precious love, which has been created for the healing of the nations, from whence flows a never-failing stream to fertilize deserts, and make cities joyful-Pull up pen, lest you canter your readers over your head. There-pause a minute, take breath. And now what think you, one and all, is it not an odd subject ?— The Wonderful Fleas !!'

You, who can find an interest in, and point a morality from, the meanest thing that finds a place in this beautiful world--which is so beautiful because there is harmony in all things from the highest to the lowest; you, who love to trace throughout creation the handwriting of God, rather than the superscription of the devil; in a word, who delight to dwell on the everything of good, rather than the worse-than-nothingness of evil; you will not turn away when I say, 'Come and let us reason together,' and see if we cannot find something to repay us in the odd subject,' beyond its first somewhat uninviting aspect.

Every one has seen in Regent-street, or in other parts of the town, a large placard headed with a representation of something like a lobster, with something like a man on its back, followed by a long description of the wonderful feats of those little lively tenants of a small space in creation, whose souls Peter Pindar, in the person of Sir Joseph Banks, doomed to everlasting perdition. The placard serves as an invitation-card to an exhibition, where you may see these heads of the sect of the jumpers, at one time drawing a carriage, at another dancing a quadrille, and performing all sorts of, to them most unnatural, antics, within the due limits prescribed by their master, (although without their accustomed bounds,) so that the imagination is tasked in vain to discover the secret of their subordination. And it would not be easily guessed, though it is now generally known. The unfortu nate little victims, after being made prisoners, are secured in a box just sufficiently high to let them leap up, that they may be knocked down. After repeated endeavours to continue their accustomed rapid way of getting over the ground, (after all they are the only true seven leagued booters, and free-booters too,) they cease not only to hope for the promise of their SPRING,' but to spring at all; and thus are brought by continual blows, to a stupid state of living death, without even enjoying their liberty in the one year of four, so peculiarly their privilege. If I were amongst them, before I would succumb to such tyranny, I would, if there were vantage ground sufficient, leap up again and again till I dashed my brains out! Better so than deteriorate my own nature: it would be for my persecutors one flea away,' while I should be at rest.' And now let us look around, and see how

many, endued with capabilities somewhat above the mere elasticity that lies in a pair of long hind legs, are put to the torture of the box; how the nobler few, who have no escape, are under the infliction, and how the inferior many are deteriorated and reduced to grovel, where they should have leapt.

There are boxes of various kinds. There is a box of Toryism, and a box of Episcopacy; and there is a box of Legal injustice, and a box of Social law, which is the most cruelly oppressive box of all. Into all these wrong boxes, or boxes of wrong, many find their way without the hope of extrication, awhile to struggle with the circumstances around them, to kick against the pricks,' that is, to leap against the lid, and then to be turned out to perform a part in life, so fantastically untrue to the nature that should show forth in the glorious human creature, as to make the angels weep,' and demons shout!-Let us take a few instances.

There is the boy who begins life with a generous love of his kind; who longs to be the righter of the injured, the regenerator of the degraded, the redeemer of the slave; whose eyes flash at a tale of oppression, whose heart throbs at the recital of a deed of high and noble daring. He reads again and again the page that records the fight of Thermopyla, and of the strife that nations have made to be free; and he has longed for the time to come over again that he might be a leader amongst them. His heart has flown with the arrow of Tell, or mourned over the fate o. Emmet. He makes a vow, in all the fulness of an earnest, untouched, untried spirit, to dedicate himself, henceforward and for ever, to the sacred cause of freedom. He cannot control his enthusiasm-it works out at every pore. In his college life he can scarcely keep it within the bounds of the prescribed decorum. He gets reprimanded as a revolutionary republican, and many other long hard names, which his tutors can say and spell, it is true, but of the spirit of which they are utterly ignorant; and he is almost equally so, as his after-life shows. However, he stands it all, for at college, resistance to the local powers that be is a sort of virtue, and as there is no influence of the world upon him, he weathers out the gale of his tutor's displeasure, and comes sailing out in gallant style. We have not time to elaborate on the several phases he passes through before his enthusiasm vanishes. The promise of place or of fortune from some old Tory uncle, or mother's brother's cousin, or the dread of losing caste by associating with those of an inferior rank in society to his own, whose strongminded sturdy demands for equal rights somewhat shock him; or, they do not quite come up to his idea of the grateful recipients of all his numerous proposals for the improvement of their condition; who, in fact, he expected were to stand by inactive while he fought their battle for them, for the idea never entered his head they were fully equal and ready to fight it for themselves, and so curtail him of that large proportion of honour and gratitude